Title: Channeling Your Inner Dorothy Vaughan (or…Cracking the IBM)
Description: Each of us has had a varied career journey. We will discuss how to use, message, and navigate this as the asset it is to get you where you want to be.
Details: The thing that rules every business conversation right now is adaptability, resilience, and agility. The ecosystems we all knew are shifting around us. It is not an “if,” but a “when” the changes come. So, it’s really great that we, as women, have the most random arsenals at our disposal.
Case in point: we started our careers in one spot and pivoted to something completely different (70%+ of us). We got a random job from a friend that spun us in a different trajectory. We managed a fundraiser for 800 people that started our thriving event business. We left the workforce to have twins and then came in through a totally different door.
We all have our stories.
And most of them revolve around our own resilience. Because every single thing we’ve ever done is relevant to the person we’ve become. Every project, boss, industry we’ve encountered made us who we are. Every lateral move was a gift of learning. Every absolutely terrible human being we’ve worked with made us stronger. Every sidestep into a random role gave us experience. And each of those experiences then makes us critical for that next gig.
Dorothy Vaughan was the woman who prepared herself and her team by learning the Fortan programming language at NASA. She saw a gap, filled it, and made herself and her team indispensable. Her resilience in the face of changing circumstances is the stuff of legend (and Hollywood).
This presentation will cover:
Adaptability and resilience in changing circumstances
How to bring value by utilizing your variety of experience
Learning in every situation–even lateral moves
Creatively solving business problems
Each of us has been a Dorothy at one point or another. Each of us brings previously unmentioned skills into our daily solutioning. And it’s critical that we know it, we hone it, and we celebrate it.Takeaway action items for attendees:
How to tell the story of their circuitous career pathway well
How to call on outside experiences to answer real business questions
How to lean on learning to be resilient
How to creatively solve business challenges from their own personal experiences
How to use every resource to get what you need
Bio: Jeri Larsen is the CEO of the management consulting firm Manage for Good, which specializes in helping companies and leaders at the inflection point of scale.
Before opening her own agency, she served as a Chief Operating Officer, Chief Customer Officer, and Chief People Officer, as well as myriad leadership roles across a variety of industries, including SVP of Sales Ops, VP of Strategy and Analytics, and VP of Client Engagement and Success. In her career, Jeri has had the opportunity to meet organizational needs from the perspectives of: Operations, Rev Ops, PeopleOperations, Client Success (CX), Sales, Acquisition, and L&D in both the public and private sectors.
She has spent the last 10 years in Software as a Service (SaaS), after a 3-year stint at an agency tailoring to Fortune 500 clientele, and spent the first decade of her career working days in government contracting and evenings as a university instructor.
Jeri has been featured three times on Women We Admire’s “Top 50 Women Leaders of Utah” list and believes better operations and better people management are the keys to creating better work and client experiences.
Wife to a burly mountain man and mom to three, the kids are all taller than she is and are pretty good rookie adults. She couldn’t be prouder of them. When she’s not in the office, you may catch her and her family whitewater rafting or camping off-grid. Off-river, she’ll usually have a book in her hand and a dog on her lap.