Her Story
About Giovanna
Giovanna Malhotra is a Staff Technical Program Manager in the technology industry with more than 15 years of experience. She holds a degree in computer science and has progressed through roles in lead project management and program management to her current position. Her primary expertise lies in product management, where she works closely with engineers on SaaS and IoT platforms. Giovanna has completed a fellowship in data engineering at Inside Data Science, is pursuing an applied AI and ML certificate from Johns Hopkins University, and holds web development certifications from the University of California, Santa Clara. She is a member of the Project Management Institute. Giovanna attributes her success to her meditation practice, which provides positivity and clarity, helping her navigate challenges and maintain forward momentum. She values honesty, transparency, collaboration, and respect in her work, and has been recognized with a Best Shot service award along with salary increases and role advancements for her contributions to building collaborative team environments.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Giovanna
01What do you attribute your success to?
My meditation practice gives me positivism and helps me be more clear. Whenever it's a little bit clouded because of the circumstances, negative situations, if I continue the values that I learned from this meditation and practice and positive philosophy, it helps me move forward.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
When a door closes, a new one opens, and it can be even better. So we just keep going.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Keep pursuing even if when it's harder. In my case it cost me effort to get the position. There's a tendency to constrain women into assistant roles and just obey rules and not participate in strategizing or brainstorming, but even when it costs more effort we should keep going. I was able to gain respect from my manager when he got to the point that he asked me before he makes that decision and that was very assertive for me.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Tech is in quite a bad shape with a lot of layoffs. Companies are not in a positive way so the culture is becoming more pressure and increasing load on people. At the same time there are a lot of people out of jobs and that doesn't motivate teams. I have seen teams where they don't go above and beyond because there is less appreciation and value of their work less much less motivation. I am more pro working together as a team collaborate appreciate their work value and let's go together go beyond above and beyond and exceed expectations.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Honesty no matter what. Transparency. Collaboration working together as a team not only focusing on our own work but how we can help others so we can move forward because they move forward the entire project program and work move forward. Respect. I like everyone to do everything they can.
Join Influential Women and start making an impact. Register now.