SOUTHFIELD – Diva Tech Talk was excited to interview Rhonda St. John Hamborsky, Director of Strategy and Innovation at multinational AT&T Inc. AT&T is the second largest provider of mobile telephones and the largest provider of affixed telephones in the United States; also offers broadband subscription television services; and was named by Fortune Magazine as the most admired worldwide telecomm company in 2015.
Rhonda’s role is to guide select large global AT&T enterprise customers in terms of technical strategy development. Some of the projects she works on cover complete technology transformation including hybrid WAN with internet offload, security stack development, and unified communications architectures. She also focuses on emerging/evolving technologies such as SDN, IoT, LTE, Cloud Interconnect and Big Data, helping enterprises move from boxes and wires to software and intelligence on a transformational path.
Rhonda’s top four lessons for women aspiring to become technology leaders are:
- Be an active listener. “Listen carefully. The nature of our work, today, and the technology we have at our disposal means that we’re multitasking way too much. If I set up a conference call with someone, they have my attention — undivided.”
- Be willing to have your argument debated, and be willing to change your mind. “When I work with colleagues, around the globe, who are from a different culture, I need to understand where they’re coming from, and how their perspective on the challenge differs from my own. They may come up with a better solution.”
- Keep learning. “Study, study, study. And do it on your own time. My perspective as a manager was ‘I’m willing to pay for the schooling; but I want to see your investment in it as well,’ and that’s your time.”
- Take a step back, and remember to remain humble. “The person you are interacting with is a person – isn’t just a user id on your company’s mailing list. Keep that in mind, always.”
- To listen, click on http://www.divatechtalk.com/blog/ep34
