CTO Confessions Brought to you by IT Labs

We all hope for a day when we don't need to mention, or even be surprised, when we see women leading in tech. But, until that wonderful moment arrives, we will celebrate a marvelous leader's journey and her leadership practices. Bela Labovitch, the VP of engineering at athenahealth, joins us to share her story and why she has much gratitude for her job. And importantly, how she makes the role effective and delightful for her people, the end customer, and the business itself. We also look at the problem that athenahealth is solving in the market and how it allows doctors and similar professionals to focus on what they love doing by adding ease and automation to important aspects of their business operations. Key takeaways from the podcast with Bela are: • The importance of metrics and measuring • The power of a tool we all have as leaders--mindfulness and how that can be enacted to great effect on all aspects of the role • How companies can help create more diversity within their companies and encourage girls and women into tech Our Guest: Bela Labovitch LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bela-labovitch-333a7b/ Website: Cloud-computing in healthcare | athenahealth : https://www.athenahealth.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/athenahealth Intro and background music: Craig MacArthur - Power Shutoff (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x74iB_jtauw)

You would believe it, but four billion people in the world do not have an address. We take it for granted in first and 2nd world nations. But imagine not having a framework to get things to you. Shocking! This is why Emre Turan, the tech leader of UNL Global, leads the tech to create the internet of places. An addressing system to bring people out of address poverty. Maybe we in more modernized countries will adopt the same system. Thus creating a standardized global standard. Key takeaways from the podcast with Emre are: • The importance of creating a system that anywhere in the world can have an address • Making sure external outsourced teams are invited into the fold of a company. Please don't treat them differently • Using data to create self-healing maps • The importance of reading the book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman. It raises awareness around a bug that all of humanity has and will serve your leadership immensely. Our Guest: Emre Turan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eturan/ Website: https://www.unl.global/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/emre_turan Intro and background music: Craig MacArthur - Power Shutoff (www.youtube.com/watch?v=x74iB_jtauw)

We all see big stock markets trading shares in big companies, with their stock-tickers showing the ups and downs of an organization's perceived value. Imagine if you could invest in, let's say, a sports stars career or the local shop down the road. Well, this is the platform that tZERO's CTO, Amit Goyal, is working on. He joins us to share his trials and tribulations, not forgetting the successes in creating this novel trading system. The key takeaways from the podcast are: - How a more democratic trading system will create investment and growth opportunities in some weird and wonderful places - Slicing big projects into manageable small value deliverables enhances the Agile space - The importance of reducing the delay of developed code getting into the production space. Ultimately to ensure developers don't get disconnected from their work and technical debt doesn't sit around out of sight. Our Guest: Amit Goyal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amit-goyal-302a0852/ Website: https://www.tzero.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/tZERO Intro and background music: Craig MacArthur - Power Shutoff (www.youtube.com/watch?v=x74iB_jtauw)

Many enlightened businesses work hard to make their brands and relationships with their customers stronger and more human, and that's exactly what Wistia does. For those who think that's obvious, well, there are many businesses out there that do the exact opposite. Either intentionally or unintentionally). The CTO and co-founder of this interesting startup joins us to share his leadership learning and the importance of building that human face of the business one video at a time. With the bonus of making the process super easy and effective. The key takeaways from the podcast are: • Creating the right funding model for your startup can have a positive impact on the way you run and do business • Learning from Brendan's reflections of leading through tough decisions (tapping into the wisdom of the organization) • Leading with remote teams and making sure they become autonomous and effective development machines ◦ Especially getting the decision making and set of power closer to the cross-functional teams doing the work Our Guest: Brendan Schwartz LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanschwartz/ Website: http://wistia.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/wistia Intro and background music: Craig MacArthur - Power Shutoff (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x74iB_jtauw)

In this episode, we talk to a tech leader who has turned a technical ship around. Her leadership resides in a cancer intelligence organization that uses data science to help oncology care teams better personalize treatment and improve drug toxicity management for their patients. Denali Lumma, the VP of engineering at Project Ronin, shares her story and her leadership. Particularly on how she, her peers, and team pivoted a troubling technical situation and created a state of technical flow in the organization. The best part is the improvements in care for patients. Feedback loops of care went from a month to days. Allowing carers to be agile in improving the conditions of patients and enhancing their quality of life. Maybe even saving lives. Key takeaways from the podcast with Denali are: • The concept of technical-debt-event-horizon (the point of no return) • How Agile can absolutely work. It can be a success if you keep going, learn from mistakes, and don't see it as some magic formula out of the box. You have to be agile about Agile. Let it guide you, rather than dictate • The huge power of healthy feedback loops. Find the important ones and enhance them • How systems and industries create incentives that really aren't helpful. Even damaging Our Guest: Denali Lumma LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/denali-lumma-1330061/ Website: https://www.projectronin.com/ Intro and background music: Craig MacArthur - Power Shutoff (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x74iB_jtauw)

With technology permeating and threading through all industries, it's surprising when you come across an industry that has further growth in the digital space, giving the tech leaders in that arena the opportunity to spearhead an industry evolution. This is exactly what our guest Rajiv Peter, the Director of Digital Technology at Notting Hill Genesis, is doing. Under his leadership and tech team, the company creates opportunities for more growth, efficient operations, and insights from the data they collect. Like the host, Rajiv has Dyslexia. He is not bestowed with the luxury of moving super quickly through tasks that others would glide through. But like many challenges, he has adapted and created his own mechanisms and leadership style to thrive. Key takeaways from the podcast are: • Using the gift of Dyslexia to lead in a better way (Visual vision) • The power of trusting your teams • Preparing a business to be able to collect the right data for the next evolution so they can sense and adapt aspects of the businesses direction Our Guest: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajivpeter/ Website: https://www.nhg.org.uk/ Intro and background music: Craig MacArthur - Power Shutoff (www.youtube.com/watch?v=x74iB_jtauw)

In this episode, we have the former CTO of Ocado, a company that is a huge operational and business success story in the UK. As part of his leadership and the work he does on various boards for the UK Government, Paul Clarke is a huge advocate for digital twins, which are models that allow us to run real--world simulations. And as we progress to make these twins even more sophisticated, the aim of Paul and other leaders in the digital space is to integrate them to run even larger and more sophisticated model runs. Some takeaways from the conversation with Paul: • The power and potential of 4 converging technological advances ◦ Artificial Intelligence ◦ Machine Learning ◦ Digital twins ◦ And the Internet of Things (IoT) • How Ocado Ltd is actually a technology company, with food delivery service being just the thin veneer of what it did and spun off. • The huge potential of governments’ use of their oceans of data and Digital Twins.…not to mention the impact of policy change and infrastructure projects) Our Guest: Paul Clarke LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulchristopherclarke/ Intro and background music: Craig MacArthur - Power Shutoff (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x74iB_jtauw)

In this information-obsessed modern world, marketing takes on many forms. And a word that gets banded around a lot (and quite rightly) is brand. For Omobono, the brand isn't just logos and fancy billboards; it's more than that. The CTO from Omobono, Marcus Lambert, joins us to tell us about its importance and how an organization's brand can be enhanced digitally. Key takeaways from the podcast are: • Organizational trust layered into every nook-and-cranny of the business is the key to lasting transformation. (Omobono's story around this is a must-hear -- truly inspiring!) • Transparency creates clarity. It is a simple, sometimes painful, quite powerful tool that all establishments need to embrace for better leadership throughout the org. • The lessons learned from oscillating between small companies and large corporates and back again. Our Guest: Marcus Lambert LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcuslambert/ Website: https://www.omobono.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/omobono_digital Intro and background music: Craig MacArthur - Power Shutoff (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x74iB_jtauw)

In this podcast, we look at an interesting B2B startup called Fashion Cloud. In particular to its CTO, Florian Klemt. The business idea that was born out of a strategic pivot shows great promise. It's morphing into something bigger and providing more supportive avenues for end clients. Key takeaways from the podcast are: • A human-centric leadership style has a great ROI. One that can't be pinned down in a spreadsheet or ledger but exists non the less • The pivoting tool in the business toolbox is an important device that should be employed readily to adapt to market needs • Maintenance and looking after legacy systems is highly recommended. It's not sexy, but tech leaders ought to appreciate the investment that's gone into these systems and work to keep them maintainable. Our Guest: Florian Klemt LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/florian-klemt-44a83352/ Website: https://fashion.cloud/en/ Intro and background music: Craig MacArthur - Power Shutoff (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x74iB_jtauw)

Niches don't get any tighter than this. Our guest Hamed Sadeghian, President and CTO of Nearfield Instruments, shares with us his journey in a super high-tech, high- science market. From his metrology in the oil and gas industry to the measurement of atoms, he now heads an organization that helps chip manufacturers sharpen their cutting edge. Key takeaways from the podcast are: • Sanitizing your vision and making it your war • What you need to be able to lead effectively in an entrepreneurial company • Finding a pain and ensuring the solution is what the customer wants • The kinds of people and teams you need in an R&D space • Creating visibility for the customer so they know where you’re going Our Guest: Hamed Sadeghian LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamed-sadeghian-76490ab/ Website: https://www.nearfieldinstruments.com/ Intro and background music: Craig MacArthur - Power Shutoff (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x74iB_jtauw)