Career Growth Advice from Lisa Davis, business Leader | Career Tips for Women in business

2B Bolder Podcast – Episode 18
Featuring Lisa Davis, CIO and SVP of BlueShield of California

Episode Title: #18 Career Podcast Featuring Lisa Davis Senior Vice President, and Chief Information Officer at Blue Shield of California – Women in Tech

Host: Mary Killelea
Guest: Lisa Davis



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 there. Today, I am honored to have Lisa Davis join us here on the show. She is currently the Senior Vice President and Chief Informational Officer at Blue Shield of California. She is a career CIO and proven technology business leader in the transformation of information and applications that address complex business problems and identify cost and performance efficiencies. She has over 15 years of executive level IT leadership, 30 years of experience in the information technology industry, and certified information system security professional. She has been actively involved on many boards from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to having a seat at the table on the CIO Magazine Advisory Board, just to name a few. She's won numerous awards over the years, and ultimately, Lisa has spent a lifetime paving the way for other women in technology, demonstrating leadership, and being an advocate of women in business and tech. Lisa, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk with us today.

Lisa Davis (Guest): Thanks, Mary. I'm so glad to be here and a pleasure to talk with you.

Mary Killelea: So I have to be honest. I followed you on Twitter over the years, and you seem really personable and down to earth, and you go out of the way to make yourself accessible to others, especially like coming on my show today, which I appreciate. Your resume is a little intimidating, I've got to admit. I want really today to ensure the listeners walk away with a feeling that your success is achievable for them too.

Lisa Davis: Absolutely. Totally achievable. And I think being accessible certainly is part of what I believe is being authentic and continue striving to be an authentic leader. So, I love certainly supporting other women and sharing my story. If that helps others, believe that they can achieve and they absolutely no reason why they can't achieve some of the things that I have and help them continue to advance in their careers.

Mary Killelea: That's fantastic. So let's start by just having you talk at the high level kind of your career journey and what led you to where you are today. I know it's long and you've had so many successes, but if you could give kind of that overview.

Lisa Davis: Well, I was a computer engineering major as an undergrad. And at the time that I was going to school, there was only six schools in the United States that actually offered that major. And frankly, it was a little intimidating. It was really my father who played a very strong part in kind of guiding me as to what would be marketable in the future. And I was very strong in math, loved math, was considering computer science. And it was my dad that really guided me into engineering. And I was intimidated by it. I wasn't a strong physics mate, strong physics, nor did I really like physics, although I liked math. And it was really kind of discovery for me. And I wish my dad was here today, frankly, still that I could talk about how did he know to kind of guide me in that direction? Because my dad was involved in logistics for a big company that he worked for his entire career, Chevron Chemical.

So anyways, tried it in engineering. And really what I thought I would ultimately do with it is because I love working with people and why I love leading teams and leading organizations is initially go into technical sales and then ultimately tie that with a law degree. That didn't that didn't quite happen. Our lives take interesting paths based on choices that we make as we grow up. And when I graduated from Syracuse, I married a guy in the Navy. And believe it or not, Mary, my first duty station about six months out of college was in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Yeah, needless to say, I started working for the US government while I high school senior continued through college on my spring breaks and holiday breaks. I was never one of those kids that was off to the Bahamas. During my spring break, I was working at Lakers Naval Air Engineering Center. And thus began my introduction into government, which I thought at the time would be short term and wound up having a full career 26 years in the federal government. What I'm really proud about is if anybody's familiar with government grade levels, you start at a GS2, the highest grade level is the GS15 or grade 15. And then you have your senior executive service. Well, I started as a grade two after 26 years retired as a senior executive service member, which is equivalent to a grade level of a general or an admiral in the military. That was quite the journey.

So, in that journey, really learning and exploring all the different functions within technology, whether that was help desk support and customer service, whether that was infrastructure, mission applications, software development, enterprise applications, cybersecurity, as you can imagine, being a huge part, working in Department of Defense. I continue to want to learn and grow, which I highly encourage others to continue to learn and grow and have a growth mindset to the point where a deputy CIO and then ultimately having a chief officer role was really my continued growth path. And what I love about that, and many times my team members will ask me, how'd you know to ask me that question, right, which is a key part of leadership, knowing when to ask the right questions, is because I've done all those roles, and really kind of built that and continue to grow and learn in my career to eventually sit in multiple different CIO roles, whether that was for the US Marshals, whether that was in counter intelligence, whether that was at Georgetown University, and then on to my roles at Intel and then back in a CIO role, now at Blue Shield of California.

Mary Killelea: That's an incredible journey. Being a successful CIO and female top exec in the industry, mostly dominated by men, what have been some of your biggest challenges related to this over the years? And what do you tell women who are intimidated about being a minority or having to fight to have a seat at the table?

Lisa Davis: Yeah, it's a great question. I was actually speaking with a young woman who just got accepted to Brown University and was going to major in computer science, and she asked me the same question. Growing up in Department of Defense, which is obviously male dominated, was how I grew up and how I had to learn and really kind of shaped me into the leader that I am today. Was it easy? No. And it's not going to be easy because even today having spent a full career in government, moving into academia, moving into high tech, and now moving into healthcare, guess what? I'm still sometimes the only woman in the room. So we have a lot more work to do. And this is why it's so important to encourage our young girls and women to explore fields in STEM. And I think my lessons over that period of time, Mary, is one, you got to have grit. You got to have grit. You got to have perseverance. You have to find your voice and develop your confidence. And at the end of the day, it's always about delivering results and execution and get really good at what you do, your trade craft or your passion. Get really good at it. And when you develop that expertise and you are delivering results and you're executing on that, and at the same time, having that seat at the table, taking the seat at the table, if it's not given to you, and building your confidence to have a voice, then it becomes easier. And you reach a point as I have in my career where sometimes I don't even notice anymore because I'm so used to it. I become oblivious to it that I'm the only woman in the room. That's not okay, but those kind of attributes of grit and perseverance and confidence and finding your voice and developing your expertise and ultimately delivering results is what builds your brand. And it represents who you are in the workplace.

Mary Killelea: So, have you consciously over the years thought about your brand and how you want to be seen and portrayed and what you're putting out there, intentionally allowed that to help guide you?

Lisa Davis: All the time. I still do. I think it's really important for us to think about, and certainly as women, how do we remain authentic? First of all, I'm a huge believer is that you have to be aligned. You have to know first and you have to be aligned. And I think that's as to what are my core values? What's important to me? What do I want out of a company? What do I want out of a job? What do I want out of a career? Many times in coaching women, or they'll ask for me to meet with them and I ask them, well, what do you want to do? What are your goals? And sometimes the answer, actually many times the answer I get back is I don't know. I would say you got to figure it out. You don't have to have all the answers, but you got to develop a plan. And your brand should be part of that plan. The brand should be incorporated into how you represent or show up in your LinkedIn, how you do that in your Twitter account. Those accounts for me are professional and they represent my brand. My Instagram and my Facebook accounts are personal and I keep those things very separate between personal and professional. So, I think we always need to be thinking about that. And the more senior you become, as you reach the executive ranks, it becomes even more important because that is how you will be perceived by others. And one of the things about perception is it's right, wrong, or indifferent. It is what it is. So working on your brand, cultivating your brand, and how you want to show up in the workplace and with your career very much influences how others view you or perceive you.

Mary Killelea: And I realize that now, but I'm much older. I wish I would have known this when I was younger. I think it could have helped me open doors or handle situations so much easier had I known who I was and what my core values were and do the homework to really say who I am from a brand level and not a superficial level, but what do I want to be known for?

Lisa Davis: I think it's a great question. But as we know, and I reflect back, I have a daughter that is going to be 31. I have my youngest daughter who is a senior in high school and we're going through the college process. And she's struggling to figure that out. And at that age, and as we go through school, we don't know or growing up. And I think as you continue to get older, we certainly get wiser. So I don't want people to think, oh, Lisa had it all figured out when she was, no, I didn't. I didn't have it figured out. I think as I look back, I wish I would have taken more risk. I would have been a little bit more comfortable because back then I thought I had to have it all figured it out. And because I thought I had to have it figured out, I probably made bad decisions. Well, I didn't probably. I made some wrong decisions that kind of set me back in my career. But we learned from those mistakes. I wish I could have failed faster, I guess I would say, so that I could have moved forward and learned from those.

I think what's more important is maybe that you don't absolutely know who you are because that's part of the discovery of learning and growing and growing up. But maybe having a plan as to what areas interest you, what should I be exploring and ultimately being more purposeful and having a strategy as to how you want to do that. And I'm a huge advocate of starting networking very early as soon as we're off as a high school senior and going into college.

Mary Killelea: That comes up frequently on many of these interviews is the importance of networking. So do you have, you know, maybe three good tips to give other women on networking?

Lisa Davis: Oh, yeah, we all hate to network, but it's absolutely, it's critical. And I actually give a, I've given a talk on networking and I think of networking in three separate rings. I think of your operational network. I think of your development network and I think of a strategic network. So let me start by saying that my last four jobs, and maybe it's five now, I got to go back and count, is not because I applied to the role or I was looking for the role. The reason I got those jobs is because my network delivered those roles to me. And I think that's really, really important to understand is certainly as we grow and advance in our careers. It's because we grow and advance in our careers. It's because someone else said, Oh, you're looking for X, you really need to speak to Lisa Davis. And that goes back to what I said earlier in our conversation, Mary, about execution and results. Because at the end of the day, I might be the greatest person since sliced bread, but if I can't deliver and execute and bring results, no one's likely to recommend me in terms of additional roles or opportunities. So, your network is incredibly important in this day and age in terms of opportunities that become available. So the broader your network and the more purposeful you are in networking, the broader the net you are throwing, impossibly to catch opportunities.

So if you think of, and this is why starting in college, if we think about my operational network and what I mean by that, operational network, and I'll go through this really quick, is who I come in contact with every day, whether they are people that I work with every day, people I socialize with, people I'm in church group with, people I'm playing sports or my kids are playing sports with our networks are huge. And if you just jot it down, everybody, you knew in your day to day, which I call operational network, that would be a huge list of people that may be involved in the same career path, maybe know someone that does, maybe could help influence that could bring you in touch with somebody else.

Your next network is your development network. And your development network is if we're being purposeful in our careers, who are those individuals that you want to meet because you're thinking that's the next right step that you want to learn about or explore within your career. Maybe it's an adjacent organization. Maybe somebody's in a different career path that you're kind of curious about and start developing that network in that one to two year range as you begin to think about where I want to go next in my career.

And then the third one is strategic. What do I want to do two to five years from now? And I'll share an example. Talking to a recruiter, I was the CIO at Georgetown and trying to figure out what my next move was and where I was going to go next. And she said to me, where do you want to be when you retire? And the first thing I thought was, geez, am I that old already? And I didn't have an answer. And when I told her that I wanted to be a CIO of a Fortune 500 company, she said to me, you're not going to make it. She was brutal, but she was right. Because the steps of what I needed to take to ultimately reach that goal, I hadn't thought through those. I needed to be more purposeful in how I was going to get there, which is why ultimately I took the job at Intel. Although it wasn't a CIO role, it put me in a high tech firm running IT, running supply chain, global supply chain, corporate services, enterprise applications, and then eventually made a decision to run a P&L in our data center group in the business. So, my point is being purposeful about your network and thinking about your career moves and leveraging your network to help you with that, those things should be integrated.

Mary Killelea: There are so many good learnings within that section on networking. Thank you for sharing that. Because I've never really heard it broken out like that in those three ways. Even looking at it from an angle of reverse architecture or engineering, what's my ultimate goal? And then what are the journey points along those? And how do I get to each of them? And who do I know that can help me get there?

Lisa Davis: I find so many times, Mary, women, it's like we let it happen to us versus us taking the reins and being purposeful about what we want to do. And no one at the end of the day is going to be more passionate and care about your career and your development than yourself. We have to spend time doing that, right? We have to spend time doing that and we have to be purposeful on that.

Mary Killelea: I totally agree. And I love that that's coming through this conversation. So, let's talk about fear and self-doubt. And how do you push yourself through those feelings of discomfort? Because I know you go through like big speeches on big stages, being on camera, presenting to presidents of companies. I mean the pressure's on you. How do you overcome some of those fears that might create a lot of might creep into your head?

Lisa Davis: It's emotional, physical, and it's intellectual. I'll give an example. When I was asked at Intel to come run a billion dollar P&L in a data center group and move out of IT to the business, and I had several opportunities lined up of what I possibly could do. That was the riskiest move of all. And I was terrified. I was terrified. Intellectually, I knew because I was terrified, it actually provided me the biggest learning and growth opportunity. And boy did it. It was awesome. And I learned a tremendous amount in managing that P&L and moving to the business side over the last three and a half years. So many times when I think, oh, I'm really kind of nervous about this. I'm fearful of this. It's because it pushes me out or it pushes us out of our comfort zone. And when you're pushed out of your comfort zone, to me, that should send a signal that it's an opportunity for growth and an opportunity for learning. And then intellectually, I can wrap my head around that. So that's how I kind of work through it.

When I do the public speaking thing, I think that just comes with practice. It's always great to be nervous and a little fearful at the start because frankly, it keeps you on your toes. I think if you become too complacent, then you're not ultimately preparing to deliver your best. So every time I do one of those, I get the nervousness and I'm thinking, am I ready? Am I prepared with my material? Am I confident in the material? And it goes back to the old adage, practice makes perfect. And every time I deliver a speech on stage or I'm delivering a pitch, Mary, I'm sitting at home practicing and saying that out loud in the mirror. I'm practicing so that I'm confident. I'm ready to deliver the message or the presentation. I don't do that unprepared. So, I don't want anybody to think, ah, she just gets up on stage and she makes it look so easy. No, I make it look easy because I practice it.

Mary Killelea: That's wonderful. If you could tell the younger generation or even someone looking to transition into a new field, especially right now, what kind of roles or areas of study would you maybe guide someone to?

Lisa Davis: Yeah, I was having this conversation last night. I mean, every company today is a technology and data company. That's not going to change. We have more needs in terms of computer science, engineering, data science, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, than we have people to fill the jobs. So, there is and there will be, I believe, a continuous demand. If we look at the amount of disruption that continues to happen in the market around digital transformation, the use of advanced analytics and artificial intelligence as these capabilities to continue to mature and get used by companies to help them differentiate and frankly survive in a very competitive market today. You can't go wrong with any of those disciplines. And I would say go broad, learn something about all of those, see what you're interested in, where you have a passion. There's nothing worse than doing a job that you're miserable in. You're going to be working for the rest of our lives. Do something that you love doing. And I think the really cool thing with a STEM field or a technology field is since every company is a tech and data company, you can take that back background and you can apply it literally to almost anything you want to do, whether it's government, manufacturing, healthcare, high tech, retail, the creative arts. It's applicable to almost every discipline. And I think that's what's really cool about technology and how technology one solves helps is an enabler, not the be all end all, because at the end of the day, it's an enabler that helps to solve business problems, helps to differentiate and accelerate capabilities for companies and solves business challenges.

Mary Killelea: That's a fantastic answer. How would you define success?

Lisa Davis: I think success, I think first starts with being true to yourself, loving what you're doing. It's interesting during this pandemic. And I had a pretty crazy travel schedule and such. And I think the one positive thing out of this pandemic is I wake up with more gratitude, gratitude for what we have, that my family is safe and we continue to stay healthy. Taking more time to reflect on that, not taking it for granted. The ability that I've had to spend time with my kids, my 30 year old moved back in, my oldest during the quarantine, my son was home from college. Us having more quality time together, sometimes that's pros and cons, as we all are stuck in the house together during this pandemic. But I think success, and I think everybody will have a different measurement of that. Staying true to who you are and loving what you're doing. I think at the end of the day, no matter what that is, is being successful.

Mary Killelea: Staying true to yourself. That's just something that I do, not only from a career, but also, you know, in relationships. So that rings true to me for sure. I can also relate to the pandemic. One of the pros out of this is really been the getting off the rat wheel of craziness of life and slowing down and having quality time with family or just quieting yourself to allow yourself to sink and decompress at the magnitude that you were running before.

Lisa Davis: Absolutely. I agree.

Mary Killelea: Before this, I mean, I don't know, how did you maintain a work-life balance?

Lisa Davis: First of all, I don't think there's any such thing as work-life balance anymore. And I think even I think even to some of our young girls, and we need more role models, frankly, and in women leadership roles is first, no, nothing's ever in perfect balance. It's just not realistic. It's the first thing I would share. And I always look at work-life balance through priority. What is most important? Where am I most needed? What are my priorities? So, for example, in a crazy work day, if my youngest Alex is having a lacrosse game, I'm going to make time to be at the lacrosse game. And granted in the role that I have, I have a little more flexibility to do that, but these boundaries and setting priorities, staying true to your core values, and if family is important and being present at family activities, then you would prioritize that. And you would have a path to make that work. If you need to take someone, your child, or extend a family member to the doctors. So it's a constant juggling of what are the priorities of the day, of the week, of the month? Where am I needed most? What do I want to prioritize? And how am I going to manage that? Michelle Obama talks about this too. If anybody ever heard her speak, she talks about how she would ask the schools, I need all of the parent-teacher stuff a year in advance, a little more extreme, but essentially she was doing the same thing. Because I want to be present at all of these school activities, you need to tell me what the calendar is so that I can get that on the calendar and I can integrate my work and family.

I think as women leaders and executives and having a career, we have to do that. So to me, it's more like work-life integration. And I've learned to set boundaries between the two, because the fact of the matter is if you don't set boundaries, you can just be working 24/7 if you wanted to. So it's really important to set boundaries between personal and professional. And those boundaries for me is, and where I relieve a lot of my stress is through fitness. So, I'm a huge fitness nut. And I take fitness to kind of keep me in balance physically and emotionally. And ultimately, I think helps me be better at showing up, whether at work or at home, because that's how I relieve stress. But you got to carve that time out for yourself. And even in my schedule today, I have 11 to 12:30, 90 minutes of what I call exec time. You can call it whatever you want. What did I do in my 90 minutes today I got a workout in? Sometimes that 90 minutes is for downtime or catching up on briefings, but that's my time that no one can schedule on but me, as I tell my admin. If I want to give up my part of that time to have a meeting to have a one on one to have a phone call, then I can do that. But that's my boundary in time of when nothing will be scheduled. Do I believe you can, we always used to have the question, can you have it all? Absolutely. Women are amazing. We can do it all. But how you manage, integrate and prioritize that, so that you are feeling centered and grounded, and you can be your best, whether that's in the office or at home, that comes with practice, you'll learn it as we get older. But nothing's ever in perfect balance in our lives. That's just how I look at it.

Mary Killelea: No, it's a great way to look at it. And I'm curious, what's your favorite type of workout?

Lisa Davis: Oh, my favorite right now is I have a Peloton bike, certainly with the pandemic. So I ride my Peloton, I love to row. But I love being… I've only been in California five years, I'm an East Coaster. So I love hiking and being outside. Especially during the pandemic, we usually go for a good walk every day just to clear your head, get some fresh air. So being outside is important for me.

Mary Killelea: So what does to be bolder mean to you?

Lisa Davis: To be bolder means to not be afraid, to not be fearful. I'm a firm believer that life's too short. Lead with intention. And don't have regrets. You learn from mistakes, we continue, we'll always make mistakes. But to be bolder, and I think I've gotten bolder, I think we get bolder as we get. It's interesting, we're bold when we're in our teens and our 20s. And then we seem to get we lose some boldness somehow in our 30s and 40s. I don't know what it is. And then, you know, you come into your 50s, which I think is the best decade of all right now, because maybe

Mary Killelea: I'm in it. I agree.

Lisa Davis: Right? And then we get bolder, we get bolder again, because we're wiser, we have that experience behind us. And I heard Condoleezza Rice say one time, with age comes that experience that you bring to the table that frankly, can't be replaced, its differentiated. And our voice, our knowledge and our experience that we can bring to the table in an organization.

Mary Killelea: Part of the mission of this podcast is really bringing women leaders like yourself and making them accessible to listeners who are tuning in while they're doing whatever activities they may be doing, but they're being inspired. So is there anything that we maybe didn't touch on that you'd like to say in closing?

Lisa Davis: Oh, I said well, Mary, I want to thank you for the opportunity. I think we touched on a lot of different areas. I think we're living in difficult times right now. It's hard to be inspired, you know, and I would encourage all of us to strive to remain inspired, find the goodness to keep hope, keep faith, find passion in what we're doing. And if you're certainly leading teams or organizations, make sure you are leaning in and helping your employees and your teams through these times that we're in right now. So I hope I provided a little bit of inspiration or a golden nugget for somebody. I think we, I feel good about that.

Mary Killelea: Thank you so much for being here and joining me today.

Lisa Davis: My pleasure.

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.