Career Growth Advice from Raechel Frick, Tech Marketing Leader | Career Tips for Women in Tech Marketing

2B Bolder Podcast – Episode 101
Featuring Rachael Frick

Episode Title: #101 Career Podcast featuring Rachael Frick, a Successful Leader in Partner Marketing at AWS

Host: Mary Killelea
Guest: Rachael Frick



Mary Killelea (Host): Hi there. My name is Mary Killelea. Welcome to the To Be Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. To Be 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. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.

Hi, thanks for tuning in. I am excited to have Rachael Frick on today's show. Rachael is a leader in the tech industry, currently over at Amazon Web Services as the head of storage and observability partner marketing. Rachael has an impressive track record from her time at Intel Corporation, building and launching the cross portfolio competitive marketing office, to her strategic role in partner marketing with Microsoft while she was there. And Rachael's career is a blueprint of innovation and strategic growth in tech. Her journey from her educational roots in computer science at UC Santa Barbara to her current leadership role reflects a deep commitment to tech innovation and customer centric strategies. Rachael, thanks for being here. It's great to have you on the show.

Rachael Frick (Guest): Thank you so much for having me. It's so great to spend time with you today.

Mary Killelea: Cool. Okay. Well, start with your telling us about your journey to get to AWS and what a typical day is.

Rachael Frick: Yeah, you bet. So as you mentioned, I started in computer science in college. I was not intimidated by technology growing up. We had computers in the house. We actually said we had a computer in the household when I was in high school, which is really, really rare. But when I got to college, I went to an all-girls university in my first year and I worked for tech support. And at the time, the most common call you would get for tech support was somebody's computer was unplugged, and they just didn't even think to plug it in. Or if you can remember, there was a floppy disk in the tower, which means your computer wouldn't boot because it was trying to be a floppy disk. And people just thought I was this computer whiz because I could solve these problems. I was always scratching my head. I'm like, this is not that deep.

So, I went down the computer science track because at the time it just seemed really easy. I eventually transferred into UC Santa Barbara. And that's where I really met the cream of the crop, like within my world at the time. I mean, these folks, their parents were some of the lead engineers within the Silicon Valley area. And we were pulling all nighters on a regular basis, just honing our brains out. And by the time I wrapped up my degree, I did not want to program anymore. And I got so lucky that Intel had emailed the UC system a program. It was a rotation program where they were looking for engineers that had some speaking skills, some like people skills, honestly, at the time. And I was just so thankful to find something where I could use my tech background, and I could not have to program all night anymore.

But the crazy thing was coming into Intel, I had really never used PowerPoint. I had barely written anything my entire life. I'd been living in a terminal for the last couple of years. And I remember having an executive and I knew nothing about corporate America. I spent my summer's life guarding in college. I never had a real internship. And I remember having a senior leader at Intel at one point say like, Hey, do you need any help since you've gotten here? And I remember asking, Yeah, can you help me with PowerPoint? And later I was at a happy hour and folks were like, Did you seriously ask him for help? I mean, I don't understand how the hierarchy

Mary Killelea: Right. Right.

Rachael Frick: And I was there at Intel for 17 years. And it was it was just amazing. But all of a sudden, year 17 just felt like a really big number. And I couldn't believe I'd been at the same place for 17 years. So, I started doing some soul searching and reflecting on what I wanted to do next. I didn't want to spend my entire career at one place. I, you know, I was lucky enough to do a lot of roles of partner marketing. So I knew cultures, other companies were really different. And I wasn't totally sure where I wanted to pop over next. Somebody recommended the book Working Backwards. It's by Colin Breyer and Bill Carr. And there are two gentlemen who were at Amazon, and they've left Amazon. And they have heard from many people since they left that the peculiar culture at Amazon is not repeatable. And they wanted to write a book. Well, actually, it's very repeatable. It just people choose not to take a stab at it, I think. And I've heard since I've been in Amazon, that actually a lot of things we do here, they do happen. But it's, it's in the minority of companies.

I had known things like Amazon rights, narratives, everything is doc writing, we don't do PowerPoint. And I thought that was terrifying, intimidating growth. I mean, I at this point, I had spent 17 years in PowerPoint.

Mary Killelea: Right, right.

Rachael Frick: Having to write an essay was so intimidating. When I read working backwards, and I understood why Amazon rights narratives, I was so curious. I just I really wanted to experience this. There was a chapter about the hiring practices over here. And I thought back at Intel, and honestly, lots of companies, when you're doing hiring, it could look different from team to team to team that you're supporting. Amazon's got a really grueling interview process that they do. It's, it's, it's difficult, and it's stressful. And it's tested. I mean, they are they've got a bar. And when they look at candidates coming in, you have to be at 50%, kind of equivalent to 50% of employees, or better, because Amazon believes that you should always be raising the bar of your employees, which what like an incredible way to think about hiring practices. Yeah, like not are you great for this job? But are you going to raise the bar of the team you're entering?

It was little things like that in the book, I was just, again, so curious to come experience it. And then the other piece was I was talking to a friend who was at Intel, we were cube neighbors forever ago. And she'd been in Amazon now for about three years. And talking to her, she was a different human after three years at Amazon, and she was still here. And she still is here, I work for her and her org today. But hearing her speak about the leadership principles just so naturally, like you could just feel that the people here, they really believe the leadership principles, they practice them every single day. And I, again, I just, I wanted to experience this. So I worked really hard. And I went through the interviews here called the loop. And then I came over.

And then you asked about like a typical day over at Amazon. And it's a mix. I mean, it's a lot of meetings, as you can imagine. But a lot of the meetings are around doc reads. So you do spend a lot of time writing, I've had to figure out just for myself, like, what is the best time of day where I can write versus when I can just do one on ones versus team meetings versus like actual doc reads, when you can't really plan your doc reads, but I did find that my best writing is around 10pm at night, my headspace is clear. So, I do have to kind of modify my days a little bit, depending on what I have to get done that week. When you've got a big idea at Amazon, you dig into the data, and you put a narrative together. Or if you've got a big message you need to land, like at my first couple quarters here, I was just, I was finding a lot of information and I had to articulate that to leadership. So, I would have to put it into a narrative. And so you join these meetings and they're just such a phenomenal experience. But you join a meeting and you send everyone a link to the document and everybody goes silent for five, 10, 20 minutes. Everybody reads the doc and then you discuss it.

Mary Killelea: Oh, wow.

Rachael Frick: And it's, so I do spend, I do, we do a lot of those per week. And the first couple of times you do it, the awkward silence is uncomfortable.

Mary Killelea: Yeah.

Rachael Frick: And then you get to a point quarters later where somebody does a PowerPoint randomly, maybe a partner does PowerPoint. And you're like, in your head, you're like, I wish I could just put this in a doc. Like I wish I could just see all the data and I could just kind of, I could internalize it on my own time. And then we could just hash it out for a little bit, as opposed to kind of watching somebody go through a presentation. It's a very different mindset. So, you know, a lot of my week it's looking at data. It's kind of putting ideas together. It's maybe doing a doc read. The doc reads are probably at most every other week, big ones, maybe once a month. It's really when people have some like really big that they want to share. But some of these docs like that I've been a part of, they can take three months to put together because they're that, they're really that thoughtful. And the amount of input you're gathering along the ways, they use you all by go primary doc, like an author. And then you're meeting every week to keep like putting this thing together. And then you'll do a doc read with it.

Think of like a sphere of influence, your doc read with a small group of people who would touch it at a day to day. And then you get all their feedback and incorporate it. You read it again. And then you go to the next kind of layer of your sphere of influence, and you have all of them review it. And then you make it up to leadership to ultimately, you're trying to get a decision. I've been a part of a doc just recently that we've been working on for quarters and we're just going up the management chain until we're getting buy in for budget for 2024.

Mary Killelea: That is so interesting to me because obviously, I know I'm trained on a different approach. Do they do they have like a decision making tree so you know whose inputters who's you know the D on it, because I would think that would be challenging to navigate and negotiate points that you're trying to influence.

Rachael Frick: Yeah, typically you'll know going into it based on what you're asking for who your decision maker is going to be. And at Amazon, we are highly transparent on your grade level. So, a lot of times you'll be in a group of L6s and then you're going to take it to your sphere of influences that are going to go to L7s. Then you go to L8s. We don't have L9 and then you go to L10. Like if it's a 10, 11, 12 million dollar ask, you're going to go to your L10. Sure. But you your doc better be flawless, no spelling out error, super tight, maybe 10, 12 pages of data, like just your appendices of all the information, because people are jumping around looking at your appendices. It's wild, but you do it enough and you're like you really grow an appreciation for it.

Mary Killelea: Oh, I could only imagine just your writing skills, your thought thinking process skills that would definitely develop. Do they use acronyms is around a lot?

Rachael Frick: A little bit, but in a doc, you have to spell it out the first time. And if you don't, you'll get comments of like, please spell this out. And I've been here for almost a year and a half. And even in December, when I had some downtime, I went back and I was retaking doc writing classes because doc writing is such a big deal here. And at Amazon, we have a thing called a doc bar raiser, where if you write enough docs, you do enough training, then you've kind of you've got to get certified internally to be a doc bar raiser. And then when people are seeking help, you're part of a master list of doc bar raisers, and people come ask you for help. But it's a bit of a process because you have to author many docs yourself before you can get to that status. So I spent some time in December kind of going back and relooking at some of the training and resources that we have.

Mary Killelea: Are there external trainings or classes that you would recommend for someone who's on the outside looking in to kind of, I guess, hone that skill prematurely?

Rachael Frick: Yeah, that's a wonderful question. And I don't know, we have so many resources internally. I've never looked. I'd be more than happy that I look afterwards. I would bet though, there's probably some really cool stuff on like YouTube. There's a lot of ex Amazonians that publish content on YouTube. In fact, when I was interviewing, the number one resource was YouTube. There are so many ex, we have bar raisers for the interview process. And there's a lot of ex bar raisers that just talk about how to prepare.

Mary Killelea: That's awesome. I'm going to include that book that you said, Working Backwards.

Rachael Frick: Yeah, there's lots of great Amazon books, but that one was my favorite.

Mary Killelea: Oh, that's cool. So, you talked a little bit about the different places that you work. I never really thought about partner marketing giving you that exposure to other companies. That's cool. So, when you're dealing with a partner, tell me what is your role and how do you navigate, I guess, serving two companies?

Rachael Frick: Yeah. Two companies. And I'd say it's really different actually when you're dedicated to an account or a partner versus when you're managing a team of partner managers. That's been kind of different for me over here. At Intel, I was on account teams where you're just, whether you're a people manager or an individual contributor, you're dedicated to that account. I covered IBM for years and IBM is North Carolina. It's very old fashioned, super formal. We wore suits. You were in the office by 8 a.m., but you could see being in the office, we mirrored our, how we showed up to work and our personalities mirrored our partner. And then when I covered Microsoft, it was very similar. I mean, I was showing up looking one way the first quarter or so. And by the end, I was dressed in like Microsoft and they're in hoodies and tennis shoes. So, there's like elements of that.

I also think in both of those roles, I spent most of my time with the partner. I spent way more time in front of the partner on site in meetings, planning, whiteboarding, helping them with their execution than I did in any internal meetings. Plus, you're on an account team. That's what Intel was function at the time. If you were a partner marketing role, many of them sat on the account teams. And so, when you would join an internal meeting, I often felt like I was Microsoft in the meeting. I am here to represent Microsoft, and I would fight and I would advocate for my partner aggressively because you're in a meeting now sometimes. So, they don't call with the person who represents all of Microsoft's peers or competitors. And my job is to make sure that Microsoft gets the spotlight. They get the most amount of money. They get the mentions in the keynotes, et cetera, et cetera. So you wear a very different hat.

When I was covering IBM, I did that for four years and I had a blast and I learned so much about marketing from IBM. But I did get to a place where I kind of felt like I wanted to know how Intel does marketing. I hadn't done a lot of Intel stuff yet. I spent most of my career at that point actually doing IBM marketing. And I had done a little bit of networking along the ways. And when a job opened up in corporate marketing, I jumped over and I did corporate just to really understand how the Intel engine works. I had no idea, honestly. At AWS, I manage a team of partner marketers. And so a lot of my time is a lot more focused internally supporting the folks on my team or either helping them with some ideation or solving challenges or thinking through strategy for the next month, the next quarter.

At Amazon, we do what we call operational planning. So, we think about 2024 in the summer of 2023. And there's formal operational planning docs that get done at the leadership level, but we already start kind of chatting about it in the summertime. And then come Q4, the end of the calendar year, we spent a significant amount of time mapping out the next calendar year. And we put it all into a doc, into a narrative. It's usually six pages plus appendices. And that's a ton of fun. I love whiteboarding. What are the big things we're going to go do this next year? And we'll try and figure that out from kind of a customer point of view or what are the challenges we need to do for customers? And then what are the things we want to help solve for our partners? And then we'll go talk to the partners. And a lot of it's parallel, really. We can go talk to partners. I was like, okay, right now we cover storage. We'll go talk to a storage partner of like, what are the top three things you guys want to get done this year? And what are you looking at top of the funnel acquisition? Are you bottom up? Then we kind of workshop, okay, based on those top three priorities, where are you thinking through on the kind of the marketing funnel, with the workshop goals? And then we make sure all of that is reflected back in our operational planning.

And so a lot of that is, for me, it's internal. And then I love joining the partner meetings, as it makes sense. And I'll join a lot of QBRs and stuff like that. We have amazing partners. And I joke a lot with my team and some of the partners. One of the categories we cover storage and storage is that's a lot of backup and recovery. But the people are phenomenal. There's just such amazing people in the entire ecosystem of folks that I work with.

Mary Killelea: That's fantastic. And this is so insightful. I appreciate you just giving all this information. It's awesome. As a woman in tech, and you move between companies, do you have non-negotiables or jobs you're going to take on to build your career?

Rachael Frick: Yeah, I think what I have found, especially with my exposure to other companies along the way, even with Microsoft, because I was covering Microsoft, we'd work with other companies, too, for triparty type activities. Customer obsession is always forefront for me. Are we, and as a company, really hyper-focused on really pushing their own product, or focus on transforming things for customers? And I think the longer I've been in the industry, the more apparent this really becomes. You can see it through messaging and some of the marketing that goes out. And then you hear it in conversations.

It's a big reason why I also came to Amazon and AWS, because it's so much part of the culture. The whole title, Working Backwards, with that book, is all about working from what the customer is looking for and how do I work backwards to get there. In fact, a lot of documentation that we do, we start with a PR FAQ, press release FAQ, facts and questions. I read a PR FAQ for somebody just right before the holiday started. He's thinking about a new marketing idea for 2024. And so, he's thinking through, what does a partner really need? So he actually wrote a PR FAQ. It would never go public, but this is what we're announcing the part today. January 12th, we are announcing that we are going to launch this new program for partners. And you write about what the final thing is going to be. And then you work backwards. I'm like, how do I actually get there?

Mary Killelea: I love reverse engineering. I love that.

Rachael Frick: Yes, it's so great. And a lot of what I was doing at Intel, and especially when I was partnering with Microsoft, was so focused on research, on what are some of the coolest challenges out there. And when you have the sum of the parts, different companies working together, how can we make magic together and create a really cool solution and storytelling for the end customer? That's the most fun. So, when I have looked at different jobs and other companies, I'm always looking at some of their marketing and how focused are they actually on the end customer? And how does that pull through on their messaging?

And then the other piece I look at is, I want to have fun. People ask me a lot, like, what's your five-year plan? And my answer is always, I want to have fun. It really is you. I just want to have fun every single day. I want to want to work. And I want to be surrounded by people that want to work and a positive culture. One of my favorite things about Intel was the values, great place to work. And I felt very supported in putting effort behind that value. Every team I was on, we found ways to make sure that the team we were was the best team on the planet. It was a great place to work. So, I do look for that in every company. I want to make sure I'm entering a place that is just a happy place to be. So, I'm already content.

Mary Killelea: I love the great place to work too. And I think it's harder, one, because of the hybrid culture, even though I'm a huge, huge fan of it. But for some of the younger people who are building careers and don't get the face time that we, I guess, had the luxury of doing it because it was more old school. What advice do you have for them in trying to feel a part of the culture and be seen and network?

Rachael Frick: It's hard.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, it is hard, isn't it?

Rachael Frick: I mean, I went through it joining Amazon a year and a half ago. I mean, we were at the end of the pandemic, but nobody was back in the office yet. So here I am joining a new company that's wildly different with its narrative culture. Amazon is a self-service company. Intel, if you want to know how to do something, you ask somebody. Amazon, if you want to know how to do something, you go find it. We have Wikis galore. Think about Wikipedia on Stairways. It's only internal. So if you have a process, a tool, whatever, you write a Wiki about it. And then if I need to go find out how to use a marketing tool, it's the culture, self-service. You go find the Wiki. If anything, you might slack some folks, like, hey, does anyone have the Wiki to know how to do X? And then people will send you the link, and then you go read about it. So, it's very different. It felt very lonely in the beginning, to be honest. I felt like I spent the first couple of months, quarters, just a lot of online meetings of how do I do my job? And it would have been so cool if we were just all in the office, and I could just ask people.

Now, the self-service piece, how much is it different when you're in the office versus just sitting and work from home remote? I'm not sure. We're just now returning to office, and it's been so exhilarating, to be honest, just like being at the office and whiteboarding things. I think for folks coming into all of this, the biggest advice is to get on camera. It is so different. And it's frustrating for me when I join meetings, and people are like, nah, I don't want to. And it's pretty rare right now. But I think everybody has gone through a phase where people just kind of got burned out with the camera. And luckily, most meetings I'm in, people are on camera. But I have heard from folks at different companies, not here, who have younger teams and people just aren't getting on camera. Or I heard an example of people just sitting on the floor, being really informal. And there's just something that too, where you just feel like they're not maybe all in for professionalism. So, I would also say, just show up professionally. You might be working from home and remote but show up like you need it.

Mary Killelea: 100%. I just boggles with my mind when people are on camera. And I get the burnout too. But if you're in a meeting with someone six times in a day, and you haven't seen them all day, there's something.

Rachael Frick: Yeah.

Mary Killelea: Anyway.

Rachael Frick: Yeah. I was in a meeting with the extended storage team just this week. So every other week, we've got everybody's storage on the phone internally together. Almost the entire group, like, I don't know, teens number of people got on camera. And I almost got emotional. Like I haven't seen you guys in weeks. And even we're all, we all live across the United States, but just seeing everybody like just changes the tone of the whole meeting.

Mary Killelea: Yeah. No, I totally agree. What would you tell your 20 year old self?

Rachael Frick: When I first started, my motto was always fake it till you make it. I started in data center. I had never seen a data center. And I kept telling myself, just pretend you know what's going on. If you nod your head and you're just like, Oh yeah, like, uh-huh. And people just assume you have an opinion. When a lot of times I didn't know what they were talking about. And I was talking about, and I was faking it so hard. It wasn't until much later at my Intel career, when I saw people more senior than me asking really basic questions and it just, it was like a light bulb went on. I was like, why have I spent at that point, probably 12 years being afraid to ask questions.

My husband always tells his team, there's no dumb questions in the first six weeks or the first, I think maybe even says like six days. He's pretty aggressive, but there's a lot of dumb questions in the first six months. Like after, if you wait too long. And I have really changed my mindset on asking questions and being really brutally honest with my peers, my team on like when I don't understand, there's no point in waiting or like taking notes and looking it up later. I think we've all experienced scenarios where we think we're asking a question that nobody knows. And guess what? A lot of people in the room don't know the answer to that question.

I remember being in a face-to-face when I had started Amazon and I thought I was the newest person there and I shouldn't ask any questions. I'm taking mad notes. And then I finally raised my hand and I'm like, Hey, I'm sorry, I'm pretty new here. And I don't know what you're talking about. And then a bunch of people rate what not in their head of like, yeah, we don't know what you're talking about either. Like you've been here a long time presenter and the rest of us aren't following this. And I just, another reminder, like it's, we should all be asking more questions.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, totally agree. What was the best career advice you've received?

Rachael Frick: Probably twofold. When I was early into my sales career, like I mentioned, like my job was to advocate for my partners and I would be aggressive, and I would get feisty. And I had a manager one day pull me aside and tell me that people are afraid of me, that I'm coming across really scary in internal meetings. And I, my first thought was like, yeah, I got a nail on this job. I am scary. And she looks at me just like, that's not the expression I was looking for. And she said, you need to be the leader that people want to follow, not that they want to be afraid of. And instantly I could picture leaders in my head that were terrifying, that nobody wanted to follow. And I could picture leaders in my head that were fun and that they got the job done. They inspired people. And when they jumped to a new org, a sea of people follow them. So I immediately could visualize what she just said. And that kind of slapped me in the face and really affected how I showed up. And I, you know, yeah, I had to work on it, but I've really taken that to heart for ever since that moment.

At Amazon, another piece of advice that I got is I was in a kind of a new hire training. And a lot of people know the Amazon culture is it's fast and it's exhausting. And people sometimes don't last because there's a lot of people will talk publicly about just like the burnout that's here. But some of the best, the best advice I got coming here was find something that pulls you away, that forces you to shut down at 5pm because you have to be X. You have whatever it is. Like I think a lot of people have kids and sports, but it doesn't have to be that. It could be your own sport that you're going to go to or some kind of like social club that you're a part of, but find something that forces you to walk away from work and just completely check out. And that also majorly changed my mindset in terms of how I view my evenings. I remember earlier in my career judging parents that, cause I didn't have kids yet. And I would be like, why can't you do the 6pm meeting? Aren't you in it with the team? Right. I mean, I just, I didn't know what it was like at all. And I was kind of, I just had my own thoughts and I'm so disappointed that that's how I, and I never expressed them. I don't think publicly, but I just, I thought we should all be hustling and working 50, 60 hours a week. But the reality is you don't need to do that. And you show up much more refreshed and energized, and I think more efficient when you do take those breaks in the evenings or whatever your schedule looks like, everyone's schedule looks a little bit different these days, but find those things that pull you away from the office.

Mary Killelea: That's great advice. I actually took horseback riding lessons because I didn't know how to do it. And it was very foreign. And when you're working with a horse, you don't have time to look at anything else. Think about anything. You got to be very present. So I had heard that advice a while ago too. And I thought, okay, what is something that I need my most attention?

Rachael Frick: Yeah, I love it.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, it was fun. What tips do you have for women looking to get into leadership?

Rachael Frick: I would say earn trust and earning trust at Amazon. It's a leadership principle and all of our leadership principles. We are constantly challenging each other, reflecting when we do 360 feedback, you judge people. Maybe judge is kind of the harsh word, but you are providing feedback to people based on leadership principles. So, it really gives you the opportunity to think about each leadership principle differently. When I think about earning trust, there's so many different ways that you can earn trust with somebody. It can be just by showing up on a regular basis, being on time, being an active listener, being an expert within a domain, providing really thoughtful and strategic feedback. And all these things eventually kind of build up. But by earning trust from others, people might, I think they really will, they start to build trust with you and then they start to see you as somebody they can come to as a resource and then a leader.

It kind of goes back to other conversation we just had about, be the leader that people want to follow. So that when you're given a leadership opportunity or if a leadership opportunity opens up, people are like, man, that's somebody that everyone's listening to and they've got great ideas, they've got great feedback, they're a segment expert within their domain. These are all really important things. And I love the fact that we have a principle here around earning trust and we're constantly checking in with ourselves and with others on how are we showing it every day, creating an environment where we're earning trust with our stakeholders.

Mary Killelea: How do you address young women's concerns that tech is a male-dominated field, which adds layers and complexity to already just your career-building challenges?

Rachael Frick: Yeah, I saw that a lot when my career started 20 years ago. When I joined the IBM account team, I was the only female globally and I was in so many meetings, the only female. It was just like common. And I was used to it because studying computer science, I was in a class of 200, there's four women and two of them didn't make it. So, two of us finished. So, when I came to Intel and then I was on the IBM sales team, I was very used to being the only female in the room. In fact, it was kind of like my comfort zone because I stood out a little bit and I could lean in a little bit more. I could raise my hand, and people would notice and they'd answer my questions. I don't experience that at all anymore. I really don't. I would say most meetings that I'm in, conferences that I attend, it's a healthy split.

And I also look at my kids, I have two boys and a girl, and the amount they're interested in technology is equal. In fact, my kids, they all had afterschool activities. My daughter's the one who does coding on Mondays. It's like part of their inherent, just the way that they live these days. They're so tech savvy and they're fearless in technology.

I also think the way that we think about tech has really evolved. Technology is now, it's woven into arts and music and education. Maybe roles that were not traditionally seemed as tech are now all becoming these tech jobs and they're incorporating AI. A lot of the coolest stories you see about these startups, we've seen lots of amazing case studies of teachers that were like, hey, I saw an opportunity to build something, so I built an app myself and now we're using it. I think differently about that. It's not a male dominated field, at least not where I sit. At Amazon, I don't feel it. I'm very hopeful that up and coming generations, it's just not a thing anymore. The technology is woven into everything that we do every day and it's not male versus female.

Mary Killelea: I love those points and I love the optimism. Approaching your career, did you take on a strategy or how did you know?

Rachael Frick: I did not know, not at all. In fact, many of the roles I had at Intel, I was the first person to do it. They were new teams that were launching or they were, like when I joined the Microsoft account team, it was a brand new team. I was the first, at the time they called them a marketing development manager, I was the first MDM to join the account team. I didn't follow anybody, and the role didn't exist, so how could I have predicted I was going to take that? Even when I joined the competitive marketing office at Intel, that was totally brand new. I was inventing that from scratch. I have loved every job I've ever had in my career, and I could have never predicted.

In fact, I would argue five years ago, I would have said over my dead body while I go to Amazon, I'm not going to do narratives and doc writing and that's not a culture for me and I love it here. I am really thankful that I haven't had a career plan that I've religiously stuck by. I love just going with whatever pops up and every time I've had a career opportunity pop up, you could just feel it in your soul, like this is the right thing I should do.

Mary Killelea: That's awesome. I think your personality, I know you but I'm getting to know you better, but even just talking with you, you embrace challenge, at least from my perspective it looks like, and you're open to risk taking, which I think are so key for career growth.

Rachael Frick: Yeah. I think a lot of it just like do what scares you. I remember Deb Kahn, I remember Deb, she would talk about, she was always looking for the biggest fire, like where is something on fire? I'm going to go over there and play with them and fix it. I always love that personality of like, what is the scariest thing I could go do next? Competitive marketing, that was terrifying. I'm like, man, no one's quite doing it yet. We're just getting started, it doesn't exist. I don't really know what it is. I should do it.

Mary Killelea: So, this leads me to what does to be bolder mean to you?

Rachael Frick: Show up as your authentic self. Just be really fearless in who you are. Ask all the questions. Ask all the questions, right? And I think going back to like earning trust too, of like really showing up authentically helps to build that trust with people. And I mean, you want to feel like you're surrounding yourself with people that you can trust. And a lot of that just comes down to being fearless and being bold.

Mary Killelea: That's fantastic. Before I let you go, fun questions for you. Quick rapid fire, winter or summer?

Rachael Frick: I love them both. I'm going to say summer because our summers in Washington are really short. They're like, it rains nine months, and it doesn't get that hot here. So, we fully embrace summer. We're outdoors every day when we have it.

Mary Killelea: Fiction or nonfiction?

Rachael Frick: Fiction. And even like one of my favorite authors is Patrick Legioni. And he writes a lot of business books on culture and stuff like that. But he tells the story through a fable. I don't know if you've read his books before, but he's phenomenal because he has one like on the motive. Like why do you become a manager? But he tells it through a fictional story of somebody who's trying to be the CEO. And then eventually he gets to like, okay, well, now that we've read that story, let me break it down for you.

Mary Killelea: I love that. I'm going to ask you for other resources to send me and then I'll include them in the show notes along with that one you just mentioned. And then the working backwards. Dogs or cats? I think I know this.

Rachael Frick: I grew up with cats. I love cats. My husband won't let me get a cat. So, I've had dogs most of my life and I just got a puppy today. She's downstairs sleeping.

Mary Killelea: Beautiful. Pizza or pasta?

Rachael Frick: Pizza. All the way.

Mary Killelea: Coffee or tea?

Rachael Frick: Coffee. Cappuccino specifically. Rachel, it's been awesome talking with you.

Mary Killelea: Thank you for being here, sharing your story and helping other women kind of get a perspective into what you do.

Rachael Frick: Thank you so much for including me. This was so fun, Mary. Thank 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.