K
Kathleen Martin
Guest
The path to CIO was absolutely not a direct or straight-line for me.
My journey encompassed many different roles, across several industries and geographies, in various leadership capacities. It can best be described as a winding road up a steep mountain terrain with lots of unexpected detours, only to arrive at the peak with an unbelievable view.
Stop one on my career path started when I graduated early as a Bachelor of Science in applied mathematics, but had uncertainty about how to translate my degree into a career. My older brother, a self-professed technology geek, was actually the one who encouraged me to combine my degree in math with computer science. It was the direction I needed to begin my journey.
A shot in the dark, I moved from South Carolina up to Vermont for my first gig – as a computer education registrar for a printing and copying solution provider, while simultaneously moonlighting as a third-shift hotel clerk to pay for the suits required for my day job.
In any career there are a handful of pivotal, defining moments. My first one came a few months after I started as a registrar. During an "all hands" company meeting, I stood up and asked the executive team why we weren't tracking computer education registrants and their course data (this was well before analytics and CRM were formalized concepts). I thought I was going to be fired, but the CEO loved the idea.
I quietly celebrated avoiding a major detour in climbing the hill. The CEO pulled me from my registrar position into a new role with IT responsibilities and that was my introduction into the tech field, building target-based marketing and relational databases for the company. It was then that I had the realization of just how powerful a resource data can be. At 19 years old, I was offered a job for another company managing databases for much larger clients.
From there, my interest grew exponentially as I began to discern how quickly the tech space evolves, and furthermore, how our answers to yesterday's business challenges often do not apply in today's world, and most definitely not tomorrow's.
Years later, I knew I wanted to become a CIO when I realized that being a CIO doesn't necessarily mean having all the technical answers to everyone's questions. It is more about having creative ideas that apply the use of technology to solve business challenges and drive competitive advantage in an organization.
Continue reading: https://www.ciodive.com/news/rachel-hayden-mentor-women-CIO/606467/
My journey encompassed many different roles, across several industries and geographies, in various leadership capacities. It can best be described as a winding road up a steep mountain terrain with lots of unexpected detours, only to arrive at the peak with an unbelievable view.
Stop one on my career path started when I graduated early as a Bachelor of Science in applied mathematics, but had uncertainty about how to translate my degree into a career. My older brother, a self-professed technology geek, was actually the one who encouraged me to combine my degree in math with computer science. It was the direction I needed to begin my journey.
A shot in the dark, I moved from South Carolina up to Vermont for my first gig – as a computer education registrar for a printing and copying solution provider, while simultaneously moonlighting as a third-shift hotel clerk to pay for the suits required for my day job.
In any career there are a handful of pivotal, defining moments. My first one came a few months after I started as a registrar. During an "all hands" company meeting, I stood up and asked the executive team why we weren't tracking computer education registrants and their course data (this was well before analytics and CRM were formalized concepts). I thought I was going to be fired, but the CEO loved the idea.
I quietly celebrated avoiding a major detour in climbing the hill. The CEO pulled me from my registrar position into a new role with IT responsibilities and that was my introduction into the tech field, building target-based marketing and relational databases for the company. It was then that I had the realization of just how powerful a resource data can be. At 19 years old, I was offered a job for another company managing databases for much larger clients.
From there, my interest grew exponentially as I began to discern how quickly the tech space evolves, and furthermore, how our answers to yesterday's business challenges often do not apply in today's world, and most definitely not tomorrow's.
Years later, I knew I wanted to become a CIO when I realized that being a CIO doesn't necessarily mean having all the technical answers to everyone's questions. It is more about having creative ideas that apply the use of technology to solve business challenges and drive competitive advantage in an organization.
Continue reading: https://www.ciodive.com/news/rachel-hayden-mentor-women-CIO/606467/
