Her Story
About Carly
Carly Duncanson serves as a Technical Program Manager at Google, where she has worked for roughly five and a half years in network, networking, and operations within the data center environment. With more than 20 years of experience in project and program management, she has held roles including project manager, technical program manager, agile coach, and Scrum Master. Her background spans industries such as retail at Target, the chemical sector at Ecolab, medical devices, and digital spaces, along with consulting experience. She holds a Scrum Master Certification, which supported her transition into IT and agile methodologies. At Ecolab she received awards, and at Google she has earned multiple spot bonuses. Duncanson focuses on continuous improvement programs, including resolving fiber issues in data centers through cross-functional collaboration with field teams, network operations, and software engineers. She attributes her success to maintaining an open mind, exercising patience with ambiguity, building relationships, and bringing teams together to solve problems and deliver results. Outside her professional work, she volunteers with the Sierra Club.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Carly
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to being open, coming in with an open mind, having patience, dealing with ambiguity, building relationships with folks, and bringing people together to figure things out and make progress.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
If you want something, you're gonna have to make it happen for yourself. Take the reins, come up with a plan, try to make that come to fruition, but also lean on your people because it doesn't happen overnight and it does require some effort.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Find your people and make connections at work, especially in a big company like Google. Be vulnerable and ask questions, because that's the right time to be asking all those questions when you're coming in as a new employee.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge is scaling due to the demands of AI and ML. We need to accelerate deployment but tooling, systems, and having the right people in place to handle the pace is difficult. Continuous improvement is a key opportunity to fix issues so everything runs smoother and avoid compounding tech debt.
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