Her Story
About Catherine
I've been in the tech industry since 1997, and my journey has been anything but conventional. I started out in oil and gas purchasing in Texas, but I was always really interested in computers and technology, and I could type really fast. I decided to take a chance and move to Washington because my goal was to work in the tech industry for Microsoft, but I also loved the mountains. I just drove up, left my job at a big oil and gas company, and started interviewing while working really low-paying jobs to sustain myself. It was the 90s during the tech boom, and I met with a recruiter and a Microsoft manager who gave me a chance. They told me to memorize the bold text in three big books and come interview, so I did. I started doing back office resource kit testing, where I learned packet sniffing, protocols, how to build machines, and partition drives. From there, I moved through various contract roles that increased my skill set, then went into Microsoft HR as a program manager on the technical side, which helped me realize I wanted to be in program management on the engineering side. I worked in SQL data management, then joined MSN as a contractor and later as an FTE doing program and release management. I was responsible for managing the release of the new MSN platform for Latin America, then EMEA, and then APAC, which was the most difficult. I then moved into the search experience platform under the MSN umbrella, where I was chosen with a dev lead to kick off a new team working on what became the early stages of Bing. I left Microsoft when I had a sick child who was later diagnosed with autism, and I stayed home to care for my two boys. I returned to Microsoft in 2021 as a contractor in Azure working on machine learning and AI, which was really cutting edge. My boss at the time invited me to join a startup as a small partner, working on machine learning and AI for data centers. After a couple of years, our budget was tight, so now I'm doing program management as a contractor at Azure, working for a consulting company out of India.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Catherine
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to surrounding myself with incredibly smart and kind people throughout my lifetime. My parents taught me that you are who you hang around with, and I've always tried to latch on to incredibly smart people and good people. They've always taught me everything, directed me, and I've listened to them, watched and learned. That's just kind of how it progressed. I've also been fortunate to have people give me chances, like when the Microsoft manager told me to memorize those books and come interview. I just kept going with a do-or-die attitude, even when I didn't know how I would make it. I was tired of people telling me what I couldn't do, so I just said I'm going to do it anyway. I packed up everything in my car and drove up and started over, and somehow it worked out.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say ask a lot of questions. Always be interested and go find out information. I think a lot of people are held back because they're afraid to ask questions or they don't engage because of what others think. They just go with what they think they know instead of searching out answers or digging deeper. Half the time, I don't know how to do some of the things that I do, but I thank God every day for chat GPT and computers because I love being able to just ask a question and get an answer at my fingertips. When I was doing machine learning and AI, I didn't know anything, but I went and searched, asked questions to my teammates like 'Hey, what book would you recommend? How would you think that I could progress in my career? I feel stuck in this space. What should I do to get unstuck?' There are times when I reach my limits of knowledge and I'm nervous because I don't feel I can get over that hump, but there might be some other way to get through that. It's really about finding what you're interested in and continuing until you can't or you feel stuck. And if you don't feel like that's the path, you figure it out and maybe take a different pathway, because there's all sorts of pathways you can go. I think people, especially young people, have this idea that they have to be a doctor or a lawyer, but there's all these different fields they can go into. To summarize, I would say ask questions, dig, find different pathways. If there's something you're interested in, try to find all the different avenues you can use in that pathway of learning or interest. Don't be afraid to ask a lot of questions. Don't be fearful of opinions. People have opinions, but it doesn't necessarily mean you have to take it. And don't ever let anyone tell you you can't do something.
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