Men Who Open Doors

Left to right: Janice Le, Michael Dickman, Ganesh Srinivasan, Ash Chowdappa, Linda Holroyd, Gopal Kumarappan, and Jatinder Narang

FountainBlue’s May 11 When She Speaks event was on the topic of Men Who Open Doors. Below are notes from the conversation. Our panelists represented a wide range of educational and professional backgrounds, and a wide range of roles and organizations. But they had much in common.

• They had strong women in their lives who helped them understand the value of having women on teams and in their lives.
• They fully understand the business case for diversity and inclusion in the workplace and are passionate and frequent advocates.
• But beyond the data, they each make the choice to do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do.

Our panelists each consistently focused on sponsoring and supporting women in the workplace and pointed to the business case for doing so. The benefits mentioned included:

• the increased diversity of thought from heterogenous teams, which can lead to innovation
• the improved decision-making abilities of diverse teams
• the increased creativity and increased amount of different ideas presented when brainstorming and problem-solving
• the improved productivity and morale
• the greater likelihood of reflecting the customer base you serve and the local community

Their collective advice to those who seek sponsors for their careers is highlighted below:

• Be prepared to take advantage of opportunities which may arise.
• Be consistently confident, competent and courageous, regardless of whether you’re seeking a sponsor.
• Own what YOU can control – your experience, your results, your brand – while you’re waiting for the opportunity to be recognized by others.
• Be your authentic self. Don’t think that you have to change who you are to succeed. Find a way to succeed by being uniquely you.
• Make an informed and specific ask when the timing is right. Know who to ask for help, and why he/she is the best person to ask.
• Work together and help each other be successful – in work and in life.
• When you’re given an opportunity, be diligent, hard-working, open and eager person, passionate about generating measurable results.
• Communicate openly and transparently and be worthy of the trust of others.
• Select the right mentor and sponsor for you, based on what you need at the time.

Their collective advice for building more sponsors and mentors and leaders in their organization is highlighted below.

• Work on changing the mindset of the executives in charge. 
• Understand your own unconscious biases and those of other executives in the organization. You may have to overcome these biases to bring more sponsors and leaders to the team.
• Pay it forward, in honor of those who did the little and big things to help YOU get to where you are.
• Lead by example and model the way. As Mahatma Gandhi would say ‘Be the Change you want to see.’

Our parting thought is that we all have the power to impact others around us and support their growth. Take the mindset that working with and for others benefits everyone.

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Please join me in thanking our gracious hosts at Aruba and our panelists for our May 11 When She Speaks event, on the topic of Men Who Open Doors!

• Facilitator Linda Holroyd, CEO, FountainBlue
• Panelist Ash Chowdappa, VP & GM, Aruba Wireless LAN at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company
• Panelist Michael Dickman, VP, Product Line Management, Aruba HPE
• Panelist Gopal Kumarappan, VP Software Engineering, AppDynamics
• Panelist Jatinder Narang, Senior Director – Finance, Western Digital
• Panelist Ganesh Srinivasan, General Manager, Power Management, Texas Instruments
• with an introduction by Janice Le, Chief Marketing Officer, Aruba HPE

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Energy and Utilities Trends and Opportunities

FountainBlue’s May 4 VIP roundtable was on the topic of ‘Energy and Utilities Trends and Predictions’, hosted by EPRI.

The focus on generating and distributing a reliable, cost-effective energy source remains the goals of our consumers, companies, utilities, cities and countries. But the needs of the “customer” are making that progressively more difficult. Couple that with the tech-savvy, real-time update needs of empowered customers around the world and the problem seems almost impossible to solve. 

Our executives in attendance all remarked on the mega trends around the energy sector and how they are impacting everyone across industries, across geographies, across technologies. Keys to managing and staying on top of these trends include:

• The need to collaborate across sectors, technologies, companies, and nations to provide solutions which optimize energy generation, leverage sustainable practices, and manage storage and distribution for maximum benefit for all stakeholders.
• Enterprise Customers need to actively become involved in defining the problems faces, adopting technologies which optimize benefits for all.
• Policy-makers need to be more flexible and open to change, for changes need to be made to support the massive energy demands of customers.
• Local utilities serve both the commercial and consumer markets. Providing proven, scalable and sustainable solutions will remain challenging. Partnering with other utilities and other organizations will help develop communities, share learnings and resources, and better anticipate and address energy-related needs and concerns of customers.
• As customers get more involved with generation through solar, wind and other renewables, it helps in some ways by increasing the amount of available energy, but also complicates matters and puts a strain on the grid as well, for generation happens only at certain times of day.

Below are some of the opportunity areas mentioned in the discussion:

• The nexus between energy and water  
• Microgrids to provide energy to smaller villages
• Using data-rich, crowd-sourced reports to inform stakeholders, customers, policy-makers, etc.,
• Apps and business models which use energy as part of the shared economy
• Cybersecurity: Nuclear, Power Delivery, Generation, Storage
• Lithium and Cobalt batteries and how they can be better mined and recycled
• Recycling of batteries in general
• AI and big data solutions around energy at work and at home
• Smart mobility which help communicate energy needs
• Smart city solutions which help generate, distribute, manage energy
• Robotics solutions around energy generation and distribution
• Utility-owned batteries
• Hydrogen fuel cells

We repeatedly remarked on how empowered customers, volume of data generated, huge international markets, sustainability demands, the power of the millennial generation and other factors will all significantly impact our growing need for energy.

The challenge is how we can also consider all these factors in creating long-term and short term goals, while serving local, regional and international markets. Success factors might include:

• Creating and supporting collaborative networks focused on creating innovation around energy
• Supporting win-win solutions for this vibrant ecosystem of stakeholders 
• Accepting and working with slow-moving, fragmented utilities, outdated infrastructure to make this happen
• Designing the types of dynamic AI, HW and SW (vs static), data-based, flexible and scalable solutions which will serve the customer base
• Designing for a long-term view, while supporting the short term revenue needs for key stakeholders

The onus will always be on each of us, as leaders in technology and business, across roles, companies, sectors and nations, to collaboratively deliver solutions which work for all.