Career Growth Advice from Tracie Zenti, Tech Marketing Leader | Career Tips for Women in Tech Marketing

2B Bolder Podcast – Episode 2
Featuring Tracie Zenti, with Microsoft

Episode Title: #2 Career Podcast Featuring Tracie Zenti, Director of Business Programs at Microsoft : Women in Tech

Host: Mary Killelea
Guest: Tracie Zenti



Mary Killelea (Host): Hi there. My name is Mary Killelea. Welcome to the 2B Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. 2B Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you. Encouraging you guys to show up and to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of, it's totally possible. On 2B Bolder, you're going to hear inspiring stories of how successful women, some I know, some I just want to bring to you guys, and they're going to talk about their careers in business and tech, and they're going to tell us their stories about their passion and their journey and their challenges, and we're going to learn some of their advice along the way too. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.

Today on the 2B Bolder podcast, I have the pleasure of talking to Tracie Zenti. She is the Director of Business Programs at Microsoft. Tracie and I have known each other for several years. She has been not only a friend to me over the years, but also a mentor to me and gave me a lot of sound advice when I transitioned into corporate America focusing in on tech marketing. Welcome Tracie, I appreciate you being on the show.

Tracie Zenti (Guest): Thanks for having me, Mary. It's great to be here.

Mary Killelea: So many people don't know this about you, but Tracie is super gifted at coming up with simple metaphors that help explain complicated technologies.

Tracie Zenti: Thank you.

Mary Killelea: I remember sitting at many lunches having you draw things out or moving the salt shaker and the pepper being around. So how does that become part of your gift or your ability or how do you use that to help explain the tech? Because it can be complicated sometimes.

Tracie Zenti: Oh gosh, yeah. Cloud especially. I think that for me, Mary, when I started learning that even though I had a couple of years of computer science in college and to be totally honest, I hated it. I was not a programmer. It was all very, it's like learning a math that has no practical application in real life. It just felt, and I was good at math, but I had the same problem in math. So honestly, I think if you really want to know, I came up with a way of understanding very difficult physics and math concepts when I was in college in high school because I couldn't understand. And so I don't think I've ever realized necessarily that I do it for others. I do it for myself. And then somewhere along the way, early on in Intel, when I realized I, pretty early, I'm the only person here primarily around that doesn't have a PhD or a high degree of a master's degree, that I was the weird person out without any tech background. And so I began to try to reach out to others and to learn and same thing. I had to learn using my analogy so that I could make it more real for me. And there came a point when I got into marketing where people were like, oh, you kind of are really good at explaining that in a simplistic way. And I went, oh, I thought I was the, you know, I kind of, my perception was that it was like, I was the non-educated person in the room who had explained it that way for me to understand it. But it's come back around because now at Microsoft, you know, I've been here about five weeks, six weeks now and the people are like, wow, your analogies are great.

Mary Killelea: Hey, so let's get started by having you tell the audience about your background and highlighting some of your jobs that you had along the journey. So I'll let you start and see where it goes.

Tracie Zenti: I got a call to go work at Hollywood video when it was just 15 video stores. It was a corporate entity at that point. And they said, we're going to, we're going to have you fly around the country and open new stores. And I was like, travel. Okay. Free food. Sign me up. And, and, and about 24 of my peers had the same reaction and there were, so there was 26 of us in the department and that's what we did. And it was an insane entrance into sort of everything retail. We set up computers. We did the marketing. We trained the staff. We worked 36 hours straight. And then we'd crash for two days and then do it again. It was just crazy. And we were the fastest opening process in the country. And I got about six months in and I'm like, boy, I'm tired. This is exhausting. And I think at that point, I'd opened about 35 stores and I started to go, boy, there has to be something else. Where am I going with this? This was fun, but I'm 22 years old. I need a career. I can't do this for the rest of my life. All the while I loved computers. I did not like programming, but I loved nascent tech. And in fact, everybody in high school called me tech girl. And everybody teased me about my need for the newest, greatest technology. I was the only kid in my four at the dorms that had a computer. Everybody borrowed my computer. And so, you know, I thought, okay, well, there's a bunch of tech departments here. Maybe I can move into those. And I started kind of networking, which is going to be the crux of what I kind of talk about today. Networking is the key. And I made friends, making friends with people and asking them how they do their job, excuse me, can never, ever, ever steer you wrong. Never. You learn so much when you talk to somebody about what they like about their job. And it's the same process I have used ever since and before when I was working for the lawyers trying to decide law school or not. These same skills, right? I would interview these women who were lawyers and what do you like? What don't you like? So I started doing that. And I have to, by the way, I got to give my father props here. This was my dad from the time I was tiny, like as old enough to care about anything, 12, 13. If you want to figure out what you want to do in life, you go talk to people. They love to talk up about what they do.

Mary Killelea: That's great advice.

Tracie Zenti: Yeah.

Mary Killelea: And it's good and the bad.

Tracie Zenti: They do. They love to tell you what they do, the good and the bad. It's so true. It's universal. And he was dead on right. And I think it was a country club skill that he had learned. Like at the 19th hole, conversing with his various friends in business. They would do that over drinks at the end of the day? And so I went over to the tech department and I became friends with developers and support people. And then kind of didn't still kind of put it back burner, but just sort of learning their process. What do you do? And about two months later, I got a call and they said, do you want to be a person that writes specs in the warehouse? And I was like, uh, where? Not where I'm headed. And they said, no, no, this is like, you're going to write specs for the new technologies. And I went technology. Okay. Sign me up. But the funny punchline of this is I didn't know what spec meant. I had spent two years in computer science at U of O where they never taught us anything about programming in a language. No one used the band and no one uses today. So I didn't know what spec, I had no idea. And so I got the job and I was like, well, I think this is the other thing, you know, like people are always worried that in our world, that they don't know enough and they're under qualified imposter syndrome, right? The reality is we are all learning all the time and there are very few true experts, right? And I can probably count on one hand, the people I know that are very true, complete total experts in their field. Because it changes too fast for anybody to be a true expert. And so I don't know if it was just blind stupidity or arrogance or what it was, but I thought I'll figure it out. I have these friends in the IT department, they'll help me make it through. And they did, they did. I went right to them and said, what's a spec? And they said, Oh, that's a spec.

Mary Killelea: I don't think that's arrogance. I think that's just being inquisitive. And I think that's what I hope comes across in this podcast. As you tell the story is having the gift of not taking no for an answer and not limiting yourself and uncovering the rocks and turning them over to learn it and get those questions answered. So please continue.

Tracie Zenti: Well, and I think you're right. Um, if I look back on my career, the thing I kind of always had in my back pocket was what's the worst that will happen. When people think about risk taking, I think they catastrophize what will happen. And then there's a very logical, what will happen is the worst case. And you can usually know that going into most scenarios. And so in this scenario, my worst case was I will screw up and not do it well. And I'll know. And so then I'll pivot and try to get a different job back in this department. Cause we were growing so fast. I felt like if I'm not right, I can come back, I had a good foundation. People liked me. And so, I immediately called my friends and said, what's the spec? And they said, specification. I said, oh, great. What's a specification? And they said, Oh, it's so funny. They laughed just like they chuck up. They said, don't worry. You're going to write this for us. So, we're going to teach you because guess what? No one ever in their history had ever asked them how they wanted the specification written. So they were thrilled because they, for the first time ever were being allowed to tell me what they thought the right thing was to do. And a lot of times in business, it goes the other way. The business tells tech and tech has to make it a reality. And that can be difficult, right? That's the whole, if you've ever seen, or you haven't look it up the tire swing, like here's what the business thinks they want. And here's what they get after they tell tech what they want. It's not really a tire swing. It's a rope and a tire.

So anyway, so they trained me and I actually ended up working on the most nascent technology at the time, really, which was warehouse management system, AKA, what does Amazon do today in their warehouses, right? They're automated in terms of how they run their business and picking and pulling product and shipping it. I got to tour Columbia's facility at the time. They were the best in the world at the time at automated, pick and pull and ship. It was absolutely amazing. And every technology went into this. So I really learned a lot about like wireless communications and infrared technologies and databases and logical flows and workflows. It was amazing. But somehow yet that wasn't enough. It became boring after about nine months because I figured it out. And so, then I thought, well, I need to do something more nascent again, like more emerging and more new. And Hollywood was doing a tech project on them, wide area network deployments across their stores using satellite. And nobody had done it yet. We were going to be one of the first three customers in the world. And again, I don't know, I think I just had a high risk tolerance because I always feel like the worst happens is you screw up and you could always go back to what you did before because you did that well, right? And so my risk tolerance was high because I never felt like I would fall too far. The fall was an incremental fall.

And I went and lobbied and this is the whole like you hope it shines through the just don't take no for an answer. I lobbied to go do that project and I had no basis for being qualified to do that project at all. But I kept telling the CTO I wanted it and I would do a good job and that I had project managed the warehouse and I could do it. And he kept laughing and going, you don't know anything about this. And I didn't. But startups, I think the other thing to glean here is startups often kind of take people that understand their business and give them opportunities they wouldn't necessarily get other places. And I knew that I knew they needed Hollywood knowledge and Hollywood video knowledge of how we did things. And there were a lot of touch points that I had learned in the stores because we were setting them up from scratch that this affected this project would affect. So, I made it a point to go bug him once a week. I think I've told you this story before. I literally camped outside of his office at the same time once a week I figured out when he didn't have meetings. And I would go and talk to him for 15-20 minutes once a week about the project. And one day out of the blue, he called me and gave it to me. And I didn't believe him at first I cast eyes to him a little bit. I was like, Oh, john, it's not fair for you to tease me like this. You know I want that job. And he's like, No, really. I'm really giving you the job. And I was like, that's not funny. And, and no, he did. And honestly, it was the most it really was the launching pad truly for me into tech. There were to learn all the networking about that and the protocols and it was really complicated. That's really when those analogies came out. And again, I relied on my network to help me. I mean, there were so many things I didn't know. And we finished that project 2500 satellites deployed across the country in four months, we were supposed to do it in three. And honestly, hard work is the other ethic here.

And the other thing to say, I was young, I had lots of energy, I probably worked 90 hours a week. But I was enjoying every second, there was not a minute that I felt like I was working. I really loved everything I did. And that was it for me. That was the kind of like, okay, this is it, I'm not going to go to law school. I love this. I guess I want to be a project manager. And that's what I thought was going to be my career till I left Hollywood. And I went on to seek point computer systems, I did a project management IT role there in consulting there, and kind of ran their ups for their consultancy. And I followed people again, my network friends, people who I trusted went to Intel, so I followed along. And I ended up at Intel where I realized quickly that I was like, the only non tech person in the room on it. Well, I'm the only woman. Pretty early, me and as my friend likes to say me and a bunch of dudes. And it just was the same thing. Every time I took on something new, I just had to go to that network of that kept growing, right of people that I would still call people at Hollywood for advice. Your network is your network, regardless of where you go. And I always say this, and I think it's true, and it's just natural for me, friends do more for friends. They just you just do. And why not have friends at work?

Mary Killelea: That’s very well said.

Tracie Zenti: You know what I mean? Like, and they you I help my friends, too, right? We help each other. And because I know things they don't, right? I think it was a lot the other direction. I think they helped me more in the beginning, but I helped them now, right? So, I ended up at Intel, and I still thought I'm a project manager. And I did that same project manager in a consultancy business where you like farm out your consultants for a couple hundred bucks an hour, running their kind of operations and project management stuff. How to run jobs, how to bid the jobs, and, you know, reporting and rolling out an ERP, which was a huge learning as well enterprise resource planning with people fast. But I kind of found that like, again, about three years into doing that job, I was like, Okay, I'm really going through the motions every day. And I'm not learning anymore. After the ERP rollout was done, I just wasn't, it was just keep the lights on, run the business. And I learned at that point, that was my moment of truth of I am really good at breaking down the brick wall once, maybe twice. But after that, I see it's just become so boring for me. I am not a refiner. So knowing yourself, learning, looking back and recognizing who you are and what you're good at, it's okay to not be good at everything. I am not good at everything. And I have no desire to be so. I can't be. So, what's it, and I think a lot of it comes from just looking at what you like and realizing, Oh, I see a pattern here. I constantly want new and I don't like to refine processes. So okay, I should probably not try to go into jobs where I refine processes. I joke it's why my husband and I have been married for so long. He's a refiner. So we complement each other very well.

Mary Killelea: Yin and yang.

Tracie Zenti: Yes, exactly. Someone needs to refine. It just should not be me because it won't be done well. And so, I began to touch that network again. Like, okay, guys, what do you think I should do? Because I'm stuck. And I feel like I don't know what's next. I really didn't. I was like, I really don't like what I'm doing, but I don't, I can't see what I would possibly be good after this. I just can't. I mean, I think it's impossible. You don't know all the jobs that exist. I mean, you can't go to college and be like, I want to be in business development. That's rare, right? If you're going to be a professional, maybe a doctor, lawyer, but even specialize and you don't know all the areas of specialty when you go to college. And your network can help you with that because they know you really well, right? They're your friends. They've taught you along the way. So, they did that for me. They were like one woman in particular. I'm going to shout out to Shelly Wagner. She and I started on a project together and honestly, we butted heads. Like it was kind of tough. I had to like really work to kind of like moderate. And I think she did too. We were a lot alike and it was hard. And we got through that project and became really close friends and, and really close work colleagues as well. Like we really trusted each other's opinion. So sometimes the people that challenge you the most and you struggle with enough become your biggest advocates. And I think more often than not. So you have to be open to realizing that when you're struggling with someone, they have a lot to teach you.

Mary Killelea: Yeah. What is the lesson there?

Tracie Zenti: Yeah. Yeah. Like I had to stop and kind of look at what am I missing and what did I need to learn? And I did that with her. Thank God, because it really changed the course of my career. And she said, you are a really good project manager, but you know a ton about technology now. Like from being a consultancy ops, we were doing all kinds of projects, networking and databases and analytics and you name it. Right. That's what you hire consultants used to do early days. Right. This is like, probably like 2002, 2003. And I was like, Oh, like, I kind of don't feel like it again. You get that imposter syndrome. Like, I don't feel like I know as much as you say I do. She's like, Tracie, you know a lot of things about varying degrees of technology that I don't know other people that know. And so you really need to be an IT like what? No, people in IT are like coders and they like fixed hardware. She goes, no, no, there's all kinds of other things. And she goes, in fact, you know what, I have this business group that is actually sort of an eat your own dog food for Intel. We're going to like take their newest technology at Intel and we're going to test it out and tell them this is the right way to go or it's not. And I went, oh, new to technology. Okay.

Remember, I had learned early on that was like my squirrel, if you're a dog, right? And, and so I was like, oh, new tech. Okay. Well, why didn't you say so? She's like, I think you'd be good at this job. And I, I took some convincing actually. I've been talked into jobs a few times by people, my network that I thought others in a way, but okay, you seem to know what you're talking about. And so I followed her advice and I took this job as director of IT for the land access division. That's the part of the Intel people didn't know about that makes the like wireless access cards and the land access controllers. And I didn't even know it existed. Right. I'm like, oh, we do that. Right.

Mary Killelea: So you don't know what you don't know.

Tracie Zenti: And I didn't know where it comes into play. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, and there's a lot of businesses at Intel like that. Actually people don't know it's actually they do a lot of things in terms of nascent technology. And I learned that that day, like I had in that job, like, oh, we do a lot of things. I didn't realize like, there's a lot of ramp here for a career that I had no idea existed. To me, it was all about the consultancy, right? I had no idea that, and we made the insides of computers. That's all I knew. And so I did that job for about nine months and I ended up on this technology. It was kind of a lot, I've done a lot of different things, as you know, Mary. So it's sort of hard to like bundle up my career into five minutes, but the technology was like, hey, we're going to put this controller on the LAN access card that allows you to remotely control computers. And we need you to prove out that it works. And I was like, what, how would you, well, hang on, let's back up the bus for a minute. How would you even build a technology you don't know that works? So I didn't know the process for tech development. And I learned about that along the way. You know, it's like, well, we kind of build these into what's called a field programmable Gatorade. What is that? Right. And so all these things that I began to like understand, oh, it's just a programmable chip, oh, okay. So you can program it. It's just software. I always call it hard software. The computer is all just software. It's just some is on the motherboard and some is up in the stack on the OS, but it's all software. And so we did that. We went into kind of, I got a bunch of experts, made friends again, made a bunch of friends who like, I'm like, Hey, I don't know what this means. Can you help me? Oh, sure. I'm an architect. I'll help you. I don't want this to screw up. So let me help you make this successful. And I got about a six person team together. I'm a very people, a couple people from IT, a couple people from that business unit. And we just started sitting in conference rooms and all of a sudden I realized, whoa, hang on, I'm a project manager. And that is what I'm doing here.

I'm just organizing these people to get together. I'm not actually solving the problem. If I were left to solve this problem, forget it. There's no way I can't deep dive that deep, right? I'm not ever going to be a board architect, right? A chip architect. It's that's impossible. I would have to go back and go to school for six years. Right. So, but I can learn enough to help these people come together. Right. And so get the analogies began to really take hold because they were bridging people like the architect couldn't understand the IT guys needs in terms of how to use it. Right. So then kind of giving them an analogy so they could speak the same language. I became a translator and organizer and a translator. And I kind of went, okay, well, it's the same skills I've always used. Right. And at the end, we went, okay, this thing works. And it's a go, we should do this. And the lesson learned was you've got all the people you need, the technology works, but you're missing this job position that goes and gets the ecosystem to take advantage of it. And when I see that think like if you have a processor and a chip on a computer, you're kind of nothing without the operating system and the apps, the operating the system and the apps are kind of the ecosystem, right? If you're driving a car, you're not going to get very far without gas stations and places to fix your car and roads, right? Those are your ecosystem. And I realized that was missing. They needed an ecosystem of partners to support it. Um, for remote control, you need a remote control partner. Um, like at the time, DMC or lan desk. And so I wrote that up and handed it to the manager. And later he would tell me I was so convincing that he just believed me.

Mary Killelea: That is really powerful.

Tracie Zenti: Yeah. Fake it till you make it. I guess I was very convincing and so funny. He and I are good friends to this day. I've worked for him twice, loved the man. So about a month went by and I'm on to the next thing. And I'm kind of bored again. I'm like not working on the new thing. And I'm like, what am I going to do? I'm seven months into this job eight and I'm already bored. And my boss calls and she says, uh, Hey, you know that, that lesson learned you turned in with the job description. Well, the manager wants to talk to you. And I was like, uh-oh, I did something wrong. Um, which is kind of always me. I'm always worried. I'm kind of a pleaser and an exceder of expectations. And so I went to him, hit mate with him and he said you're right about your lesson learned. And I'm like, oh, wow. Okay. He goes, and we need that job to fill it. And since I can't, I have no idea what the job is because we don't have it here at Intel. I need you to take it. And I was like, oh no, no, no. Yeah. Yeah. Back up the bus. That was never the intention. I was not trying to create a job. I'm so sorry. You misunderstood. He's like, no, I didn't misunderstand. You are, um, you need to take this job because I know we can't be successful without this role. And I was like, but there's people surely that have done this job before. And he's like, I don't know where to find them. Do you? And I'm like, Nope. I just wrote what needed to be done. I didn't think in terms of a job description. So I went back to my boss who I'd only been in my role for eight and a half months at this point. And I said, Hey, what do you think? I mean, I don't think I should do it. And she's like, Oh no, I've already decided you're taking the job. Now keep in mind, this is that same woman that convinced me to go to it in the first place, Shelley. And I said, Shelley, you're crazy. I've never done that job. And she's like, you're taking the job. I was like, okay. Again, I'm thinking, well, worst case scenario, I can fall back. Shelley's an advocate and she's a trusted advisor and I should trust her. And I'm excited about it because it is new, right? Um, nobody's ever done it before and it does need help. And I like to kind of like, I've always, I've realized now also at this point, I like to take on that hard underdog project that everybody else feels like they can't do, but has a lot of potential, it's like the mutt that just needs a haircut and shampoo. I need the mutt with that needs the bath and the cut, right. And the haircut and they're nailed done. So I took the job and I went into it and I still like, there were all these people were like, I started meeting and they're like, no, we don't need that role. Why are you here? And then why are you here, especially people that didn't know me, you don't know anything about this. Who died and gave you this job, right? Like how'd you inherit this? And, so that was my first time really facing skepticism. And that was hard. Like, you don't have the pedigree for this. You don't come from Harvard. You don't come from MIT. You don't have a tech degree. Um, why are you taking this on? And I really struggled for the first few months. And the non English or he thought non non-speaking English speaker, right? He, he was really just a cheerleader. No, you, you stay the course. You know what this means. They don't, you're in a lane they don't understand and you just need to stay the course. And he was getting better, of course, all the time. And he was speaking fine. It was the understanding he was struggling with. So I stayed in it and that ended up being the next six years of my life, the longest job I've ever done. And we didn't know what the title was. So my boss at the time, but I moved to a new boss, kind of moved to departments, the whole tech moved to a new department and moved into the digital business group. I didn't tell him and they titled me the, uh, ecosystem enabling product marketing engineer.

Mary Killelea: An engineer?

Tracie Zenti: Yes. Oh yes. Until I think you're an accounting, you have engineering title and thought I'm not a marketer. I'm not an engineer. I'm probably an ecosystem enabler. That made sense, but I just rolled with it. And I just started making friends with the ISVs. Like again, that I approach it from a friendship angle and they, I don't know guys what I'm doing here. How have you done partnerships in the past? Help me understand how to work with you. Uh, and again, it was like the developers going back to Hollywood days. Oh my gosh, you are asking us how you'd like us to work with you? We love you already. Cause no one ever asks. Um, and I think that's a key takeaway. Ask other people how they want you to work with them because most people don't ask that they come in guns blazing.

Mary Killelea: That’s a good tip.

Tracie Zenti: Yeah. And if you think about it, really you appreciate it yourself. If anybody ever asks you like, how can I help you be successful? It's sort of refreshing. You don't get that a lot in tech. A lot of people in tech are really knowledgeable and come in and they're like, I know the right thing to do. We're going to do it this way. And I don't think any of us really particularly love that. It's funny. I think a lot of people act that way, but they don't love it themselves. Right. And so we spent the next six years together, a company called land us. It's now a Vanti semantic, Microsoft was involved, um, all these manageability players, but kind of like, how do we manage computers in the data in an enterprise, right? Both servers and clients or servers and desktops and laptops. And I kept learning that is such a vast area of knowledge that I never stopped learning for six years, but all things come to an end and you have to accept that in career and in life and in tech, you know, it was a season for me and that was time to change.

And then I kind of hit a phase again where it was like, oh, now what I don't know what to do. So I went back to my network again and I said, guys, now what I really, I'm not looking for you to give me a job. I'm looking for, I don't know what to do next. And there was my former manager named Ido Kadim and I said, I don't know, you know me well, what do you think? And he's like, well, I have a job open in the server group. And I know nothing about servers. Really. He's like, awesome. You'll have a lot to learn because he's really good at pegging people's personalities. And so he was like, that's great for you. You like to learn. So I took the job and I ended up being a deep dive into security and firmware security, but pretty quick, it came time to like, we were, I had learned kind of what I could learn to help the project. And I had advanced at some point I could, and I felt like I wasn't learning anymore. And then it was just refining at that point, it's like, just keep saying the same thing and helping people understand and keep getting people to sign up. And at this point, I really realized I loved business development and I loved taking things that were a bunch of parts and putting them together. I liked making a pie, take the apples, take the sugar, take the flour, take the shortening and put it all together. You get a pie, but once the pie is done, I'm not interested in making a hundred pies. So I did the same thing. I reached out to the network and pretty soon I was talking to a couple of different outside of Intel for the first time and I looked back and I was like, Oh my God, I've been here for 14 years. What happened? There's all these different careers and I've enjoyed it, but I like, I've been here a long time, maybe I need to try outside Intel. And, um, and it was a process of again, talking to different people. And I finally kind of settled on if I truly love building, making the pie the first time, I probably need to be in this group called the new business organization at Intel, which is what I did when I did that for three years and I got to do crazy projects like genomics as a service, all brand new for me, healthcare, how to, how the process of mapping our DNA got to meet the genetic analysis toolkit creator, inventor, like the guy, one of the four people who now who invented the ability to map the genome. It was incredible. And it was whole way outside my lane, but it was so far outside my lane that I went, am I pivoting to healthcare now? I love healthcare. I really do, but I love tech. And I was like, I don't think I want to make that bar of a pivot. Like I really think I need to stay in the pure tech kind of enterprise. Ask me 10 years from now, I might have changed my mind, but at this point, this was 2017 ish 16. And I realized like I probably, like I may be too far outside my happy place for tech cause healthcare is kind of actually a little bit behind in tech. So, it's sort of like taking a step back in a way.

And so I decided to start looking and that's when I found out about the job at Amazon and it was running strategic partners, building a business on the Amazon web services marketplace, which was an interesting thing. Cause I'd done some side gigs about consumerization of IP when I was in the software solutions group. And I've realized then this is like eight years, nine, eight years ago, probably that it is having this broader consumerization of it happening, which is processes that you and I live through in our daily lives as consumers of just everything, you know, buying on Amazon, whatever, buying apps on our phone, that was coming to IT in a giant wave that was crashing down. And IT was trying to grapple that and change their processes and the way that they did things to still be secure, but offer that can you get on your phone and download an app for work kind of style of deploying and delivering solutions to the enterprise users like you and I at our jobs, right. And I realized that that was what this marketplace offered was the ability to just click to buy software and cloud together. And I had spent a bunch of time on the cloud and I was doing well all the way back to SSG again, 2009. So, when cloud was just developing and virtualization and all that. And so I thought, well, that's an interesting next step because it really is making life easier for procurement and people in IT. So I took that job and that I did that for two and a half years and it was time for a change again. And I took the job at Microsoft to work for them in marketplace again, but at a different capacity. Um, but again, that same for me, that to me is still nascent and new that paradigm of IT is not on mass yet buying in marketplaces. The cloud is still newish for IT. And I think personally, I believe that this change, this paradigm shift that marketplaces bring to enterprise IT is an exceptional change that is just very much at the beginning. And so it brings all together all those things I love. So that was a long description, but that is how I got to now. And I love what I do and I'm never bored, never, ever, ever bored.

Mary Killelea: Well, thank you for that. I mean, I love it. And I think it's fascinating to hear your journey. I'm jotting notes and I think a couple things that came across when you were talking with self-awareness, trust and network being so vital. The fact that you've reached out to your network, built those relationships and then they too care enough about you to steer you in directions where they see growth and you trusted that. And that's a big deal. And then even just being self-aware of, does this turn me on? Do I like this? Is this the category? Is this the minds? Is this going to make me want to wake up in the morning? And if not, then I'm going to shift and pivot and having the ability to shift and put these. I mean, these are key things that are so valuable for the next generation of women looking to get into business or tech. These are skills that just are invaluable really.

Tracie Zenti: Thank you. Yeah, I agree. And I think a lot of people get heads down into, I think women, especially Mary get in that I have to prove myself and they put their heads down and they work and they work and they work. And I see so many women that sacrifice themselves, their, uh, their personal time, their family time, who they are, what drives them because they're so heads down and deliver, deliver, deliver that they, it's like swimming in a giant lake and never coming up for air or just barely getting air and going back under. And you never get up and notice that like days have gone by years have gone by, the seasons have changed, like life has changed around you and you're really not doing anybody a service when you do that. You're not doing a service to your job either because you're not aware of where your true north is. If you're never looking up and taking a breath. And it really is a limiter. And I think a lot of women do that.

Mary Killelea: So, and I agree with you completely. And I know you touched on a couple of mentors that you've had along the way. What advice would you give someone looking to find a mentor for their, a mentor for their own career? And it's not just something you can dial, you know, 1-800-MENTOR and it happens.

Tracie Zenti: That's a good business idea, Mary. Let's talk.

Mary Killelea: I'm buying the domain.

Tracie Zenti: Okay. 1-800-MENTOR. I like it.

Mary Killelea: Yeah. TM.

Tracie Zenti: It's a good question. I think it's just taking a moment to stop and think about who you have seen that you perceive doing it well. And I was actually thinking about it last night. I was kind of thinking about people who I've run across in my life and maybe I didn't actually use as a mentor. And at the time though, I thought, man, they had it dialed in and maybe I even have some missed opportunities. I think as I, maybe first eight years, I accidentally got mentors. I didn't realize they were mentors. It was just survival. I felt very much the imposter syndrome and I needed to know what to do and I needed guidance and people, I just had no other coping skill but to ask my friends. And I'm a naturally social person. And I see this all the time. People are not naturally social and they kind of say, I just don't know how to do that. And so I think LinkedIn offers some good opportunities for that. Things that force people who are less social to get out of their shell, like Technology Association of Oregon, for example. So, I guess it's the advice isn't clear cut. It's not follow my path. Cause if you try to follow my path and you're not naturally social and you're not naturally comfortable just asking questions and developing relationships, you're going to not have success. You're going to struggle. But there are a lot of ways that there exists out there. I think more people are not like me and they need help. And there are all these great professional societies. Going back to my early first job, right? That lawyer, sorry, legal assistant job. I didn't know. I was very insecure. I was 22 years old. Or 21. I think I felt like I can't just talk to the lawyers at my office. That'll show me as not knowing what I want to do. And so joining the Oregon Women Lawyers Association was a lifeline for me and we're all humans on the planet trying to get through our day, right? As they say, putting our pants on.

Mary Killelea: That's just what I was envisioning in my head. Absolutely.

Tracie Zenti: Yeah. And so, I think that because not everybody's the same socially, there are professional organizations just for that. And I encourage people to do that. I've heard somebody say one time, oh, I don't go to the Technology Association of Oregon meetings because it's just a bunch of people looking for jobs. And I said to the person, well, why is that a problem? Well, none of them can help me find the job. And I said, oh, well, if you're just getting to the point of networking at the point you need a job, you're not doing it right. You don't network when you need a job. That's too late.

Mary Killelea: Right. No, you're absolutely right. Yeah.

Tracie Zenti: It's too late. That's sort of like Christmas shopping at 11:59 on Christmas Eve. You're not going to get good gifts. Plan ahead a little, like even the week before a sign. But I mean, I think the networking, some people see it as a destination and I see it as a every day, I work from home. I have for 14 years. The dog and I don't have very good water cooler conversations. We try, but it's not great. I set lunches. I have no intention of asking any of these people for jobs. They have become my friends, but I've got a friend that works at Palo Alto Networks. We go to lunch once a month, got another friend in another business and we go to lunch once every two months. And I don't even think it has to be a prescribed thing where you kind of set it on a cadence, but making sure you do it every few weeks that you touch base with other people and get out of your office. Networking is not having, you can have your in office networking. And that's important, right? Cause you might want another job at the company you're at. But you need to get outside of your company. You cannot just network inside. And so you've got to find what your natural way is of kind of negotiating the world socially. And that's the thing you go do. It doesn't have to be anything innovative or different, if it's you play tennis, if you play tennis, find a woman in your field that plays tennis.

Mary Killelea: That's great advice. So what would you say have been some of the biggest challenges along the way in your career or that you even face today?

Tracie Zenti: Oh, that's a hard question. I mean, there's the biggest challenges purely as an employee. And then there's the biggest challenges as a woman. What would you like, you want me to focus on the woman aspect of my, in my career?

Mary Killelea: Let's go as a woman because I think the audience is clearly women who are tuning in. So, I think, yeah, we can all relate.

Tracie Zenti: Okay. So I mean, there's some people that are like, it's the same women and men. We have the same issues and yeah, we do. But women, particularly, I feel like there is an ever changing landscape of politics at any given company that are totally different for us, what it's like to have a baby, um, and come back to work, right? Those kinds of things that just aren't as much happening to men. It's different. And by the way, men have their own issues. Like I'm not saying men don't have their own, right. They've got their own things to navigate. We don't understand. I think the biggest challenges have been for me, some of it is overcoming my own worry that I might be perceived as not working as hard as men because I have a family. And a lot of that is honestly, I think culture of the company and making the right choice, but it's also a bit in my own head of worrying. People worry about things that they don't. Right. And so, I think early in my career, that was very real. I had a coworker once tell me that I needed to be less personal. This entire interview has been about me telling you to be personal. So, it depends again, that had to do with the culture of the company. So I think it's that it's, it's checking myself. Am I doing, am I acting a different way? Because I'm worried about perception of me balancing my work and life. And being authentic and true to myself, my kids and my husband are my most important. They're my why it's why I do anything. I love tech. It's my second. Why am I number one? Why is my family? I cannot work somewhere that does not support my way. And I think people need to be really true to themselves about that. Like it's, there's always another job in a good economy about economy. We can have another discussion about that surviving a bad economy. Um, but in a good economy, if it's not the right fit, don't stay. It's not worth your time.

Mary Killelea: You and I work in the tech space. How would you say tech is changing the future landscape of the jobs for the upcoming women who are looking to get into business in tech? And I know that's a huge question.

Tracie Zenti: Yeah, it is a huge question. I was having this discussion with someone just this last week, actually. We're getting more and more automated, right? AI is here. If you don't know that it, it let me be clear. Jobs that are repetitive. Even if you're a general practitioner as a medical doctor, right? That job, that job will be heavily automated in the next 10 years. You have to recognize that, know what you're good at and what's your secret sauce and be willing to evolve that over time. And if your secret sauce of who you are and what makes you special becomes very repetitive, it is likely that it would be something that could be turned over to an AI type application or server machine learning like Watson or something like that. Right. For example, workflow automation. If you're a project manager and you've always just kept track of schedules and that's kind of what your thing is, probably not too far off in the next 10 years that something will be able to do that. And there are already products that do that, right? But not usually need a human to kind of like ride on top and make sure everything's accurate. But I think automation is real and it's coming. I think for women coming out of school right now, what I see happening is that data, I remember in the week you and I had this conversation in the early, like around 2011, I remember Intel coined the term big data. At least my perception was that started Intel big data. And I remember about a year later, I started saying to people, I want to be clear data is no longer big. It's huge. It's huge now. And then about a year later, I was like, I'd like to let you all know that we have reached the point of data being enormous. It's no longer huge. It's now enormous. Right. And now it's just ridiculous. It's just a joke how big it is. Right. And why that's relevant to your question is that there is so much data now that like, I think as I'm sitting here in my office, I can't even count the number of connected devices. Like literally, I think I'm sitting around in a 10 by 10 office. I am sitting around probably 15 devices. Now that might seem extreme to you, but you would be surprised. I have a digital frame. That's a device that has firmware. It's capturing and collecting its own data. Right. I've got an Alexa that's on mute for the call. I've got a Sonos. I've got two printers. These things are all in their own right. Right. Got an iPad sitting in front of me. I got an Apple watch. They're all collecting and sending data and connecting out to the world of the internet to get updates, to tell the world what's happening to them right now. They're all trying to fix themselves. There's a problem. My printers are probably talking to China right now to get the latest and greatest firmware update.

And so I've kind of for about the last five years realized that like our lives have become about managing these machines and it is really complicated. And that we are scratching the surface. So, for your audience of women out there, the jobs that are going to be available and are available around managing data, it's only going to get bigger. Right. I think we've barely scratched the surface. So, I think automation, IOT data, if you find yourself into those areas, that's where it's at. If you had asked me this question 10 years ago, I would have been, it's all about this personal computing devices becoming like iPads and cell phones are getting bigger. Cell phones are getting bigger. Watches are becoming phone aware and connecting to your phones and computers are becoming tablets, right? Handheld, no keyboards, maybe even 12 years ago. And it's all about that kind of evolution and change. That's the future is all about data. And how that data is going to like both complicate our lives and make them better. Unfortunately, all tech sort of brings a layer of management with it. So if you can find your way into that, yeah, that I think is really where things are going. And there won't be any jobs in that that are redundant because it's new.

Mary Killelea: I think it's important too, though, that they prepare themselves or recognize or I guess align themselves if they are self-aware that tech is fast paced, it's changing. Are they good with that? Because you do have to be fast. Multitask, you need to be able to move. You need to learn constantly learning.

Tracie Zenti: Yeah, that's a good point. I read a lot. I read a lot. I read a lot about the changing. I'm reading a book right now called Soonish. It's not because of my job. I just really like Mason emerging technology, right? It's interesting. And this thing is all about different categories of space exploration and all kinds of things. Just constantly reading. I'm LinkedIn. That's not because I work for Microsoft. LinkedIn is just a great way to stay up on new. It just is. And just see trends, be aware and reach out to your network when you're having lunch. What do you see changing? Oh, like honestly, when I was in college, I don't know, maybe business development like I do now existed. I couldn't see it. If you had asked me if I wanted to be in business development, I would have laughed and said, what are you talking about? I don't know what that is. Right? I have no idea what that is. And it's even marketing is changing. You have marketing tools, right? That are becoming very canned and easy. You input your information. It's out websites, right? You can use Square now and get a pretty decent website in about half an hour. Like when you and I first met, what, 10 years ago now? Yeah, I think it's been 10 years ago. Exactly. Making a website was like you had to hire a person and they like used code and built a website and took a while.

Mary Killelea: Oh, absolutely. Definitely was entrenched in that world for a while. Yeah. So let me shift gears a little bit because I want to play a position, a question that I think aligns with one of your strongest skills too. When it comes to negotiating, I think you're really good at that. Negotiating plays an important role in daily work from having to get other organizations within a company to either like your ideas, support it financially, or just not be a roadblock. But I think for the audience here, negotiating your salary, what tips do you have for someone young who might be hungry for a job or even someone who's been in the business a while but just doesn't like to talk about money? What is your advice around negotiating?

Tracie Zenti: Oh, that's hard for people. My goodness. There's a couple things I see as reoccurring themes in all my friends, not just women. They have a hard time singing their praises. I had a friend, a male friend, send me an email the other day and he said, should I talk about my MBA and my LinkedIn profile? I said, did you not get your MBA? And he goes, yeah, but I shouldn't brag about it. And I was like, if you can't brag about it on your LinkedIn profile, where can you? If you didn't think you should brag about it, why did you spend the $150,000 to go to Kellogg? Right? What's the point if you weren't going to tell people? So, first off, you are only as good at negotiating as the other party's perceived value of you. So, your job is to help them understand why you are the person, why are you the car they should buy? And we don't like to think of ourselves as products. But in this world, that is exactly what we are. We are products and we are trying to sell ourselves to someone else. And so therefore, you need to create every possible lane you can to create awareness about who you are and to sell yourself. Okay, you cannot negotiate from a power of position if you have not made clear why you are strong and important, why you are. So it's sort of like when you go into any job interview or any salary negotiation or anything, you want to go in with a position of impact.

So if you're in a job, and you're trying to get a new salary, you go in with here's my impact. Like this is and you by the way, you should be thinking about your impact and everything you do, everything you do. Because any task like I had a friend once that said she read every single email every day, sometimes she would work 16 hours a day to do so. I said, Oh, I didn't know that Intel hire you to read email. What do you mean? And I was teasing her. We were good friends. And she goes, What do you mean? I genuinely don't understand. And I said, with every one of those emails, directly, did it directly impact the company and what you were trying to accomplish that you had agreed with your boss or your goals? Well, no. Well, then why did you read them all? Like, why did you spend time reading and responding? I get skimming and making sure that you know, but we all could probably say at least a third of the email we get at least is BS and has nothing to do with what we have to accomplish in any given day. That's your life too. You don't read every single email in your personal life. If you did, you'd never have time to do your job.

So anyway, so I think you have to start with that base of like, know your own value, know your impact, write it down, write it down monthly, write down, I actually do it once a week, I write down the things I did that week that were impactful, it helps me frame the next week. And then at the end of a month or six month period, I'm able to say here's the impact I had and I'm on the right path. Now, I'm going into that negotiation on the salary, know what people are making around you, you don't have to ask your friends, that can be very hard for people. There are websites that you can look it up, they tend to all be a little on the low side. So if you're making 75,000 or 100,000 for easy math, $100,000 a year and the website, salary.com or whatever for your area says that 120 is average, that's usually just salary, that's not bonuses. You can kind of assume it's anywhere from 20 to 50% low. So know what the value is, your value, know what people are making and then go in with that. And then the negotiating part comes in, in being strong and what you know your worth is if you feel like you're underpaid, you probably are. And so be ready, you've got to sort of be ready to take the step like, okay, if I can't get what I need, I'm going to go somewhere else. And you don't have to threaten, you just kind of go, like, if I, you know, this is what I need to do this job. And if that's not possible, then I need to start looking elsewhere, you don't even have to say it, you need to know it intrinsically, you need to know your value. But I think negotiating in general is always very important to try to help the other person really want and desire what you have. And so that puts you in a position of power, right? It's a little bit hard, we could have a whole hour on negotiating really, because I do that every day in my job, right? I'm in business development. And I think whether you're negotiating a car deal, or you're negotiating for your salary, it's the same principles of psychology. And it might not even hurt to have people take a class on negotiating, right? Because, but the biggest thing I see women do is they undervalue themselves. They do not want to market themselves, they don't want to say what they're good at. They will routinely just, just kind of undervalue themselves. And that's just, you shouldn't do that. You shouldn't do that.

Mary Killelea: Those are great tips. And they hit home, you know, for me personally, I see myself probably every year evolving and taking some of these action steps that just didn't come naturally to me because I was raised to be quieter, or take what I got, or be thankful. So, it's a struggle for me at my age. I mean, this isn't easy. This is something you have to work on.

Tracie Zenti: Well, you know what, you're right. And I think sometimes, I sometimes think, okay, let's, I feel like I'm underpaid. Well, what, maybe, why don't I think about exactly like, what do I do for the business? What does this job do? And what could I quantify my impact? Sometimes that's hard to do. But sometimes it depends on the role you're in, right? Well, for salespeople, it's really easy. I've sold $10 million last quarter, or last year, or whatever it is, right? I sold $1 million. My salary is $200,000. That absolutely, I am worth that salary because I'm making so much money. But maybe you're not a salesperson. Maybe you're a product manager. Okay, well, that product is expected to make $20 million in the first year. And without my guidance, we wouldn't hit the release dates. And the thing I see time and time again is people do not write about themselves in terms of impact. They just don't know how to do it. And I think it's because they've learned to use adjectives in a soft way. And women especially have learned like, collaborate, right? Or drive. I drive. You see resumes all the time. Drove, collaborated, built. But I'll read these resumes a lot and go, and when I mentor women, I go, what did you actually do? So you drove some stuff and collaborated. What does that mean? In the big picture. And when you begin to see that and start to frame the way you talk about your accomplishments, sometimes you don't need to negotiate anymore because they speak for themselves. You're sending a status report to your boss that says I completed a course on strength based training, the strength finder. So what? So, you're like, strength finder. So what? So we all took that class. And I use that to affect my relationship with my partners. And now I am focusing on building the portfolio in a different way. And that had this impact. And it is not easy. It is not easy and it takes time. It really does. It doesn't come naturally to anybody. But if you have already been framing your worth in that way, your day to day accomplishments, you will shine in then a time for review and you'll get the bigger, , truly you will get the bigger salary.

The other thing is in one time, in my entire career, one time, and I think I've told you this, did I get offered a raise? Once. No one comes knocking on your door and says, you're amazing Mary. I want to pay you more. It goes against the grain of every company. If I can get you to do it for less, I will, by the way, if you work 70 hours a week and do it for less, that's even better. Because I'm really getting my ROI out of this employee. Right. So nobody ever is going to come and bring you that race. I have talked to so many people that like, well, I'm just working really hard and I'm going to get a raise because I'm working hard. You can work really hard and get fired because you're working hard on the wrong things or you're not making that impact that you should be making. Right. So, if you don't ask for it, you won't get it.

Mary Killelea: So we only have time for maybe one, maybe two questions. So I'm going to ask you do you work on your personal brand? And if so, why is it so important? I mean, I think we've kind of, it's kind of been a story throughout this, but let me, let me ask you that for yourself.

Tracie Zenti: Yeah. It's an easy answer. Yes. 100% I work on my personal brand. Yeah. Um, take opportunities to be visible both in your company and outside your company. It's scary for people cause that puts you on like a bit of a, for people who are risk averse, that's like, Oh, everybody's going to be watching what if I fail? If you don't do it, you're definitely not going to rise up. You will stay right where you are. If not any, if nothing else, actually probably you will decline in your career. If you don't look for opportunities to work on your brand, you must have a public presence. LinkedIn is a great way to do that. I highly recommend the premium account because it lets you see how, when you make a change on your LinkedIn, you go and look and see how people are viewing you. And that is a direct easy, it's just like a website. You can see, okay, I added to my job description that I negotiate with partners and my LinkedIn and I posted an article about negotiating with partners and my LinkedIn went way up. Okay. So, it's very easy to see direct correlation when you have that. If it is expensive, I think it's like 40 bucks a month, but if you're trying to really work on your career, it is really the best way to get direct feedback. Like you'll see, you'll also develop a network of people that are liking your stuff. I've got a woman in Australia that follows me and she reached out to me and said, I just want to follow you and be able to stay in touch with you because I'm learning. And I was like, Oh, great. I don't know you at all, but I'm happy to help. Right. And I consider that part of my network now. If I needed advice and career of expertise, which happens to be financial, I would absolutely not feel one bit awkward about emailing her and saying, Hey, can you give me some advice on this? So yes, the answer is yes, 100%.

There are other ways that I think you can do it. You can have a personal website. You can look for speaking opportunities, you know, but you've, it starts with having the table stakes are linked in profile. The other thing I tell people is please recognize that just because a company gave you a job title 20 years ago, 10 years ago, a year ago, does not mean that it is relevant to the rest of the world. So if you were chief collector of data and information at AT&T, but you worked as an operator, I don't know what that really means. And so titles are really not to change your title to be more appropriate for the rest of us to understand what you do. It's okay. It's not lying. Don't go say you were chief information officer when you were really an operator. That's ridiculous. Make it relevant. I mean, it's silly. Nobody cares that it's look, if I'm trying to hire you today as a business analyst, that can mean a lot of things. I want more specific. I've got a friend right now who, um, he is an amazing, amazing business development person in cloud partnerships. And there was a job opening in another company and I referred him in and they said, gee, I'm sorry. I don't know why you sent us this guy. He said, what are you talking about? He's amazing. I've worked with him for two and a half years and we built programs together. He like really knows how to do this. He is literally your perfect candidate. And they said, well, his title said senior director of product management. We're looking for a business development guy. I go, ah, I called him up, change your title. Why do you still have product manager? Well, technically my internal title code is senior director of product management for cloud partnerships. I go, do you ever write requirements any point in the day? Are you actually creating a product roadmap? No. What do you do? I'm business development. Okay. Could we agree that your actual outside title is senior director of business development? Well, yeah, but I can't change that. And why is there a title police? I don't know about that runs around checking people's text. So he's now embarking on updating his LinkedIn. Yeah. But that's going to help you both internally and externally. Inside jobs or she knows. So yeah.

Mary Killelea: All right. Time for last question. If you could tell your 20 year old self anything, what would it be?

Tracie Zenti: Oh, wow. Hmm. I think honestly, that is very specific to me. I have an obsessive need to hold on to not let go, tell something to self. I am tenacious to a fault. And it is the biggest thing I have had to work on as a person is knowing when to let go and say, I can't do that. I can't do it because I can't do it or I can't do it because someone will allow me to do it. Or I can't the bigger one, Mary, is I can't win that person over. I really like to kind of help everyone I'm working with see what I working on a specific project is good for them. And get them to like want to be excited about it just like me and knowing myself. This is also very important learning. I've learned about who I am. I'm expressive, happy, want everybody to enjoy the job and a driver. I want to get it done. And if you give me a desk, a deadline and a destination come hell or high water, I want to meet that deadline and that destination. It's really an important part of who I am. But there are times that I have hurt myself because I have been so tenacious. I've changed to get there different ways, but sometimes you have to know when you're baking a souffle and you have just put too much dang flour in it and I don't care how many minutes you bake it for or how you stop in the middle and take away flour or you've just gotten on the wrong path. And that can be said for me and staying in jobs for too long that I shouldn't have. It can be said for me in sticking with a person who is carrying me down in work, personal life too, right? My friend calls them emotional vampires at work and at home, right? Not my husband's not, but you know what I mean, in my personal life. And just knowing when to sort of say, I can't win that. It's okay to say, uncle, right? It's okay to like, don't let somebody break your arm to be, say, I finished it. Like sometimes I need to let go. That's my biggest advice to myself at 20 is like see the situation for what the really is and pivot and change direction. Because staying on that course only ended up in you hitting a giant iceberg and it was never going to be any different. And you could have seen that four months ahead or eight months before and you saw it, but you still stayed on that same course. You could see the iceberg coming, but you didn't stop.

Mary Killelea: That is so great. It's been awesome having you on the show. If someone wanted to connect with you, I know you mentioned LinkedIn, but.

Tracie Zenti: So LinkedIn is just like Facebook for work and it has the private messages and I treat mine as I do text messages and Facebook messages. It's gotten a work. So if I get a message, I see it just like I see any other message and I will respond. So yeah, feel free. And I think it's called private message. Some people call it direct message. So yeah, just feel free to connect with me. I will say I don't accept every connection on LinkedIn, but you can send me a message and ask me to connect with your reason and then I'll accept it. But there is fraud on LinkedIn. So I don't just blindly accept friend requests or sort of a connection credit request. I should say, by the way, PSA don't accept every LinkedIn you get. Validate, validate why they're asking you to connect. Yeah. Yeah.

Mary Killelea: Well, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate your time and support and sharing insights from your career. This is going to help the next generation of women in business and tech and just thanks for being there for me over the years.

Tracie Zenti: Oh, I mean so much to me, Mary Ann, for you having me on and also our friendship and long time collaboration and you have taught me so much. So it's definitely, you're one of my experts. You know that when I have questions, I call you. So thank you for doing that all these years too, because I've learned an enormous amount from you.

Mary Killelea: Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guests. If you liked our show, please like it and share it with your friends. If you want to learn what we're up to, please go check out our website at 2bbolder.com. That's the number two little b bolder.com.