Career Growth Advice from Samira Naraghi, Chief Officer at Enoix | Career Tips for Women in Business and Tech

2B Bolder Podcast – Episode 142
Featuring Samira Naraghi

Episode Title: #142 Samira Naraghi on how small, uncomfortable bets compound into big career leaps.

Host: Mary Killelea
Guest: Samira Naraghi


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. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.

Today's guest has a talent for building high performing teams, mentoring with intention, and bringing structure to fast-moving chaos. Her career is packed with powerful pivots, lessons in leadership, and moments that will resonate with anyone aiming to build their careers. Samira Naraghi, chief officer at Enoix, is a respected business leader with over 20 years of experience. She has led global go-to market strategies and launched industry defining products at tech giants like Amazon Web Services, Meta, and Qualcomm. She's built and scaled multi-billion dollar businesses, driven operation turnarounds, and delivered deep expertise in both semiconductor and cloud computing. Thank you so much for being here. It is a pleasure to have you here on the show.

Samira Naraghi (Guest): Great to be here, Mary. Thank you for having me.

Mary Killelea: Okay. So, on the show, you know, this is all for women in business and tech who are looking to navigate their career. So, I'd love to start with the guests and kind of have you give me that 500 foot view of where you started and kind of the journey and stops that you did along the way and where you are today.

Samira Naraghi: Yeah, happy to. I grew up in Iran in the 80s right after the Iran Iraq war and you know, at the time the power outages were a regular part of our lives and especially post because of the sanctions, technology felt very rare and somewhat magical. And I was always curious about how things were built and how things worked. And that eventually led me to engineering and a career building foundational tech in semiconductors and cloud. I moved from Iran to Canada and then to the US and I spent over a decade in the chip world at companies like Qualcomm IDTOS and Rambus and then moved into cloud computing at AWS where I helped scale some of the largest platforms in the world. What brought me eventually to Anovix was actually a former colleague of mine. We used to work with each other at Qualcomm and he's currently the CEO of Anobics. And he called me shortly after he joined the company and said you've done semiconductors and cloud, come build something from scratch in batteries. And I knew the market was heating up. I always believed in his vision and I trusted him. And so I joined and batteries may seem simple but they are incredibly difficult to innovate on and that's where the challenge excited me and here I am.

Mary Killelea: What an incredibly unique path and you know it is funny because technology sometimes is not sexy but if you dive deeper into the technology that can be sexy.

Samira Naraghi: Yeah that's very well said.

Mary KilleIea: I guess taking a deeper look, what is it about technology that interests you?

Samira Naraghi: Great question. For me, it's really about the impact of technology into people's day-to-day lives. I've always gravitated towards roles where product and tech sort of meet business. And to me that's really about not just about what you build but also why it's built and what is the broader level impact on the society and the people around you. So that's really I and I find that very sexy actually.

Mary Killelea: So you worked at the big brands like AWS, Meta, Qualcomm and now your company here. What would you say is like the through line that has kind of been consistent in kind of drawing you into those businesses?

Samira Naraghi: Yeah, you know, it's it's actually what we just talked about and I think that through line is always in the intersection of product and business and really it's been about translating deep technology into to to real world impact whether it's a chip, a cloud platform, a battery tech, you know, it's it's all always about, you know, the the real world impact that's been the through line. But I just say, you know, my roles have been very different. I've always also worked in very different companies and very different domains and I've done jobs in engineering and also product management and then partnerships and now sales and so I guess the way I view it is that every role has taught me a different piece of the puzzle. It's always been about growing a different muscle in every role that I've taken or every company that I've tried. In companies like Qualcomm and Rambus, I learned how technology is architected from the ground up. In a company like Meta, I learned how you can operate at a global scale while still being very experimental. And you know, as companies like Amazon, that was really a business school meeting engineering boot camp. and we launched and scaled incredibly difficult products at a massive scale and a super fast pace. So, yeah, I'd say that the through line has always been about, you know, the intersection of product and impact and you know, I've worked on platforms that have really changed the world.

Mary Killelea: You know, and I think this is a great example for women out there who are looking at switching from company to company and not sure how they're going to make their skills appeal to the other one. There's a lot of transferable skills even if you're working with a different product. Would you agree with that or how do you look at transferable skills?

Samira Naraghi: Yeah, I mean I think my career path is a very good example of that. I think for me the most trans like that maybe that's the through line. It's all about adaptability and you know in Amazon we had a leadership principle which was all about learning and being curious and so that if you truly are genuinely curious about how things work and or wanting to change the world I guess you can take that trade and take that skill set with you everywhere you go. It's just all about having enough humility to want to learn more and diving deep and learning having an impact on a very different sort of industry segment or or a domain.

Mary Killelea: What's something about your day-to-day right now in your current role that you think would surprise people if they heard?

Samira Naraghi: Oh god. I guess what might surprise people is just how incredibly difficult it is to bring a new technology into the world. It's not glamorous. It's a grind. You're fighting physics timelines, supply chains and sometimes even in disbelief. You know a while back we had just moved our factory to Malaysia from the US which is a massive undertaking of its own and our first customer samples were supposed to get shipped in the same quarter and you know in the beginning we thought it's impossible to do and everything had to go right for us to be able to to pull it off and of course nothing did and you know we ended up shipping customer samples right on schedule kept our commitment, but it took a lot of hard work and grit and I think that kind of pressure takes a toll. But it always shows you what your team is made up of. So you know, yeah, it's just not glamorous as I had anticipated when I was much younger and in the beginning of my career.

Mary Killelea: When you look back, was there a turning point or maybe a bold risk that you took that helped kind of level up your career?

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Samira Naraghi: So, for me it's it's it wasn't one big bold move. It was a series of small uncomfortable moves. It was raising my hand and saying yes to managing a difficult customer, but nobody else wanted to do it. It was getting on stage to speak about a topic I had just ramped up on or it was taking a new role in a completely unfamiliar domain and just figuring it out on the fly. So each time I felt like I was slightly in over my head. But I guess those were the moments that stretched me the most and built confidence. I just don't think growth comes from knowing everything. Does it really come from being willing to learn openly? You know,

Mary Killelea: Such a great example. You've been at the helm of incubating and launching breakthrough products. What are some of the biggest leadership or strategic challenges that you face bringing those ideas to market?

Samira Naraghi: Well, many I can't. I've lost count. But I'd say breakthrough products are very exciting, but they're also polarizing. You know, one of the biggest challenges in my mind is getting people internally and also externally to believe in something that doesn't even exist yet. So you're constantly managing tradeoffs. Speed versus, you know, quality, ambition versus reality, short-term revenue versus long-term vision. And so you're sort of doing it with imperfect information. You're it's always the stakes are high and there's a lot of opinions along the way and I have one recent example that I don't know because we were trying to prioritize the sort of the augmented reality AR market within our IoT portfolio and it's a still a nan space but we made a conscious decision to invest early and we have to go through all of those trade-offs and you know AR devices are power hungry on the space constrained and they need a fundamentally better battery because of what they want to do. And so all of those choices and trade-offs shaped our product roadmap. They shaped our sort of customer conversations and also our internal focus. And it wasn't just about building breakthrough tech. You know, it was about making sure it can be built. It can be built reliably. It can be built in millions and it can be built in our factory with what we have. So I think that's where strategy meets execution and a lot of challenges along the way.

Mary Killelea: It always amazes me because customers have no idea of all the challenges that go into it. What do you believe is the most misunderstood thing about like a go to market strategy in high-tech environments?

Samira Naraghi: Yeah. So I think people often think the go to market strategy comes after a product is built. Yeah, you know but in reality it's got to start a lot earlier when the product is still being developed and being defined even and I think if go to market is just an afterthought you end up with a solution looking for the problem and especially in deep technology the value isn't always obvious. You have to educate the market. You sort of have to create the urgency in some cases and sometimes help the customers imagine a future they're not really planning for. Yeah, I think that's just part of the like the most misunderstood things about go to market and I don't know that's been sort of a crucial part of our approach in go to market and for that we partner closely with our customers while our product is still maturing. So the idea is we can shape the product around the real world use cases and it's not quarter market is not just about sort of what you're building is it's who are you building it with and why are you building that and I do see a lot of folks that I have worked with in the past that that just really think about go to market after the product is built and thinking about where to take it to market.

Mary Killelea: I know when I was in marketing at a big tech firm, you know, getting customer input was so critical, especially early on. Where do you bring in the customer from a product design standpoint? Is it conception even testing to see if it's a viable need?

Samira Naraghi: Yeah, it's and that's a great question, Mary. So, in our case, I mean, so first is every C I really believe in being customer focused and in Amazon we call it customer obsession. We always start with the customer and what they do, right? And in some cases they don't know so we partner with them closely. So the approach for us right now especially the notice is that we have sort of early early partners that we work with in every space that we want to work on and it's really about collaboration. So in some ways we're building the product together. You know they give us specifications and then we have our own spec and then we work together to build the what's what hasn't been done before and we both push each other to the limit. So it's really not about you know I'm going to have it built and you know you just use what I have. It's even for our roadmap products and definitions we start from very early on to your point from conception and definition and work with our customers and partners throughout that process.

Mary Killelea: I love that. We know that many companies struggle to retain top female talent especially in tech. What advice do you give to companies that genuinely want to improve upward mobility for women? And what do you tell women working in the field who feel like they're hitting a ceiling?

Samira Naraghi: You know, that's a topic that's very dear and near to my heart. I think for companies, it starts with really genuine intention and follows through. I still think representation at the top level matters a lot and so does putting women in roles with real responsibility not just visibility and you know if you want to keep top female talent they need to see a path for growth and they have to be given the runway to lead and in many cases some accommodations to to sort of be able to manage their family life and personal lives. And I guess for women who feel stuck, I always say don't wait for permission. Don't wait for permission to lead. Raise your hand for that messy high impact project, the ones that nobody else wants to do because they're hard or they're unclear, you know. That's often where opportunity lives in my mind. And I also say that, you know, find your own people. A strong peer network can be just as powerful as a formal mentor if you will. I guess you need people who will push you, who will challenge you, who are honest to you, who will tell you like it is and help you see yourself bigger. And that could be a peer network at work, that could be your family or broader circles.

Mary Killelea: I love that. What advice would you give to a woman who's high performing but feels invisible in her company? And what are the most effective ways that you would suggest for a woman to gain visibility? And I think you kind of touched on it there with, you know, trying to raise your hand for the opportunities. But, you know, I think invisibility among women is pretty predominant. What do you suggest they do when they're feeling so strained or self, you know, holding themselves back from being visible, even though they want to be on the other side so badly?

Samira Naraghi: Yeah. So, I'm going to share something that may be an unpopular opinion. Mary, I really genuinely think if you're truly high performing and you're consistently doing the work that others avoid, solving hard problems, leading through chaos, you know, taking high ownership, you will get noticed. There's no way you're going to be invisible. I mean maybe I've been privileged with the environments that I've worked on but I've been in tech for 20ome years and in the beginning especially the environment was not as flexible as it is right now. I really don't think you need to chase visibility if your results speak loudly you know and so that's why I think the fastest way to gain credibility is to take on the mess. It's just like I said, taking on the project that nobody wants and the customer but it's hard to manage sales codes that everybody thinks it's impossible. You just do it and knock it out of the park. And that's the kind of work and I think that builds trust and visibility at the same time. I'm not saying, you know, presence doesn't matter and you shouldn't reach out, but I think substance comes first. And I think visibility is a byproduct of just impact. And again, maybe I've been lucky enough to be working in environments where that's been the case. I never thought I'm I'm hitting a ceiling.

Mary Killelea: And I think you've worked for companies who are very focused on results. And I think you know that too. I think it is important for women to understand what companies are you working for and what their priorities are to catch their eye.

Samira Naraghi: 100%. And it just I think I'd say the companies that I worked for they were very results oriented but also impact oriented and if the mission of the company aligns with what you're passionate about working hard doesn't feel like a chore and you know I think that just the rest will just follow and yeah and I've been incredibly lucky with with working for those companies and you know managers and leaders that we're all mission driven.

Mary Killelea: I want to stay on this kind of theme, I guess, for just a bit more. What have you intentionally done to deepen or sharpen your executive presence?

Samira Naraghi: So, I'm still working on it. You know, I think it's a work in progress, but again, for me, executive presence starts with substance and it always starts with delivering results. And when you consistently deliver, especially under pressure, I think people start to listen differently. They trust you. They want to hear what you think. Over time, I've learned to pair that with communicating better. Being more clear in my communication, being more direct, being concise. I don't hedge. And I think the older you get the more people are looking for confidence not caveats. And so I guess for me finally presence comes from preparation. I've never walked into a meeting not being prepared thinking oh my track record is going to be enough. I always show up ready. I do the work and I speak with purpose. And I think that's what executive presence looks like at least to me.

Mary Killelea: Absolutely. So the tech landscape is shifting fast with AI. What skills or mindsets do you think women should be focusing on right now to not only be relevant but to also be kind of that future forward?

Samira Naraghi: Yeah. From my perspective, the most important mindset is adaptability, you know and I think I've shown that throughout my career as just as adapted and flexible with different roles and different companies. I think AI is evolving so quickly that nobody knows all the answers and that's sort of a good thing. You know the ones who stay curious, experiment and learn fast will lead to change. You know in terms of skills I'd say you know understanding the fundamentals of AI how it works how it's models are trained I think all of that is valuable no matter what your role you're in I keep telling that to my own daughter and you don't need to be a data scientist but you need to to speak the basic language of AI and being able to use all the different tools that are out there to your advantage be more productive and you know uplevel your skill set. I guess one more thing is that I don't think anybody should count themselves out. You know sometimes wait to feel fully ready to jump in and to these emerging spaces. AI is still being shaped. The rules are not written yet and I guess now is the best time to lean into this space.

Mary Killelea: You mentioned that you're deeply committed to mentoring. What are some common themes that you see people coming to seek you out as a mentor?

Samira Naraghi: I have people who are reaching out that are currently in my company or you know college grads or my friends' kids, my daughter's friends and I think a lot of times it's the type of advice that people need are looking for is just they want you to find a path for their success. And I find that it's incredibly difficult. I always tell them to start with what's your passion. It's just the career path is a very nonlinear path in my mind and you know it's just not a recipe, it's not a one-size- fit that fits all kinds of recipes. So I tend to think that many come for advice to look for the destination and whereas the journey is all where I think you need a lot of mentorship and the destination will solve for itself.

Mary Killelea: What does to be bolder mean to you?

Samira Naraghi: I think to me being bolder doesn't mean being the loudest voice in the room. It means taking the hard job, owning the outcome, saying yes before you're ready, and having the confidence that you'll get through it somehow. And so it's sort of like a quiet confidence. It's doing the hard work and letting the results speak louder than words.

Mary Killelea: That's beautiful. Last question. What advice would you give your younger self who is just starting out in tech right now?

Samira Naraghi: Be bold. That's the advice I would wish somebody had told me earlier and I wish I could understand it better at the time. I wish somebody had told me don't wait till you're ready. Grow into roles, it's not the other way around. And some of my biggest steps forward came from saying yes before I had it all figured out. And I learned that confidence and confidence are all built through experience, you know, they don't they don't come before it. And so my advice is be bold, take the leap, ask for that hard assignment and trust that you get it done. And you know along the way build a network and nobody can figure it out alone. Surround yourself with people who push you, who vouch for you, who have your back and I think that makes all the difference.

Mary Killelea: Well, thank you very much for being a wonderful female leader. That is a great inspiration to a lot of young women out there and thank you for taking the time to be on the show today.

Samira Naraghi: Thanks for having me, Mary. This was great.

Mary Killelea: Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guest. 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 2 little bbolder.com.