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Ideagen Intersection
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Leif Ackerman:
I am here with Gretchen O'Hara, Vice President of US Go-to-Market for One Commercial Partner at Microsoft. Thank you for joining us today, Gretchen, pleasure to have you here.
Gretchen O'Hara:
Oh, thank you, very excited to be here.
Leif:
We'll talk about the upcoming Summit and what you're working on with Microsoft to empower women and girls and specifically how you're forming initiatives to create that sustainability. What inspired you to join Microsoft?
Gretchen O'Hara:
I’ve been at Microsoft for about 13 years and two things related to empowering women and girls have really inspired me throughout my career. The first is our mission, which is bigger than any one person. It's about empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. When you look at a company that's about bringing greater good and about making the individual, not just the company, better that's something that personally I get very excited about.
The second reason I stay so passionate about Microsoft is that we are continually driving innovation. As a leader, being innovative requires that you continue to evolve, continue to be open to new possibilities, and continue to seek change where needed throughout your organization. Ongoing learning - we call it having a “growth mindset” - is a centerpiece of this and a core value here at Microsoft. It starts with the individual but collectively having a growth mindset enables innovation at the team level, the organizational level and even outside of the organization within whole communities. This idea that we will continually grow, learn and innovate is a key strategy to achieving our mission.
Leif:
It sounds like Microsoft has a lot of initiatives that inspire you to strive towards establishing this pipeline for empowering women for future generations.
Gretchen:
Yes. And we’re approaching the issue in two ways. First, we’re thinking about how to reach young women and girls early enough to get them interested in STEM education and careers. Then, once those girls are in the workforce we’re looking at ways of supporting and empowering them to become the next generation of leaders. It’s a classroom to boardroom issue that we need to tackle and it requires investing in dollars and programs to really support girls at the very beginning of that cycle all the way through their careers.
Leif:
Touching on these STEM programs, how does that create sustainable progress so we can enhance the lives of these young girls, and when they become future professionals in the corporate setting?
Gretchen:
One of the things that I've been working on as part of my leadership in education and in the developer and startup audiences is how do we maintain the excitement we
Empowerment & Innovation
An interview with Gretchen O'Hara of Microsoft
Gretchen is a 20+ year tech industry veteran with vast experience in commercial, public sector and partner sales and marketing across small, medium and large businesses. She serves as Vice President of Go-to-Market for the One Commercial Partner Organization at Microsoft, where she is responsible for leading the market strategy and execution with Partners responsible for $20 Billion in revenue and 23K partners across the US. She is passionate about driving awareness, programs, and opportunities to close the digital divide with women in technology, spanning girls in the classroom to women in the boardroom.