THE INTERVIEW

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What was the path that led to your role as CTO at Dell Technologies ? It ’ s a long one ! The punchline is I ’ m a serial CTO , but I ’ m a CTO that has crossed many different industries . I ’ ve been in telecom , enterprise networking , compute , security , cellular , unified communications , real-time communications , storage , and everything else .

It was 2012 when I got a call from EMC . I wasn ’ t actually looking for a job , but I had a feeling that EMC was going to end up right in the middle of something very disruptive . I didn ’ t know exactly what it was going to be , but it seemed like with VMware , Pivotal , and EMC , we were going to be in the middle of the

BY ANNA-LEE MUCK

action . For me , that ’ s the most exciting thing about the industry . Then when we announced we were going to combine with Dell , it seemed even more like being in the center of the technology universe . I led the overarching technology strategy to integrate Dell and EMC ( and build Dell Technologies ), then became the CTO .

Funny enough , when heading to college , I flipped a coin between being a lawyer and an electrical engineer . I sometimes say I lost and picked the engineering path , but of course I don ’ t really think that .

What are you most passionate about as CTO ? As a technologist , probably the most important thing in your life is when you see the ideas and technologies that you saw first or that you created actually go into practice and change the human condition in a positive way .

PHOTO BY BOB O ’ CONNOR