Colette Boynton

I attribute my success to continuous growth and always being willing to learn and take on new challenges. That learning and development part of me is always going to be there, so I always want to have a role that's going to offer me a new challenge, something to keep me on my toes. I've gone from doing hair as a cosmetologist to being an assistant manager, then into education where I was speaking at regional and national conferences, and then I made the switch into corporate training and development. Now I've had this opportunity to make another switch into a technical program manager role where I'm again having to reinvent and learn things. That's kind of what drives me. I'm 56, and people are like, you're starting something new? And I'm like, well, yeah, I'm starting something new, I'm not done yet. Rather than having a more traditional, specific vision of where I see myself in 5 years, I look at it more generically that I just want to continue to learn. I need it to be something where I'm still learning and I'm stretching myself a little bit.

I think the number one thing is just not to shrink. One of the things I've learned over my career is, male or female, the reality is the majority of us all have some insecurity and question if we're doing the right thing or if we're in the right place. But I don't think it's a gender thing. I think men and women both have those insecurities, and it might just display differently. Men might tend towards being a little more loud, boisterous, or trying to assert themselves a little bit more than traditionally women have, and women might be more reluctant because we spend a little more time thinking about it and trying to work it through in our head before we want to put things out there. But I see in my own kids and the younger generation that a lot of those stereotypes are diminishing. I think there's more of an opportunity for young women to be present at work, to be themselves, to put themselves out there without having to feel like there's the same level of judgment. And if there is, I see women that are much more assertive about pushing back about it and not as reluctant as maybe some of us were in my younger years. I also want to show that there is that ability to grow, continue to learn, and be in multiple areas. For my generation, you grew up thinking that you were going to have a job, and that's the job you were going to do your entire life, but that doesn't necessarily happen anymore. It should be your whole career life. You should be looking for new opportunities, new ways to grow.

Right now, it's such a challenging time to even project the future because with AI, this technology, things are shifting so quickly. Back when I was teaching, I worked with middle school and high school students, and we would say it was becoming challenging because you were developing students towards roles that hadn't been created yet, and that used to go in 5 to 10-year cycles. Now it's 5 to 10-month cycles. Our company, like all tech companies, are really looking at how we're going to be using AI to best support our clients and move things forward within our own company, and how we're ensuring AI is being utilized for our associates to make sure that they've got the tools they need to do the work that can be handled by AI so they can be focusing on the more challenging work that needs a human. We've got a lot of large initiatives this year that need to be managed that are going across multiple areas of the business and having to collaborate and bring them together. AI is definitely impacting learning and development as well.