Sheryl Lemma – How to Stay Focused on Solving the Right Problems with Technology

Sheryl Lemma has over 20 years of experience in higher education technology and has been with Ellucian for almost 16 years. She currently serves as Director of Product Management, with responsibility for Ellucian’s document management solutions, Ellucian Mobile, and Ellucian Reporting, powered by Ellucian Ethos.

Prior to this role, she served as product owner on new product development teams in areas such as reporting, Ellucian Portal, ILP, and most recently, Ellucian Mobile. Before joining Ellucian, she worked as a Colleague and Unix system administrator at Lebanon Valley College. Sheryl is passionate about creating unique and exciting applications that solve people's business problems, and is looking forward to engaging in new areas.

You’re at a 48-hour hackathon. What would you love to create?
It’s funny you should say that because my company just participated in hackathon at William and Mary College. Ellucian makes software for colleges and universities, so there’s a good chance that you may have used our software! We have 154 products and one of the products I’m responsible for is mobile. So when I look at a hackathon, I would love to be able to sit with college students and ask them, “What do you want?” What problems are they having that their device could solve for them? Those are the things I really want to build.

I’ve spoken about technologies in search of a problem rather than problems that can be solved with technology. One of the things we’re thinking about as an arrow in our quiver is location-based technologies. We know where you’re sitting right now – what can we do with that? What problems can we solve? We’re looking for example at attendance tracking instead of faculty members taking attendance, which they’re required to do by state law and federal law – there’s actually federal student dollars attached to that so they have to take attendance. What could we do so that they don’t have to do that and can teach and spend more time in the classroom? I would love to see how students can solve that because I know students will have a very different approach to that from administrators who have to collect that information.

Speaking of problem-solving, what advice would you give to someone facing challenges in the workplace? How do you stay energized when you inevitably encounter problems in any kind of working process?
Particularly when you’re younger – and I went through all of this as a younger person, especially when you’re female – the way people interpret how you  react to those problems can be vastly different. We’re doing a whole cultural transformation at my company, and one of the behaviors we identified was assume positive intent. And this is something I wish I had known when I was younger, I’ve used it with my kids and my spouse. Most people are trying to do they best they can with the information that they have. So when they come to you and it sometimes may feel negative, assume the best, assume they’re trying to move forward. They may not always be, but you certainly feel better and approach it differently.

I think one of the traps that technologists in general and perhaps women fall into is the stress or strain of trying to be the smartest person in the room. In general, in technology, that’s been the biggest barrier to success that most people have had. You don't have to have all the answers, and if you can be confident enough to say, “Can we stop and back up, can we reframe this a little bit” – another one of our values at our company is pause, assess, restart: let’s bring this back to the problem we’re trying to solve – being confident enough to say, “I’ve not encountered this before, can we back up and talk about it?” is really powerful and takes a lot of confidence. You have to grow into confidence a bit, but I think most people who are starting out now have more confidence than we did when we were their age. 

Do you think that’s a particular problem for women in the workplace, trying to be the smartest person in the room?
I think developers in particular, and I’ve seen it in the hot-shot male developers, think they don’t need business people and that they can solve all the problems when you don’t…and that’s ok. Part of it is that in technology in particular, we don’t value brawn, we value brains and knowledge, so you feel like you have to have all the answers from the start is hard. It’s hard on the people and leads to incomplete decisions and it’s very fast-paced. In fact it’s seen as a barrier to raise your hand and ask to stop for a second. Let’s just make sure we’re solving the right problems.

What advice would you give women who are graduating from college, both those who really understand where they want to go and then those who don’t? What are the first jobs they should go after and what should they make sure to do when they get those first positions? What’s your advice of how to utilize and to really pay attention to their early 20s?
Well first of all, don’t spiral downwards! It’s a very scary time and it wasn’t a pleasant time for me, and I think it’s because you go through school and do well, you’re a superstar, and then you get into the workforce…and you’re not. Or maybe you hit a plateau and you wonder what life has to offer you. I don’t work in the field I studied, I took a very left turn – I actually wanted to be in broadcast news but the great thing is that if you stay open to learning and recognize the things you’re good at, the things that are truly strengths for you actually cross entire disciplines.

I wanted to be in broadcast news because I’m good at talking, and if you can find a way to do those things every day, your job almost doesn’t matter. Find something that’s interesting to you, recognize that you may move around and it’s ok, be confident in what you’re good at and really think about what you’re good at – you will have confidence in that. I’m not good at coding, but as I got into the product side, I was able to jump around and take disparate pieces of information together, assemble them into something new and hand it off to someone else. I have a developer who is very detail-oriented, loves to code; I’m much more big-picture, so when we partner, something amazing comes out of it. So if you can partner with someone who has the strengths that you don’t have, it almost doesn’t what you’re working on because great things will happen.

When it comes to data, how do you teach kids about this nebulous, intangible thing that drives everyone’s lives – how do you actually understand and visualize data?
I think we do a pretty good job with people who are interested in STEM and are naturally talented at that. The thing that’s important that I don’t know that we do enough of is for people who aren’t necessarily interested in coding or the data or the infrastructure, because we still need those people. You have to have this basic understanding of these really complex pieces of information. It took me a long time to give myself credit for being good at communicating, and people like me are so needed to bridge the gap between the technical and the non-technical. There’s definitely a need for people who are in most art-based areas to be those communicators and translators of ideas.

Erin M. Thorpe – Breaking Through the Jargon; Communications Break Through

Chief Warrant Officer (CWO) Erin Thorpe is assigned to USCG Command, Control & Communications Engineering Center (C3CEN) in Portsmouth, VA. Her responsibility is to oversee the security and accreditation of IT systems supported by the Communications Area Master Station Product Line.  Her USCG assignments include three USCG Cutters, an Aviation Training Center, a Sector Command Center (Search and Rescue Controller), and a District Telecommunications Office.  CWO Thorpe consistently seeks opportunities to mentor fellow Coast Guardsmen.  She is an active member of her community, volunteer tutor at a local elementary school and participates in various local charity events.  CWO Thorpe is the proud mother of three amazing, high energy kids.

Which skills or attributes do you value most in coworkers that are just starting their careers?
Communications: being able to take complex information and translate it into something that anyone can understand, ability to make subjects approachable and not sound so scary. People in tech use dense language with a lot of jargon; especially in the military, acronyms are everywhere. I value being able to break away from buzzwords or terms that only your small work community can understand

Describe a decision you made early in your career that has had a big impact for you.
When starting in the technical field in the coast guard, you used to get a choice between operations or IT. I chose operations. It gave me a diverse skillset and experience as the end user of IT products. I have since looped back around into the IT side so I design and maintain systems for the operations folks to use. With that experience as an end user, I design better products. I also know the questions to ask when designing a new product.

If you completely changed courses today, what would your new life look like?
I would be an elementary school guidance counselor. I love talking about future endeavors and I like the age range. I now tutor special needs students at my local school. The moment when the kids “get” a concept for the first time is so exciting.

Cyber Trends and English Lit – An Interview with Sara Abiusi

Sara Abiusi is a Managing Director with Accenture Federal Services. She is the Civilian Portfolio Technology lead and leads Technology for the US Postal Service account. She founded the Accenture DC Women in Technology program. Sara serves on the DC Board of Ascend – the largest PanAsian Professional Development nonprofit in the US and the board of the JHU Women in Business affinity group. Sara graduated in 1996 from Johns Hopkins with a BS in Mechanical Engineering. Sara is married with two children: an eight year old daughter and a four year old son.

Which of your special projects or undertakings are you most proud of?
I helped launch a Women In Tech group at Accenture. We have a leadership series, we monitor cyber trends, and do other activities to ensure that we as a company can stay relevant.

You win the lottery for $10 million. What do you do?
I would call my husband and relatives! And then I would retire way early. I do have a passion for women and girls in technology, and so my work in those two spheres would definitely continue. I’m also active in the Asian-Pacific Islander community—I’m associated with Ascend, an APA professional development organization, and would devote more time to that area. And, you know what, I studied mechanical engineering in college, and have been in tech my whole career. I’d love to devote time to English Literature, to enjoy and to feed the soul.

What’s an overrated piece of advice that people give and why doesn’t it ring true for you?
People always say, “network all you can.” Really, it’s a bit more nuanced than this. It’s more than just having the biggest stack of business cards in your wallet or LinkedIn contacts. It’s about finding people you feel really connected to. There’s no substitute for good work that will leave people with a concrete positive memory of you.

Describe a decision you made early in your career that has had a big impact for you.
Early on in my career as a technical architect, I was pretty introverted. I learned a lot in my first year, but I kept to myself most of the time. I was adding limited value to the company because I had things to say and wasn’t saying them. I was afraid to be wrong or disagreed with. That was a big learning curve – that it’s okay not to be 100% right all the time. It’s okay to create some tension when it ultimately leads to a better product.

Founding, Managing, and Growing a Company – an Interview with Rebecca Andino

Ms. Rebecca Andino, founder and CEO of Highlight Technologies, LLC has supported Federal agencies as an IT professional, program manager, and business owner for more than 15 years. She got her start working as a database developer for the Department of State, and led technology projects for national security missions after 9/11. In the last 8 years, she has led Highlight Technologies to achieve steady, profitable growth, currently managing 14 prime contracts across a dozen federal agencies. Ms. Andino is passionate about creating a customer and team-oriented environment that takes chances on talented and hard-working individuals, invests in employees’ careers, and provides opportunities for professional growth.

What inspired you to found Highlight Technologies?
Coming up, I had some really positive experiences working with small companies. You can have a lot of impact, you can learn a lot and own your growth. The small company for which I was working ended up growing, but I wanted to use the skills I had learned to recreate that environment. I hire a lot of talented junior level employees, and mentor them in the world of government contracting, providing them with lots of opportunities to grow.

You win the lottery for $10 million. What do you do?
Oh, wow. I would save some of it, pay for my house, my kids’ college, travel around the world a little bit. I like to concentrate on a couple of key areas rather than have a lot of small fires going, which can sometimes be ineffectual. I would spend time and money to reduce homelessness, especially among populations with families and children. I really would like that. Now you’ve got me thinking.

You’re at a 48-hour hackathon. What would you love to create?
I would love to be a coder! But speaking from the business side of things, I would create something very user-centric. I work in the government sector, so I’m always thinking about solutions to help customer-facing agencies. It would be so useful to help people that need information from a particular agency to access what they need.

What music are you grooving on recently?
In my head is Meghan Trainor’s “No”; my daughter is always playing it and it’s really catchy! I don’t have a lot of chance to listen to my own music, but I get a great variety listening secondhand to what my family has playing.

Volunteer of the Year – An Interview with Michelle Richards

by Laura Harcourt

Michelle Richards leads the Mobility Solutions sales team dedicated to the National Security and Public Safety sectors of Global Business - Public Sector Solutions. An accomplished team leader, Michelle Richards holds key roles in WIT and Women of AT&T (WOA), currently: President, WOA MD; Chair, WIT Maryland Leadership Lunch; and Coach, Mt. deSales CyberPatriot Girls, where she engages students to explore STEM careers.  Michelle champions the WIT/WOA collaboration, launching the Maryland Executive Leadership Lunches, which she has chaired for the last three years, and supporting expansion to Virginia.  She launched the WOA cell phone drive to fund WOA MD Scholarships and expanded it to WIT to support GIT programs.  

Michelle received the prestigious 2016 POTUS Volunteer Service Award, and holds a BS in Business Administration and an MS in Human Resources Development.

Which of your special projects or undertakings are you most proud of?

Being President of Women of AT&T, Maryland chapter. It’s a combination of tenured/senior women and young professionals hoping to get into tech. Lots of collaboration. We have a luncheon series featuring amazing speakers, and we bring tech programs to Maryland youth.

Phyllis Kolmus and I launched CyberPatriots: we send all-girl teams to the national competition sponsored by the US Air Force. We now have eleven participating high schools, and last year, made it to the regional finals The students are now interested in IT, looking for cyberattacks, and getting hands-on technical skills. Plus, it’s a lot of fun for us and for the girls!

Describe, anonymously or not, the best manager you know, and why they are so good at it.

Good managers believe in you more than you believe in yourself, sometimes. They see something you may not see. My best manager had an extremely positive attitude and led by example.

If you completely changed courses today, what would your new life look like?

I would continue my volunteer work. I like kids, so might work with middle or high school girls. They know how to make any task fun!

Prosthetic Limbs and Caribbean Port Calls – An Interview with Amy Grable

Commander Amy Grable is currently serving as Product Line Manager for the Coast Guard’s Enterprise Information Systems Infrastructure. In this position she is responsible for delivering IT services to 42,000 men and women supporting every Coast Guard mission. Previous assignments include Commanding Officer of Electronic Systems Support Unit (ESU) Boston and other positions held at the Coast Guard Personnel Service Center, ESU Seattle, Acquisition Directorate, Research & Development Center, and CGC SPENCER (WMEC 905). CDR Grable holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Coast Guard Academy and a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rhode Island.

CDR Grable talked to the WIT Young Professionals about her achievements and career path. One of her proudest accomplishments, she said, wascompleting her training at the Coast Guard Academy. One of the country’s five prestigious federal military academies, the USCGA is extremely selective and well-established. Graduates of the Academy are obligated to serve five years in the U.S. Coast Guard. CDR Grable says her time there was physically and mentally difficult but she loved the challenge.

Following graduation, newly commissioned ensigns report for duty aboard cutters and at sector offices in ports nationwide, so CDR Grable shared some of her travel stories. On sea duty, she transited through the Panama Canal, earning the “Order of the Ditch” certificate. Says the publishing website, “The traditional version of this certificate features traditionally clad mermaids. [The] revised version is exactly the same, but features more modestly clad mermaids.” CDR Grable also recalls the first time she crossed the equator, a ceremonial occasion common for all sea-going U.S. military forces.

If she had to drop everything and start a completely new life, CDR Grable would favor one of her passions, the medical field. She is interested in biomedical research and improving its related IT systems. By making information more accessible and centralized, systems relating to medicine could be more effective at saving lives and improving quality of life. CDR Grable isn’t only interested in the back end of technology, however; she also sees herself designing and improving prosthetic limbs, ensuring that they bring as much lifelike ability to their wearers as possible.

Currently, as IT manager for the Coast Guard’s enterprise information services infrastructure, CDR Grable provides oversight to major programs for the Coast Guard and has been recognized consistently for improving efficiency and responding to emergencies such as Superstorm Sandy. She actively mentors junior officers through the inter-service Officer Women e-mentor program, as well as civilians under her jurisdiction. We were thrilled to have the opportunity to chat with CDR Grable and are inspired by her accomplishments and her approachability alike.

Risk Services and Rwanda - An Interview with Stacey Halota

Stacey Halota is the Vice President for Information Security and Privacy at Graham Holdings Company. Ms. Halota has more than 20 years of experience in the IT, security and privacy fields. Before joining The Washington Post Company in 2003, she served as the federal government and southeast region leader of Guardent Consulting Services (now part of Verisign), where she helped transform Guardent from a regional decentralized model into a national information security consulting organization recognized by Computerworld as a top 100 company to watch among IT companies. Prior to Guardent, she worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers in the Technology Risk Services consulting practice where she helped grow the team serving the mid-Atlantic market and federal government from two consultants with no client base or revenue to 46 consultants and $9.3M in annual revenue in three years. She talks to the Young Professionals about her volunteer work and staying positive in the face of change.

Ms. Halota describes herself as a very optimistic and positive person, saying, “there is so much to be grateful here.” She cites an incident recently when she was in a taxi and the driver was from Afghanistan. He said, when you live in the U.S., you’ve hit the lottery. The sentiment rung true for Ms. Halota, as it does for us here on the Young Professionals committee.

Although Ms. Halota enjoys her work – and, as described above, is extremely successful at it—if she completely changed courses today, she would choose to be more active in missionary and volunteer work, expanding the work that she already does. One of her passions is The Mustard Seed Project (MSP), a non-profit which provides acts of mercy and acts of mission in east and central Africa. Ms. Halota is particularly active in Rwanda, leading mission trips there and ultimately joining the Board of Directors in 2013.

She has traveled extensively with the MSP, describing it as a land of 1,000 hills and lakes with unbelievable beauty. Ms. Halota also travels around as a consultant and as a speaker. For example, She was the CISO Spotlight featured speaker at last year’s Black Hat conference and spoke at the inaugural Privacy and Security Summit in October as well. Above and beyond these prestigious engagements, she reveres the Grand Canyon as an inspirational spot that she would recommend to any traveler.

Asked about which of her special projects or undertakings she is most proud of, Ms. Halota cited her work with the International Consortium of Minority Cyber Professionals (ICMCP). Launched in 2014 to bridge the cyber divide that results from the ongoing underrepresentation of minorities in the fast-growing field of cyber security, they will sponsor their first-ever National Conference of Minority Cybersecurity Professionals in March 2016. Once again, Ms. Halota will be a featured speaker.

Ms. Halota was named Secure Computing Magazine’s 2009 Chief Security Officer of the Year and was also named 2009 Mid-Atlantic Information Security Executive of the Year (Commercial Category) by the Executive Alliance. She has been featured in Secure Computing Magazine and is well-known around DC and in the cyber community generally. We were happy to be granted the gift of some of her time and— albeit unnecessarily—wish her luck in her upcoming appearances. We’ll be following you!