Jamie Lorraine Schroder

I attribute my success to a mixture of luck and hard work. I've been really lucky that opportunities have fallen in my lap, and I've known enough to take advantage of them. ServiceNow reached out to me when I didn't even know who they were - it was luck. But I don't think saying that takes away from the hard work I've done. I also think situational awareness and self-awareness are really important. Being able to read the room and know how I need to respond to my boss versus a different VP in the organization, and knowing that how I shift that is going to impact how successful those interactions are - that's a really vital skill. Ultimately, though it sounds kind of cheesy, a growth mindset is just constantly looking at how I can improve myself and the things around me. I think that's been a really big part of my success.

The best advice I ever received was from a supervisor in the military who essentially said you need to spend as much time, if not more, picking the right battle versus deciding how you're going to fight. There are so many things that happen on a day-to-day basis at work that can feel frustrating or trigger that response to want to argue about it. I think oftentimes we react and start crafting our argument or how we're going to fight something, as opposed to thinking about whether this fight is really worth it. Sometimes the fights that are really worth it lose a little bit of their emphasis because people are calling out or creating fights all the time. The way we used to say it, and I'm kind of known for saying this with my teams, is sometimes we just have to shut up in color. It's not a very PC way to say that in the corporate world, but that's essentially what it was - sometimes we don't like what's happening, but we realize that the best move is to just go along with it because there's going to be more important fights down the road.

Take your seat at the table like it's got your name on it. The tech industry, especially at higher levels, is still a male-dominated industry, and that's changing, but I think it can be easy for women to not feel like they have a seat at the table, or to feel like if they get a seat, they're lucky to be there and maybe don't have as much to contribute. I think every woman should take that seat at the table like it's got their name in front of it and they are supposed to be there, and just as worthy as everybody else there.

I think the AI transformation is the biggest challenge and opportunity right now. Companies are seeing from a distance what is possible with AI, but most of them don't know how to put that into practice, so they're not necessarily getting the returns out of it. At the same time, on the employee side, there are a lot of people who don't necessarily know what this means for them, and instead of engaging and learning about it, are potentially shying away from it, which is just going to cause them to be further and further behind. All of the fears and concerns around AI, whether they're environmental or economic, are valid and worth exploring solutions to. But just like the internet and any technology we use today, this isn't going away. AI is not going back in the box. In the learning space that I'm in, helping people understand the value and work within it effectively, and to see where their value as humans is actually raised because they should have an opportunity to do higher-level things if they have those skill sets - that's the biggest thing we're dealing with today.

I think integrity and accountability are probably the two values that come up for me continuously, both in my work and personal life. Integrity first was one of the core values in the Air Force, and it became a word that I kind of always had in my head. Being somebody who's going to do what they say they're going to do, and who does the right thing even when no one is looking, is always just something that's really stuck with me and how I assess others as well as myself. Being accountable and holding other people accountable is important. Right now, boundaries is the more common, popular term these days - setting boundaries - but it's all about accountability and aligning your accountabilities with others. Those are the two that are my foundation.