Google Enterprise Blog: Women in Tech: a chat with Carolyn Cheng, SVP of Strategic Services for Royal LePage, plus 1 more

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Women in Tech: a chat with Carolyn Cheng, SVP of Strategic Services for Royal LePage Posted: 27 Mar 2014 04:37 PM PDT Editor's note: From Ada Lovelace to the ladies of ENIAC, women have played an important part in driving technology forward. As Women's History Month winds down, we're highlighting a handful of women who are making strides, driving change and shaping the future of technology. Today, we hear from Carolyn Cheng, SVP of Strategic Services for Royal LePage, a Google Enterprise customer. How did you first get involved in technology? I'd say that technology found me. I began my professional life as a management consultant in strategy and operations at Deloitte Consulting, then joined the growth strategy group at Brookfield Real Estate Services to help drive new business opportunities. After a strong growth period for the company, each person from the team took on a strategic role in one of the operating companies - and I joined Royal LePage. I was brought on to develop new products and services for their network of agents (now more than 15,000), and since they're distributed so widely across North America, many of those products and services had to be delivered over the web. And thus began my journey into the world of technology. Have any mentors or communities been especially instrumental to your interest and success in tech? The Royal LePage culture has played a huge role in driving and developing my career in tech. When I started at the company, the CIO and half of our senior executives were women, so having those positive examples was inspiring. Our culture is also very entrepreneurial, driven in particular by our President, who ensures that employees who show enthusiasm, curiosity and capability are given opportunities to pursue new ideas - even if they're outside their defined job role. I wasn't a technologist by trade, for example, but once I'd established my capabilities and strengths, I was given new opportunities that happened to intersect with technology. In general, I think the inquisitive, analytical problem solving skills that are the backbone of strategy are well aligned with developing and delivering services through technology. What are some of the biggest changes you've seen in technology since working in the space? For one, it's now much easier and faster to implement technology projects. A decade ago, we often built our own custom solutions in-house, which meant building the software, installing the hardware and learning by trial and error along the way. These were greater stress-induced days, to say the least. Today, third-party solutions in real estate are far more mature and require much more straightforward configuration. And when we choose to build custom, differentiated solutions, we partner with experienced vendors, use an agile process supported with documentation and, most often, ensure those solutions is cloud-based. On the whole, projects deliver in almost half the time, at a lower cost and with a far higher quality product. What advice do you have for women interested or working in tech today? Technology is such an integral part of the fabric of how work gets done that I think it's critical for all women to learn about it one way or another. There's no role that doesn't touch technology somehow: sales people need CRMs, marketers have to be conversant in SEO, SEM and social media, finance relies on tech-based tools to deliver business intelligence. The choice revolves more around where you want to sit on the spectrum of technology - on one end, purely as an end user, or on the other, as a more technical creator or implementer. But the more you know about technology, the more opportunities you open up for yourself. So, if I had one piece of advice, it's to learn about technology from a young age, then decide what interests you most and go after it. Technology has a much broader definition and is more accessible than ever before. And from what I've experienced myself, women in technology are often very grounded, extraordinarily passionate and want to achieve great things, so you'll be in good company.

Women in tech: a chat with Kelly Campbell, Director of Enterprise Marketing at Google Posted: 27 Mar 2014 09:57 AM PDT Editor's note: From Ada Lovelace to the ladies of ENIAC, women have played an important part in driving technology forward. As Women's History Month winds down, we're highlighting a handful of women who are making strides, driving change and shaping the future of technology. Today, we hear from Kelly Campbell, Director of Enterprise Marketing at Google. How did you get into technology? I entered the world of technology when I joined Google in 2005 after getting my MBA. I'd worked in Finance earlier in my career and did an internship as a brand manager at a large CPG company, but both had left me wanting more. In my second year of business school, a handful of companies from various industries came to campus to talk about potential job opportunities. I popped into my first tech session, with Amazon, and was blown away. There was so much energy and excitement around what they were doing and where the tech industry was going that just didn't exist in the other sessions. Then Google visited, and I was hooked. I joined the company after graduation and haven't looked back since. In this industry, you have to constantly challenge the status quo and think about the future first. I love the pace, energy, challenges and vast opportunity. What are some of the biggest changes you've seen in technology since working in the space? Since I joined Google, I've seen a dramatic change in the way people work and the way people learn. When I started, most people used devices and apps in their home life that they loved, while they were stuck with slow, heavy enterprise software and devices at work. Working from home, on the road or from a remote office meant feeling disconnected and operating in isolation. Now, with the incredible growth in the mobile space and the development of smartphones and tablets, people can use whichever devices they want to work with and work from wherever they need to be. You don't have to be in the same place to feel like you're working side by side with someone. You're seeing their face over a video conference or collaborating on a document at the same exact time, watching as the words they type appear right on the screen in front of you. On the learning front, if you look at a classroom today and compare it with eight years ago, the landscape has changed exponentially. Students are relying more on technology to learn, and education content and devices are opening new opportunities for teaching all over the world. What advice do you have for other women interested in technology? I'm one of four girls in my family, and my father always taught me the importance of having thick skin. I definitely think this applies to anyone working in the technology space. Decisions are made quickly. Change happens often. It's important to be open to all perspectives and to be ready to push hard for what you really believe in. How did starting a family affect your ability to continue to move fast at work in the tech space? It was incredibly hard to take that first step away from work, and then to come back five months later and acknowledge how much I'd missed. But becoming a mother has also helped me in ways that I didn't anticipate. First, it helped me put things in perspective. It's incredibly inspiring to look at my child and think about all of the possibilities that technology will enable for him. Second, I increased my productivity quite a bit when I had a child. It's important to me to be fully present whether I'm with family or colleagues. To strike this balance, I need to draw clear lines between work time and family time.

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