My Journey to the C-Suite

Over the years I’ve been asked about my journey and I’ve talked about it in bits and pieces, but I’ll be honest I’ve put off talking about it in-depth for a while. And you know why – impostor syndrome! But I've decided now is time to share, so more amazing women can learn from my journey, and hopefully avoid some of the missteps I took along the way. Here’s the thing, I want to dismiss my journey, my story, my career. I tell myself things such as 'it was a small company so it doesn’t count', or 'I happened to be in the right place at the right time' or my personal favorite 'anyone can do it - I'm not special'. I do believe anyone can do it, but I know most people don’t. Not because they can’t, but because they haven’t YET figured it out. To a large extent, all of that is true and yet I don’t see thousands of women duplicating what I did. Now I’m able to share the tools, tactics, and strategies with my clients, women, who I think are so far beyond what I ever achieved and yet they haven’t gotten there.So, I’m finally sitting down and pushing through my impostorism and ditching myself doubt to tell you amazing women in tech my story. And once again I’m showing you that impostor syndrome shows up over and over again, even when you’ve done the work. But know it can always be ditched.Now that I’m ready to tell my story the big question…. where to start? Well, as always at the beginning.My journey started by earning three degrees. At some juncture along the way my mother pointed out I should really get a job. Although to be fair, I was very ready to start earning a proper living after my Ph.D.The first job I had was at the University of Edinburgh as a parallel computing applications developer. I loved the brain ache I got from parallel programming and I enjoyed teaching and lecturing. But the thing that really put me on my current path was when the role of the Equality and Diversity Coordinator became available. The position was typically given to professors who wanted the extra gold star and I was told there was no way I’d get the position. I applied anyway. I didn’t know what else to do other than feel angry. I went into the interview with so much courage because I didn’t think it mattered. I was going to take the opportunity to tell the panel exactly what I thought. It was because of that boldness I got the job. This experience taught me that if I really care about something, I should just go out there and say what I need to say. This is a lesson I continue to carry with me. In the ED&I role, I quickly realized I needed to take a collaborative approach to get things done and that was the start of my true leadership journey. I ended up with a reputation as someone who could get staff members to work on projects when other managers couldn’t. But my tech held me back. I was a different person when I stood on stage to talk about ED&I than when I talked about Tech. I remember doing a presentation in Japan on GPUification of CASTEP - that's a fancy way of saying porting a quantum mechnics simulation code to GPUs. I was terrified, nervous, and lacking clarity on what I’d actually done or achieved on the project.A month later I ran a conference for ED&I and although I was young and very naïve, my confidence was sky-high. I KNEW that I knew more than most of the people, if not all of the people, in that room. Looking back my lack of tech confidence played a part in the roles I took on and the future of my career. Thankfully, it worked out for me, but would I have done things differently – hell yes! I wish I’d realized how much my confidence held me back technically. I may have taken a very different journey if I’d dealt with that sooner. In late 2013, I launched Women in High Performance Computing (WHPC) after being extraordinarily annoyed at being the only woman in the room. I was invited as a keynote speaker at a conference to talk about my work with WHPC and ED&I. As I was putting my slides on my computer at the front, the chair of the conference, who clearly couldn’t be bothered to check who her keynote speakers were, marched up to me and started ordering me to put out chairs and such because she assumed, I was a member of staff. That is the stuff that drives me nuts! Women who should know better continue with the micro-behaviours that make every woman feel less than what they deserve, and angry at the same time.WHPC was actually one of the best things for my career, even though it was born through frustration and annoyance. I thought it was going to be a small organization in Scotland, but within a year we’d gone global and within 2-years we had over 300 members. We were being invited to talk at all manner of events. No one knew what to do about the dearth of women in HPC and WHPC was the only thing talking about it, backed up with data and research. Because of WHPC, I had to up-level my leadership, get comfortable with public speaking, voicing my concerns, and dealing with a LOT of pushback on comments I’d make. Because I was trying to make a big change, I had to learn how to convince people by approaching them with the outcome backed up with the solution, followed by the problem. This is the way executives present solutions, and yet no one teaches you this. It is one of those executive presentation skills I’ve since realised that we all need and something I cover in-depth with my clients and in my Lit Up Leadership Academy for women in tech.While I was working full time running High Performance Computing (HPC) projects and leading WHPC internationally I had such a profound impact on the world of HPC that I was invited to speak at pretty much every major conference. During this time, I was voted as the 2016 Outstanding Leader in High Performance Computing by the international readership of HPCWire, the primary source of HPC news for the supercomputing community globally. It took me a really long time to talk about this and own it as my own success, instead of believing that I didn't really deserve this award and accolade. Because of my work with WHPC and ED&I and the change I was trying to make I had to get really good at networking. I was having conversations, solving peoples’ problems, getting them to buy into changing the way they operated as teams, businesses, and how we approach HPC and HPC research. And then you know what happened? I started getting headhunted. This totally surprised me. And honestly, I turned a number of opportunities down because my impostor syndrome told me that they didn't realise what they were going to be getting into.But a few months later I had a fire lit under me to take action on my career. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I’d never get promoted. It was my last day of work before the Christmas holidays and I was told, “You’ll never get promoted because you aren’t technical enough.” I spent Christmas oscillating between extraordinarily angry and thinking 'oh, they’re right. I just lead, I don’t do programming anymore.' Luckily, I have a great husband who was my catalyst to spur action, and believe in myself. I know not all of us are lucky enough to have a trusted ally that builds us up, but we all need such a person in our lives. He reminded me of my achievements, the multiple awards (that I was still telling myself I didn't deserve), and the fact that I was being asked to apply for leadership roles where understanding tech was necessary, but so was trusting your team who is in the thick of it each day to know more than you! Senior leaders who think they know more than their team are in for a shock because you can’t do high-level strategy AND stay on top of the tech enough to be the expert of all experts on your team. Something’s gotta give. By the time January arrived I realized I was done with my current job, where I had way more responsibility than my job title acknowledged, and yet I wasn’t being allowed to take on things I wanted because it was beyond my 'competence' due to my job title. So, I dialed up my networking and went to every event that year. However, now instead of networking for just WHPC's benefit, I was networking for myself too. I wasn’t pushy but I was clear I wanted something. And then it happened, an opportunity came that I wanted. In fact, it was because of a dear friend of mine who needed some help understanding some tech for a company she was doing some work for. During our chat, I offered suggestions on some things they might change, and the next thing I know she has me in front of the CEO. And well, the rest is history…After 6-months of negotiations, I walked into my first C-Suite role as Chief Business Development officer, which had a job description I wrote and doubled my salary. The best thing about all of it is they hired me for my ideas which was the thing that held me back before. They wanted my opinions and it felt oh so good!So, there you have it. Of course, now I’ve pivoted to running my own business and coaching full time. And I love that more than anything, because I want other women to avoid the pitfalls I feel into along the way!Could I have got here sooner with a coach? Almost certainly! I had to figure out every step of the way by myself, albeit with a number of amazing mentors and friends to help me along. I only got a coach once I became an Executive, and honestly, if I'd received coaching sooner, I could have done so much more instead of figuring stuff out on my own. This is why I love doing what I now do, and although I focus on Leadership and Executive Coaching, I actually have women I work with all the way from entry-level right up to Executives. I view myself as lucky with a good dash of incredible stubbornness. I was also incredibly privileged in that my life chances meant I was in the room with some amazing women in my career that I could learn from. I've been told many times that it wasn't 'luck' that got me to where I am, but maybe one bit of Impostor Syndrome that I still have to deal with is that I do feel like luck had a huge part to play. Of course, I'm fully aware that my privilege of being white, having two parents who went to University, a father with a Ph.D. totally made my journey easier.I feel extremely fortunate to work with amazing women each and every day. Want to learn more about my journey? Check out Episode 40 of the Leading Women in Tech Podcast: https://tonicollis.com/episode40

My Journey to the C-Suitehttps://tonicollis.com/episode40

My Journey to the C-Suitehttps://tonicollis.com/episode40