Last year, Austin was ranked first in CompTIA’s Tech Town Index, a snapshot of the best flourishing tech hubs for job opportunities, affordability and quality of life. Austin is no stranger to the top spot, having secured it for the three past years.
Despite the continued success of the city’s tech sector, the tech landscape worldwide continues to be uneven. In 2022, women only accounted for 33 percent of the industry’s workforce and held one in four leadership positions in large global technology firms, according to a Deloitte report.
However, at three Austin companies women are leading the tech teams working to achieve big goals. These leaders offer valuable knowledge and advice gathered throughout their careers, especially for fellow women in the industry.
For Director of Training and Support Erin Stenzel, the most important lesson she learned was to be her genuine self at work — something that can be easier said than done. “Encouraging my teams to do the same thing has made all of us more productive and able to connect on a more personal level,” said Stenzel, who works at SourceDay. “It opens us to be able to share ideas — even the quirky ones — to come up with solutions that help make us better.”
Stenzel, along with women tech leaders from WP Engine and ThousandEyes, sat down with Built In Austin to share their career journeys, the lessons they’ve learned along the way and their advice for other women in the industry.
ThousandEyes is a cloud platform that companies leverage to understand and improve digital experiences for their customers and employees. The software company is part of Cisco.
Can you tell me a bit about your career journey and your current role at ThousandEyes?
My interest in a career in analytics was piqued during my first experience post receiving my MBA, with Bharti Airtel Limited in India. While my management role took me across cities, functions and projects, I realized that using data was my common denominator in solving most of these problems. I qualified this interest in data with a master’s in business analytics, before joining Expedia Group as a senior business analyst. I grew steadily in my role to eventually lead product analytics for the packages and activities lines of business with Expedia Group before joining ThousandEyes to lead the analytics charter here.
My role as an analytics leader at ThousandEyes focuses on building and executing the analytics roadmap that’s closely aligned with the product and strategies across the customer-facing business functions. Beyond building the analytics powerhouse, I aim to build a thriving data organization by hiring rockstar analytics problem solvers and enabling them to thrive and grow.
What’s one really important lesson you’ve learned in your time as a people manager, and how has that made you a better manager?
Strengthening the basics is the biggest lesson I’ve learned during my experience as a people manager. Take this idea across contexts, and it still holds true!
As a people manager, I empower my team to be able to solve problems independently. Strengthening my own basics by understanding the overall business and product strategy enables me to effectively lead the team by adding relevant context and clarity to help them be successful. While I’m problem-solving, focusing on the basics helps me visualize the big picture while coloring it with the right tactical elements to build a 360-degree problem-solving culture. It further enables me to ask the simplest questions that either strengthen analyses or poke holes in the analytics methodologies we’ve adopted.
As a hiring manager, it enables me to filter out candidates who can truly problem-solve versus ones who can talk through interviews but fumble at real-world challenges.
While I’m problem-solving, focusing on the basics helps me visualize the big picture while coloring it with the right tactical elements to build a 360-degree problem-solving culture.”
What advice do you have for other women who manage tech teams or aspire to?
Lead by example, and don’t be afraid to have a strong opinion. The best way to inspire is by being true to your roots and being a strong analyst (or engineer), so you can lead your team by example. Always understand the “why”s of the problems you’re solving and be curious to find better ways to solve them. Build your conviction as you solve more problems, and don’t be afraid to have strong opinions!
WP Engine is a platform that provides organizations and creators with what they need to build and host WordPress websites — from hosting solutions and design tools to site speed, security and management.
Can you tell me a bit about your career journey and your current role at WP Engine?
I am a software engineering leader with experience at multinational technology and innovation companies engaged in the defense, telecommunications, IT management, hosting and e-commerce markets. Currently, I am a director of engineering at WP Engine, a WordPress technology leader that provides the number one fully managed WordPress platform trusted by over 1 million brands and agencies worldwide, along with developer, headless, agency and e-commerce solutions. I focus on strategy development and shaping customer-inspired products, and lead product teams that are focused on the e-commerce product line.
Previously, I had built and led global product development teams that have engineered large-scale, customer-centric solutions at companies like SolarWinds, Cisco Systems, Paradyne Networks and Raytheon. I hold a degree in computer science from Texas A&M University and am a patent holder. Originally from Puerto Rico, I now live in north Austin with my husband, and I am a proud mother of two young adults and a 20-year cancer survivor.
What’s one really important lesson you’ve learned in your time as a people manager, and how has that made you a better manager?
“No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care,” said President Theodore Roosevelt.
Lead with your head and heart because you are working through others! It is imperative that you are trustworthy, clear, present, genuine and humane. People need to be valued, respected, involved and heard. When you lead with your head and heart, you engage with purpose and develop the capacity to establish long-term meaningful relationships. You need to genuinely care about the dreams and aspirations of those reporting to you so that you are able to create opportunities that align with their motivations and true potential. Trust is non-negotiable. Your words and actions must align with each other all the time.
When you lead with your head and heart, you engage with purpose and develop the capacity to establish long-term meaningful relationships.”
What advice do you have for other women who manage tech teams or aspire to?
Share your story and include your personal values as well as aspirations! When you are confident and willing to be vulnerable, you will build a solid foundation of trust.
Know thy team! Assume each person has good intentions and tremendous value to contribute. Invest in understanding people’s capabilities, motivations, dreams and personal styles. Don’t assume you understand the problems and challenges facing your team.
Listen, listen, but do not forget to act! Challenge your assumptions to become far wiser and gain much more respect than those who try to establish authority too quickly. However, do not be passive. You need to act to change things for the better.
Love, not fear! You will have to make difficult decisions that others will not like. Many might decide they do not like you as a result. You cannot worry about that. If you let fear of being unpopular or making the wrong move affect your decisions, you will suffer. Instead, lead with your head and heart. Let people see your humanity. Communicate clearly. Share the “why” behind your decisions. Bring your full self to every challenge and take 100 percent accountability for an outcome.
SourceDay is a supplier collaboration engine that helps buyers and suppliers collaborate and communicate on shipments, preventing supply chain issues from cropping up.
Can you tell me a bit about your career journey and your current role at SourceDay?
I have gone through a lot of iterations in my career, and I am a firm believer in following your passions. I started out as a developer and business analyst straight out of college. Using those skills, I transitioned into running a project management office for tech and marketing projects and eventually transitioned into customer and sales enablement. Like a lot of other professionals, during Covid, I needed a new outlet, so I took over operations for a startup here in Austin and suddenly found myself in the middle of the supply chain crisis trying to find manufacturing inventory in an environment where that was scarce and the tools were limited.
When SourceDay approached me to take over their support and training departments, I jumped at the opportunity. This position allows me to use a lot of my previous experiences in order to make a positive impact in healing the supply chain while at the same time helping customers that were just like me.
What’s one really important lesson you’ve learned in your time as a people manager, and how has that made you a better manager?
The most important lesson I have learned is to be your genuine self. I spent a lot of my career trying to adjust who I was to my environment. One day, my CFO asked me, “Isn’t that tiring? I like the actual you, the one that doesn’t always wear makeup, tries to look on the bright side when things are going downhill and takes ‘that’s impossible’ as a personal challenge.” From that day, I have brought the real me to the table and it has allowed me to focus all of my energy on the challenges at hand versus splitting my focus on things that really don’t matter.
Encouraging my teams to do the same thing has made all of us more productive and able to connect on a more personal level. It opens us to be able to share ideas — even the quirky ones — to come up with solutions that help make us better. Realizing that we all have different experiences and different voices allows us to better serve our customers and the teams we interact with every day.
Realizing that we all have different experiences and different voices allows us to better serve our customers and the teams we interact with every day.”
What advice do you have for other women who manage tech teams or aspire to?
A lot of people who take on tech teams do not take the time to truly understand the technologies and challenges that their teams face every day. The best advice I can give is to make sure that you understand the technical language and are able to translate concepts and challenges into terms that non-technical people can understand and relate to. This likely involves a lot of saying “I don’t understand,” creating flow charts, writing things down and performing teach-backs to ensure that you understand what the team is telling you.
Once you have that base knowledge, it opens you up to better combine ideas and experiences with your team in order to better grow and scale your teams and advance what they are working on. Finally, when it comes time to sell those ideas to other departments, you are in a place where you can be the best champion for your team by helping non-technical stakeholders really understand what it is your team is trying to accomplish and why.
