Ami Ward

I attribute my success to my father. My dad is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the Army and also a retired CEO of a major non-profit healthcare institution. That man worked his tail off and taught us how to work hard. He worked in the reserves every other weekend and was a senior over a hospital that had 6,000 employees. They used to call our house on Christmas Eve if the TVs weren't working in the room, and he'd take every call. He knew everybody's name in that hospital. They still talk about him to this day - he's been retired for 10 years. He used to say to me, if I meet somebody and I don't mention their name, please reach out your hand so they'll introduce yourself so I can get their name. He taught us all to extend ourselves, always make sure we're polite to people, introduce ourselves, and shake hands. These silly things that he taught us in the business world have made us all pretty successful. He taught us how to work hard and practice, practice, practice. You're not gonna walk on the court and just be amazing - you gotta practice every day. I was the youngest of five, and he'd take me to the mall and I would walk him around the entire mall to tire him out so that I could get the thing I wanted. He taught me how to sell. I was always thinking of ways to get something that the other four didn't have. He taught us all hard work, and I tell my kids this all the time - you work hard and practice. That's what he taught us.

The best career advice I’ve ever received is to outwork everyone in the room and always be prepared. That lesson, passed down from my father and reinforced by mentors throughout my career, has guided me whether I was learning a new industry from scratch or striving to exceed quota year after year.

If you're gonna do something, give it everything you've got. Don't ever be afraid to fail. Failure is part of the process. You have to make mistakes, you have to fail. You can't succeed without those two things. That would be my advice to young women into this field, especially this one, because it's a very, very male-dominated field. You have to be on point. My daughter is a perfect example of this mindset - she just joined cross-country two weeks ago, has never done it before, and when she wasn't fast enough the first day, she got herself up at 4:30 in the morning and got on the treadmill. She's 12 years old. Everything this kid does, that's how she is. I say to her all the time, I want to be like you when I grow up. I'm extremely competitive, but it's not really competition with other people, it's competition with myself to see if I can always strive to be better. She's that times 100.

AI is a big issue right now. It's taking the world by force, just like the internet did way back when. People are scared of it, people aren't, people are excited about it - it's kind of an unknown entity right now. You do have to be careful because there's a lot of security issues. What a lot of people don't realize in AI is when you use it, it holds all that information. That's the last thing a business wants to do, for security reasons - start putting stuff into their AI system and have that lack of security. You have to consider the entire ecosystem of a business when you're doing business with them. You have to look at every single angle. We kind of go in there and teach people - this is your ecosystem, this is what you're looking at, here's what we can do to help you, here's what you need to be cognizant of, here's how you should make your decision based on these objectives. That's probably the biggest challenge right now - AI, and trying to help businesses navigate through it. On the opportunity side, global network is huge. If you have a company in China and a company in the US, and you're trying to connect those two places and their communication platforms, you want to make sure that they have some kind of security in place all around. Those opportunities right now are humongous for a company that can do all of that stuff and protect all of their data at the same time. We're turning into a data-driven world - that's everything. It's a very good indicator of future success or failure.

Trust is number one. If you're not a trustworthy person in life or in work, you're not going to get anywhere. Another important thing I instill in my children is you're only as good as your word, that's all you have. That's it. Probably a good portion of my success is because people do trust me. I do try and genuinely care. I think if you genuinely care, and people understand that and feel that, they're going to want to do business with you. And you can't let them down, either. You have to make sure you're true to it. There's a lot of different things you can say in that answer, but I think the base of everything in life is trust and caring. I was raised to be a very respectful person. If people take the time to help me and put the effort into me, I'm gonna deliver 110%, because I just appreciate other people very much. I'm a big believer in humility. My father's thing is never expect credit for things you're supposed to be doing. Humility is a strength.