Jessica Bukstel, MBA, PMP

I attribute my success to the incredible support system I've been blessed with throughout my life. I have two amazing younger brothers who've always looked up to me, and two parents who've always supported me in trying new things, who never questioned my opinions, and who always gave me a voice, no matter what. My martial arts training, specifically karate, played a huge role too. A lot of us who do martial arts were kind of bullied, quiet, shy kids, and that was definitely me in elementary school. I was just shy and quiet, and I liked my books. But karate gave me the discipline that I feel like I have now as an adult. I also have to credit my husband, who we've been together since we're kids. He has never once said to me that I can't do something. When I have any doubt, he's like, you're gonna do it. You're gonna do it. That's why I can do all of that, is because I've had an incredible support system of people who believed in me, even when I didn't believe in myself, and that is a blessing that I know most people don't have, so I'm very, very grateful for it every single day.

The best career advice I ever received came from my manager during my very first 90-day review when I had just moved out of education into my current role. She said to me, 'Jessica, I know what you... I know you know what you're talking about, but I need you to act like you know what you're talking about.' That really stuck with me. It was about leaning into who you are, your personality, and displaying confidence. It's about walking into a room and having a presence about you, and that is something that I have worked towards for the last 4 years. It's probably gotten me some opportunities that I wouldn't have gotten if I didn't do that. So I would say, walk into every room with confidence. Even if you're not the smartest person in the room, you don't have to be. You just have to be the person who asks good questions, and who is engaged, and who sits there, and even if it's a little fake, fake it till you make it, you know? That phrase is so cliche, but it actually works.

I would tell young women entering my field that there are kind of two steps, and step one is to listen. Some women come in ready to go, which is awesome, but there are people around you who know more. Listening is an extremely valuable skill that I think is very underrated, especially in today's world where you have a thousand opinions coming at you in quite literally one second. The ability to sit down, to listen, to process is so important. My first few team meetings, I didn't say a word, except to introduce myself. I listened to the interactions, to what everybody was talking about, and then I went to work on my own. I dug into my product. I pushed the buttons, mildly afraid, mind you, because I'd never pushed the back-end buttons of a system before. But I pushed the buttons and I tested things. Then, ask questions. Ask a lot of questions. Not enough questions to sideline your boss's day, but try and find the answer first, and if you can't, ask, because you're never going to get anywhere. You'll hear a lot of no's before you hear any yeses if you ask no questions. And then the third tier is, once you've listened, once you've asked, speak up. If you think something needs to be a certain way for a client based on your own experimentation, your interactions with the client, and the data that's being presented to you, you need to tell somebody, because nobody is going to read your mind. That's the one that I'm still developing. Every now and then I still sit quietly, and I'm like, wait, I know what these clients need right now, so I'm gonna say something to product, to new sales, and really make sure that they know what I'm talking about. So I would say listen, ask, and then speak up. Sometimes people get it in the wrong order, especially young women who are all excited.

I would say a big challenge that customer success, customer implementation, onboarding, support, client services, professional services - however you want to say it - is facing right now is the balance between AI and human touch. When you come to a person who needs help, having a human touch is probably the biggest challenge that my particular industry is facing right now. We're kind of at this precipice, because on the one hand, we have AI that's an extremely useful tool, very helpful, has a lot of ways that it could kind of be our little assistants. But we don't want that assistantship to take over the humanity that people need and want. They might not recognize that they need it at first, but at some point they will. Finding that balance between using AI as a tool to help us in our day-to-day lives without it overcoming the years of product knowledge and soft skills that we have worked to develop, especially people coming into the industry - that's the key. You want to make sure that the interaction you're creating with the client is very human. People are going to see a lot that's automated, a lot that bots are going to take care of. When you are really good at reading a situation, or reading a person, de-escalating the situation, and solving their problem, that is the most irreplaceable skill that maybe AI in 20, 30, 40 years might be able to emulate, but we'll never be able to replace. We need to approach AI with wary curiosity, rather than completely throwing ourselves at it. We don't want to frighten people. We want to be excited about it. Being aware of the fact that you're the person, you're the expert, and you're in charge - going forward from there is really what's going to make it be a driver for positive change within our industry.

The first thing that comes to mind is integrity. I have always had a very strong sense of integrity growing up and as an adult, especially in our current world. The ability to create something and be proud of it, and know that you are doing really good quality work - I would say that whether that's in your friendships, your marriage, with your manager, your coworkers, just behaving and working with integrity. And kindness, too. Everybody's going through something. Nobody's sitting here with all the answers. Everybody's dealing with something that we can't see. So walking into a room with kindness, starting there, and then building with integrity in the way you carry yourself, the way you do your job, the way you comport yourself with others - I think that that gets you so much further than a variety of other qualities.