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Podcast: VMware CEO Raghu Raghuram with IDC President Crawford Del Prete

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Sandy Hogan: Partner in Chief

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You’ve been at VMware for almost two years as the Chief Digital Transformation Officer and are now Chief Operating Officer. What does this mean for you and your team?

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We are still the same team - laser-focused on improving the experiences of our customers, partners, and colleagues. What this change really represents for our team is how critically important Operations is in driving VMware’s growth and success.

One of the many great things about VMware is our ability to evolve. As we shift our business model to as-a-service, a company’s operations become increasingly visible to our customers. At the same time their expectations about the ease of business have skyrocketed. They want flexibility, speed and agility, and Operations is how you deliver that. Put simply, the back-office has become the front-office. Almost overnight, Operations became a strategic, customer-facing, and revenue driving function.

It’s interesting to think of the “back-office becoming the front-office.” What’s something else you wish more people knew about Operations?

Operations is so much more than a cost-center. You hear a lot about “Product-Led Growth” out there in the industry — the idea that products can be so good that they sell themselves. While that’s important, it only takes you so far. Our customers are complex and solving some of the hardest problems in the world. They need the best products and services, and an experience that only comes with elite Operations.

In other words, <a href="https://news.vmware.com/leadership/the-new-frontier-operations-led-growth">"Operations-Led Growth"</a> is a real thing, and not enough people think about it this way. As competition heightens, the companies that think like this will rise to the top. It is a huge source of customer value – not an afterthought or merely an efficiency play.

You have a different background than many leaders we meet in tech: from Navy SEAL Commander to Director at the National Security Council for Presidents Bush and Obama, to hedge fund COO, to strategic operations leader at a global technology services company. How does this influence the way you lead at VMware?

Great question. My first reaction is that I don’t think of this company — or the world — as divided into leaders and followers. Everyone at VMware is a leader. We’re all leaders and followers — and the key is to know when to be which. That one insight has informed everything I’ve done over my career.

Another observation that’s important to keep in mind is that top organizations are all doing essentially the same thing: solving really hard problems in unpredictable environments. So, what do you do? You build a world-class team and teach them how to think, not what to think, so that they’re ready to pivot.

It’s no longer enough to have a great strategy and plan at the top and simply rely on others to execute. You need the operational rigor to make fast decisions – across silos – so you can adapt when things inevitably change.  

Thank you! Before we let you go, how about a get-to-know-you-speed-round?

Favorite movie?

New skill you’d like to learn?

360 shuvit on the wakeboard (look it up!).

Favorite family tradition?

Saying grace before dinner to appreciate what we have, and ask for others to be provided for as we have.

Bucket-list travel destination?

To visit a peaceful Afghanistan and Iraq.

Favorite thing about your spouse?

Incredible sense of humor - often deservedly at my expense.

Meet VMware's new Chief Operating Officer Mike Hayes and learn how important Operations has become in driving our growth and success.

Meet VMware's new Chief Operating Officer Mike Hayes and learn how important Operations is in driving our growth and success.

Meet VMware’s New Chief Operating Officer, Mike Hayes

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VMware’s New Chief Operating Officer- VMware News and Stories

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Meet VMware's new Chief Operating Officer Mike Hayes and learn how Operations has become a strategic, customer-facing and revenue-driving function.

I originally signed up for a half marathon. The 13.1-mile distance felt manageable, unlike the massive effort I imagined a full marathon would require. There was just one problem: I’ve never been good at doing things halfway.

With the idea of the big race nagging at me, I decided to push my training — week by week, my runs getting longer and more frequent. Before I knew it, I felt confident enough to take on the full 26.2 miles—something that only a few months before felt impossible.

What does running a marathon have to do with business? More than you think — especially when you’re in the <a href="https://news.vmware.com/tech-innovation/terror-thrill-transformational-change" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">business of transformation</a>.

I spend a lot of time talking with VMware’s customers. Just about all of them tell me the same thing: Their company’s future success depends on having a resilient, nimble digital foundation. They’re looking for platforms and tools that can thrive amid uncertainty and flex to meet evolving demands.

Now, my team and I know most of these needs can be met by embracing multi-cloud solutions, which have customer choice and flexibility baked into their architecture. But we also know the process of implementing multi-cloud comes with its own complexity. It’s a major commitment, one that requires time, skills, and resources over the long-term. In the face of that marathon, the lure of half-measures can be strong.

In this environment, my team’s job becomes two-fold: creating a vision for the future that is compelling enough to inspire action, while also charting a realistic path to get there that feels manageable. How do we do it? The same way I eventually ran my marathon.

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Learn to Love the Process

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As soon as I signed up for my race, I knew I needed to make a plan. Training isn’t something you can procrastinate on. It requires consistent effort over the long-term. So, I started mapping out what the next few months would look like: the weekly mileage I would need to hit, the time it would take, the days I would run.

Broken up into smaller pieces, the impossible starts to become possible. That’s why creating a process is so important to the success of any digital transformation. When my team starts working with a customer, we spend a lot of time upfront thinking about the business outcomes they’re trying to achieve and the most efficient way of getting there. We’re also constantly looking for ways to improve our own processes so that it’s easy for our clients to onboard, find information and best practices, and get value from our services as soon as possible.

Focus on Short-term Wins

Training for a marathon is a marathon in itself — one that can feel overwhelming when you’re just starting out. That’s why I didn’t think about running 26.2 miles at first. Instead, I focused on hitting better times in my hill and speed work. I pushed to run one mile faster than the week before.

Small wins have a way of boosting your confidence and keeping you motivated over the long-term. That’s why my team and I often work with our customers to identify what workloads make the most sense to move to the cloud and in what order. By executing on specific use cases that create big value early on, we can build momentum for the larger-scale transformation we’re working towards. These customer wins also have the added benefit of keeping our own team motivated because we can see just how much our work moves the needle.

When I think back to my marathon training, one factor above all others contributed to my success: I wasn’t doing it alone. I was part of a running club that helped me keep showing up, even on the bad days. I once took a bad fall during one of my long runs, and I probably would have packed it in for the day if I’d been on my own. But my team was with me, and they inspired me to keep going. I ended up running another 10 miles.

When you’re surrounded by people you trust, just about anything is possible. I remind my team about this all the time. We’re there to be partners to our customers in their digital transformation journeys, as well as partners for each other as we do it. This is especially important when the unexpected occurs. Setbacks are inevitable when you’re trying to do big things. But they don’t have to derail progress toward bigger goals — a fact that’s a lot easier to focus on when you’re surrounded by a team that’s as invested in your success as you are.

When the day finally came and I completed my marathon, it was exhilarating. I couldn’t believe what I had achieved and how far I’d come. That’s the feeling I wish for every one of VMware’s customers when they work with us to. And my team and I are committed to delivering it.

Setbacks don’t have to derail progress — a fact that’s easier to focus on when you’re surrounded by a team that’s as invested in your success as you are.

From Vision to Reality: Charting a Path to Tomorrow’s Success - VMware

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Paula Hodgins currently serves as Senior Vice President, WW Cloud Sales, at VMware. As the leader of the worldwide Cloud Sales Team, she and her team work across the sales and partner organizations to sell the entire VMware Cloud Portfolio, drive time-to-value for both enterprise and commercial customers and lead VMware’s evolution to become a Multi-Cloud leader. In February 2021, Hodgins joined VMware as Senior Vice President, Worldwide Global Accounts and Telco Sales. In that role, she successfully led a team of trusted advisors focused on driving value and leading transformation for VMware and its largest and most strategic global customers. Prior to joining VMware in 2021, Hodgins was President of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Canada. As the top executive in Canada, she ran all customer segments and supported some of Canada’s largest companies and government agencies through their digital transformation journeys. Hodgins also spent 13 years at Microsoft, where she held multiple leadership positions working across global, US and Canadian subsidiaries. Most recently, Paula led Azure sales in the enterprise customer segment at Microsoft Canada, moving some of the country’s largest companies to public cloud for the first time. Hodgins holds an Honors Bachelor of Arts degree in Media and Communications from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. She resides in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with her husband, Gary, and two children, Dylan and Danielle.

Paula Hodgins

When you’re thinking about how to best grow your business, it’s easy to debate modern Product-Led Growth approaches - relying on the products themselves to draw customers - versus traditional Sales-Led Growth strategies - hinging success on the power of an effective sales force.

In leading VMware’s worldwide operations, I’ve come to believe the product-versus-sales conversation misses a critical point. High performing organizations are only high performing if they recognize the power of Operations-Led Growth.

Operations has been traditionally (and mistakenly!) dismissed as merely a lever for cost savings. Too many organizations think of operations in terms of efficiency or eliminating redundancies. Expert organizations see operations as a true growth driver. This is especially the case in today’s world, where expectations for the ease of doing business are higher than ever before, and where data is making things possible that would have felt like miracles just a few years ago.

The world doesn’t (yet) talk about Operations-Led Growth, but it is the next frontier in customer value, profit maximization and shareholder return. 

Here are four ideas to help realize the power of Operations-Led Growth.

Operations is a Goldmine for Non-Linear Growth

We all understand the big-picture goal: a business that grows exponentially. And yet, so much of our thinking on the operations side is linear in nature — needlessly capping our growth potential.

I was in a conversation recently with a CEO of a business that just hit a $1B valuation, and he was trying to figure out how many more salespeople to hire to best accelerate performance. That sounds like a simple question for sales or HR leadership, but it’s actually not. Sure, we can take the straightforward approach, evaluating revenue quota per salesperson against the amount of investment we want to make, but the smarter way to look at this question turns it into a strategic operations issue: how can we make each salesperson far more effective because of the way the rest of the business operates? 

In the end, I advised my friend that he should certainly evaluate risk and return relative to the sales force, but the focus should be on how to maximize profit regardless of the size of the sales force. Maybe what’s needed isn’t more salespeople, but better policies, processes, and technologies to leverage those salespeople exponentially, and be able to raise their quotas ever higher. 

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At scale, you inevitably need to systematize — to become 2x larger, or 10x larger, you can’t grow costs (like salespeople) by 2x or 10x along the way. Instead, you need to find solutions that aren’t just good for one but good for many, and that lifts the entire organization up.

The kinds of questions my friend had to ask were ones that would affect the entire business, from end to end — and siloing them in the sales department meant missing out on tremendous opportunities. Where do those opportunities emerge from? The next three ideas provide some places to look: data, process, and the entire operations system underpinning an organization.

Operations is How You Benefit from the Data Revolution Happening Around Us

I don’t need to re-tell the consumer-first story about the power of data that pretty much everyone understands by now. Whether it’s Amazon surfacing product recommendations, Spotify knowing the music you’ll like before you’ve ever heard it, or DoorDash making it easy to add those dumplings onto your dinner order, we get it: data about the consumer leads to more consumption.

The problem is that we don’t always carry that story through to the B2B arena. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking the old ways are still the best ways when it comes to selling to enterprises — but data has just as much to teach us here as it does in the B2C space. Good, rich, unified data across your enterprise drives insights, and speeds and future-proofs any organization’s agility. 

Most of us understand how to use data to see where time and money are slipping through the cracks — and how to recapture those losses. But that’s just the cost-cutting side of things.

And that’s just a start. The right insights can turn IT and engineering into growth partners and not just cost centers. They can feed off the information coming back into the system and respond directly to customer needs — as long as the data is robust, accurate, and actionable. That’s what’s so critical about rich infrastructure, and why it has to be a huge focus for operations.

Operations is the Vehicle for Smart Processes — Leading to Far Stronger Outcomes

It’s popular to dismiss “process” as the gateway toward needless bureaucracy, but that’s thinking about it in exactly the wrong way. Good process doesn’t lead to more checkpoints and bottlenecks. Instead, it enables simplicity and clean workflows that eliminate as many stopping points as possible. (And simplicity scales far more effectively than complex and broken systems.)

Good process is about faster decision-making — and more principle-driven decision-making — so that even those who disagree with an outcome still trust how a choice was made and remain committed to the larger cause. Good process is also about spending less time on corporate minutiae and more time on things that matter — internally but also for customers and business partners externally.

Internally — we can go back to the sales example. Maybe salespeople are failing to optimize their efficiency because they’re spending 40% of their time on administrative work, which is not only wasteful but fails to take advantage of the skill set they were hired for. If you can put processes in place that save each salesperson six hours a week, you not only get those six hours back, but you give them each six extra hours to actually do the things they’re best at. At VMware, we’ve modeled it out - of course it depends on assumptions but a low/high sensitivity analysis shows us every day we give back to the sales force adds $2.5 to $3.2M in top line. In effect, good process frees people’s time from administrative bloat, making them happier and more productive, encouraging them to stay at your organization longer, grow their skills, and cultivate stronger talent behind them.

Externally it’s exactly the same story. Customers freed from barriers and bottlenecks can spend more time actually engaging with your brand, understanding its value, and ultimately buying more product. Why does Amazon shine? Because it’s so frictionless to buy, sell, return, track your order and so much more. But what looks effortless on the front end requires an incredible amount of coordination on the back end, between vendors, warehouses and more. It requires operations at the elite level. This is even truer — and harder to achieve — in the B2B space. We’ve all been mired in corporate processes that make procurement a nightmare. We’ve all spent hours dealing with legal, with finance, with salespeople who can’t execute what you need. Imagine if all of that went away – at least on one company’s side - and it was less of a bureaucratic nightmare to procure products and services. 

We all naturally gravitate toward pleasant experiences, especially in a world where so much is trying to grab our attention. When you make it easy for people to do business with you — an operations issue for sure — they will buy even if your product isn’t breaking new ground (but even more so if it is!). If it’s seamless and quick, growth and profit will follow.

Operations is the Glue That Fits Together the Entire Organization — Guiding Everyone in the Same Direction, Paving the Way for Growth

Organizations that don’t think strategically about their growth drivers miss the opportunity to strike the optimal balance between product-led, sales-led and operations-led growth. In essence, good operations is about the entire system working together. The reality is that the whole of an organization is greater than the sum of its parts. Siloed decision-making, siloed priorities, siloed budgets, siloed data and siloed accountability are major blockers for growth, whereas an effectively connected organization is unstoppable.

What people fail to recognize is that operational discipline is the engine of innovation. Great ideas — the kind that drive exponential growth — are too often isolated to small groups and individuals. But making ideas a reality requires the right data and the right people. On the data: good, consistent, shared data, allows everyone to see the same information, and chase the same goals — which makes it possible to streamline processes and make business easier for customers and employees alike. On the people: bringing ideas to fruition in a company requires the right people to get behind them and drive them forward — meaning cross-functional buy-in, which is only made possible when: 

Part of what creates this operational discipline is culture. We all want to build strong teams — but that’s just a buzzword. What building strong teams means in reality is an organization where everyone is focused on the same goals (the right goals!), armed with the tools to reach them, and unleashed to achieve their best. 

Good operations allow you to actually solve problems, because it means that someone is empowered to not just see a part of the picture but understand all of the details. Operations is really about seeing the system as the interconnection of technology, process, and policy, and so when issues arise, there’s someone equipped to address them.

These four ideas are just the start for an Operations-Led Growth mindset. As competition grows across industries, and as customers’ expectations for service increase, businesses who see operations as a growth driver (not just a way to trim costs) will come out on top. Operations may not grab as many headlines as new products or new tech, but in the end, it’s how you excel, and I see it as the next big difference-maker no matter your industry.

High performing organizations are only high performing if they recognize the power of Operations-Led Growth.

Mike Hayes, Chief Digital Transformation Officer at VMware discusses why organizations that recognize the power of Operations-Led Growth will come out on top.

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The New Frontier: Operations-Led Growth- VMware News and Stories

Mike Hayes is the Chief Digital Transformation Officer at VMware. He joined VMware in October 2020 and leads the company’s worldwide business operations and the acceleration of the Company’s SaaS transition. Prior to joining VMware, Hayes served as senior vice president and head of Strategic Operations for Cognizant Technologies where he ran a $2B P&amp;L for Cognizant’s largest financial services clients. Mike previously spent four years at Bridgewater Associates, an investment management firm, where he served in Chief of Staff to CEO and COO roles. Hayes previously spent 20 years in the U.S. Navy SEALs, serving throughout South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia, including the conflicts in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. His last job in the Navy was the Commanding Officer of SEAL Team TWO, which included ten months as the Commander of a 2,000-person Special Operations Task Force in southeastern Afghanistan. Before that, Hayes was selected as a White House Fellow and served two years as Director, Defense Policy and Strategy at the National Security Council, and served as the Deputy Commander for all Special Operations in Anbar Province, Iraq. His military decorations include the Bronze Star for valor in combat in Iraq, a Bronze Star for Afghanistan, and the Defense Superior Service Medal from the White House. In February 2021, Hayes published the book “Never Enough: A Navy SEAL Commander on Living a Life of Excellence, Agility, and Meaning.” Hayes holds a master’s degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School and a bachelor’s degree from Holy Cross College. He is on the boards of Immuta, a data governance company, and the National Medal of Honor Museum. He is also a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Mike Hayes

VMware today announced that Chip Childers has joined the company as vice president and Chief Open Source Officer.

“We’re delighted that Chip has joined VMware,” said Chris Wolf, VMware’s Chief Research and Innovation Officer. “The upstream and community work, as well as the outstanding compliance efforts from our Open Source Program Office, are critical to the success of our customers, the communities we work with and VMware.”

“I am extraordinarily happy to be joining VMware because of its strategic and high profile embrace of open source and its clear grasp of the importance of building inclusive cultures,” Childers said. “Both are positive-sum approaches to growing a great business. When an organization such as VMware embraces positive-sum thinking, it improves outcomes for customers, partners, employees, the broader industry and the company itself.”

Childers brings more than 20 years of experience in enterprise infrastructure and cloud computing. Most recently, he was at Puppet Labs, where he served as Chief Architect and led their innovation program, incubated multiple new products, and aligned their open source strategy to evolving business needs.

Previously, Childers co-founded the Cloud Foundry Foundation and served as its Chief Technology Officer and Executive Director. While at the Cloud Foundry Foundation, he transformed the organization from an independent nonprofit to a directed fund within the Linux Foundation. VMware is a platinum member of both the Cloud Foundry Foundation and the Linux Foundation.

VMware announced that Chip Childers has joined the company as vice president and Chief Open Source Officer.

VMware announces that Chip Childers has joined the company as vice president and Chief Open Source Officer.

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Chip Childers joins VMware as Chief Open Source Officer. - VMware News and Stories

“It’s so hard … can we skip to the good part?”

You’ve probably heard this lyric from <a href="https://youtu.be/hqrWXNMTaKY">AJR</a> on TikTok at some point over the past few months. It’s the soundtrack to countless clips that all follow the same pattern — someone starts out with one thing, then effortlessly segues into another. From pregnancy tests that turn into babies to outdated bathrooms that turn into modern spas, the <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/skiptothegoodpart">#skiptothegoodpart</a> tag has racked up more than 140 million views … and counting.

What’s behind the popularity of this trend? A lot more than just a catchy song. It gets at a fundamental truth about how most people feel about change. We like the idea of transformation and the better, brighter outcomes it can create. But the process and work of actually getting there? Not so much.

It makes sense. The prospect of change is designed to make us feel uncomfortable and on edge. Chalk it up to instinct — the result of ancestors who constantly scanned their surroundings for any sign of movement that might threaten their survival.

But like it or not, doing the work of change is a constant — in life and in business. So, how can we get more comfortable with it?

I spend a lot of time thinking about this as part of my work at VMware — because in many ways, our business is change. We help drive digital transformation for our customers, particularly in their push to the cloud. But this is a major transition that a lot of organizations struggle with.

We’ve heard the same story, time and time again. Cloud migrations take too long and are too complex. They demand not just technical changes, but process and support changes that require significant leadership buy-in over the long-term. And the pressure to get it right — right now — is tremendous. The pandemic not only turned five-year plans into one-year plans, but fundamentally changed expectations about how quickly an organization should be able to pivot in the digital space. It’s no wonder our customers want to skip to the good part.

While we can’t make the process of change quite as easy as TikTok creators make it look, figuring out how digital transformation can be simpler and faster for our customers is a huge priority for VMware. We know it’s not enough to just create great products — we also have to deliver the business outcomes our customers need, on the timelines they want, with the resources they have.

The only way to succeed at doing this is by getting comfortable with change ourselves. We have to constantly push ourselves to innovate and evolve so that we can stay one step ahead of our customers’ needs.

This dual push for change — transforming ourselves so that we can help our customers transform — is a unique challenge. It’s a bit like trying to change a tire while you’re cruising down the highway. And the desire to solve it is what drew me to VMware a little more than a year ago.

I’ve always been drawn to the change process and the opportunity to create, rather than just sustain. And as a leader, it’s my responsibility to help get my team excited about it too — not only for ourselves, but for our customers. So over the next few months, I’ll be sharing my best tips for navigating the terror — and thrill — of transformational change.

Until then … what change would you love to skip to the good part of?

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We like the idea of transformational change and the better, brighter outcomes it can create. But the process of getting there? Not so much.

The Terror — and Thrill — of Transformational Change - VMware News and Stories

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Welcome to VMware! You have more than 27 years of experience in the telecommunications industry across mobile, wireless, fixed, satellite and cable technologies. What brought you to VMware?

I gained much of my experience while working on the operator side. I saw what it takes to run a network and understand what operators will need to deploy future networks. I want to focus the next part of my career on creating solutions for these future needs.

VMware sits at the crossroads of many emerging technologies that will shape the future of telecommunications. Multi-cloud, disaggregation, open interfaces, and automation, to name a few. We have an opportunity to create solutions that will evolve the way we build and operate networks, as well as evolve and grow how we communicate.

The telecommunications industry has not historically been known for its pace of innovation. Do you think this is changing?

It must change and it must change quickly as more agile competitors are moving in on new markets like private networks. Take hyperscalers for instance. They can innovate and implement new technology quickly because they are starting with a blank sheet of paper. And they are partnering with telcos to gain much-needed experience in how to build and operate networks. I think these are exciting times as this kind of competition will drive innovation.

While it may seem like telcos are at a disadvantage, I think they will rise to the challenge. The way we communicate is changing and they are more familiar with current and future users. It’s not just about connecting people but also about connecting things and entities that have different needs. A new type of network is needed that is agile and can grow in a modular fashion as user demands change. New use cases mean new market opportunity. Telcos know they must move fast to take advantage of new revenue streams.

In your estimation, how are 5G rollouts going?

When the industry first started talking about 5G, we focused on outcomes in three areas:

We’ve seen progress in the first pillar. But to me, faster speeds is only unleashing a small subset of new use cases. The other two pillars – uRLLC and mMTC – will enable technologies that will change society as we know it today. These are harder to move forward faster as they require more investment from operators.

Also, when we mention 5G, we should couple it with other technological evolutions happening alongside it such as virtualization, Open RAN and edge compute-enabled architectures. We have seen new operators make strides in these areas with new networks. We have also seen existing operators make very aggressive and impressive announcements about their future plans. These investments will require a monetization plan; therefore, it’s important to identify things like the edge-native killer use case.

What is your experience as a woman in the telecommunications industry?

I consider myself fortunate to have worked at many amazing companies throughout my career. I’ve gained a variety of experience that spans many technologies. But rising as a woman in this industry is challenging.

It’s great to see companies focused on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) but there is a lot of work to be done. I can’t tell you how many LinkedIn messages I receive that start with “we want to talk with you because we need more women on our leadership team.” They are missing the point. I’m not interested in helping you improve a statistic. I am interested in bringing my unique experience and lens to a team. That’s the power of DEI – bringing together a group of people who represent diverse communities and perspectives.

My hope is that the work I am doing today and the challenges I have overcome will create a more inclusive workplace for my 7-year-old daughter. For most of my career, I’ve been the only woman in the room. By the time my daughter enters the workforce, I hope she is working with a much more representative group of colleagues than what I experienced.

How would you describe your leadership style?

I try to lead with empathy. Great leaders lead from the heart and not just the head. So, while much of my work must be from the head, I often remind myself I must lead from the heart. Believing in people and diversity. Mentoring and coaching others to bring their talents and value forward for their company’s and customers’ success – as well as for their own career accomplishments.

Dream Big, then Stay Curious, Be Passionate. I’ve always loved “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”, but believe in addition to need and openness, you must also have passion and curiosity to make the most out of life.

Mariam Sorond has joined VMware as the Chief Technology Officer of the Service Provider and Edge business unit.

Mariam Sorond has joined VMware as the Chief Technology Officer of the Service Provider and Edge business unit. Learn more about her outlook on the telco industry, her career path, and her leadership style.

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Mariam Sorond has joined @VMware as the CTO of the Service Provider and Edge business unit. Learn more about her outlook on the telco industry, her career path, and her leadership style.

Bessie Yuan, you are responsible for VMware's business in Greater China. How did your career path lead you to such wide responsibility?

I didn’t grow up with a dream to be in technology. I wanted to be in the airline industry so I could travel and see the world. But I listened to my parents who wanted me to study computer science and then I did my master’s in economics. At the time that I graduated, I didn’t come across a job opportunity in economics that made me excited, so I had to switch back to computer science. 

I started my career as a trainee at Oracle then worked for several multinational companies. Most recently, I was general manager of the Enterprise Commercial Group for Microsoft China. I think one important thing that enabled me to take my current VMware position is that all along my career path, I accessed opportunities that allowed me to gain experience through increased responsibilities.

<a href="https://www.forbeschina.com/business/%E5%95%86%E4%B8%9A/59831">Forbes China</a> recently named you as one of the Top 100 Outstanding Businesswomen in China. That’s a wonderful way to be recognized for your contribution. Would you say your success derives from some mission you have?

I don’t call it a mission, but I’m passionate about helping other women in the technology industry and beyond this industry, as well. I want to be the person who can really contribute and give back to the community. And I want to see other women succeed and emerge as leaders.

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Your answer aligns to the International Women's Day global theme, “Break the Bias.” How do you knowingly or unknowingly break the bias?

I was fortunate in that I worked for companies with very good cultures that respect diversity. While I personally didn’t experience any bias, I see many opportunities across the board where there are very few or even no women leaders at senior board member levels. So that’s part of my passion―to influence the local companies and promote women leadership development. I want to support other women entering technology and in the workforce. And in my role, I see an incredible opportunity to influence our partners and customers to promote greater diversity, equity and inclusion in the industry.

Another important way I provide influence is with my own children. Your children are the closest people you can influence, and you must lead by example. I strive to be a mother my children can be proud of.

Speaking of leading by example, is there a mentor or someone in your life whom you’ve admired and has inspired you?

A lot of people have helped me, and I have learned different things from each one. As an example, I learned a lot from Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, and I am inspired by Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla. Actually, so many people have inspired me and shaped who I am. I couldn’t name them all! However, I do want to mention a manager I had about 15 to 20 years ago.

This manager saw my potential. He told me that if I want to lead a company, I’d need to get more customer-facing experience in sales. At that time in my life, I thought of myself as someone that is just good at working with computers and coding. I didn’t value sales as a career path, so I didn’t want to try it. But when I did try it, I realized that sales is not the simple job that I thought it was. It’s an incredibly discerning role that requires heightened awareness and empathy for your customer. 

This is such an exciting time to be at VMware because there’s so much transformation going on. You joined the company late last year, so what motivated you to join VMware? 

Honestly, it was the role and the opportunity to lead the business in the region. When <a href="https://news.vmware.com/author/duncan-hewett">Duncan Hewett</a> (erstwhile leader for VMware in Asia Pacific and Japan) talked to me about this role, I realized I could really make things happen because I know this local market and I’ve got solid experience. I also wanted this role because of the way it has been set up. I feel that I can make a large impact and I can realize my potential.

As I shared when I was hired, I look forward to leading this incredible team to accelerate the further development of the Greater China business. I want to do that by injecting an innovative drive into the digital transformation process of more companies.

I also want to say that I’ve been hired for my potential, and this is a great practice that’s important for women. Hiring to potential enlarges the opportunities for women leaders in the corporate world. And my advice to women would be, don’t limit your imagination, even if something may be beyond your current capability. The format of an enterprise is continually changing so the relationship between an employer and an employee will evolve and perhaps become more flexible than what it is today. My general advice to women is just don’t limit your imagination or creativity.

Bessie Yuan shares her career path to Vice President and General Manager of VMware's Greater China Region.

Bessie Yuan shares her career path and passion in helping develop more women as leaders in the community.

Bessie Yuan: Leading With Influence

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Bessie Yuan: Leading with Influence- VMware News and Stories

"I want to see more women pursue their passion, and to develop and invest in themselves," Bessie Yuan, @vmware VP and GM of the Greater China Region, shares. #IWD2022

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