Her Story
About Laura
Laura Gilligan brings more than 31 years of experience at IBM to her current position as WW Customer Success Tooling Lead, a role she has held for six years. Her career path includes serving as operations lead for IBM's Watson Health Initiative, working on global sales incentives, managing business partners and independent software vendors, supporting sales operations for a major industry, project management, and starting as a developer. She earned a Bachelor of Science from the University of Notre Dame in 1995 as a mathematics major with a computer science minor. Gilligan is known for her commitment to mentoring younger women at IBM, her ability to communicate effectively at all organizational levels, and her focus on operational excellence and team development.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Laura
01What do you attribute your success to?
I think I just naturally like to do well. I've always been motivated to do a good job. My reputation is very important to me. I want to be known as someone who gets the work done. I'm also very good communicator. I can communicate with all levels of the business from executives to individual contributors to developers to salespeople. I just have good communication skills in the business world and I just love working with people and helping people. So the combination of all those things the roles I found myself in really play to those strengths.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Whenever you start something new give yourself 3 months before you should be expecting to know it all. Ask all the questions give yourself grace but let yourself have those 3 months to get into it figure out what you're doing and learn. In other words don't stress right away because nobody expects you to know everything right off the bat.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Figure out what you like figure out what your strengths are figure out where you could make a real difference and then go forward. Don't be afraid to take risks don't be afraid to raise your hand and volunteer. It's okay to try and fail and learn from those failures. Don't be afraid to keep taking classes and keep learning. Align yourself with mentors or more experienced people. Don't be afraid to ask questions set up just casual informational interviews or ask them for coffee and just pick their brain.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
AI how to use it how to use it responsibly how to make sure that it's trusted. With the explosion of Claude and Bob and ChatGPT all of that stuff is flooding the market and everybody is scrambling to figure out the best way to use it. It's probably the biggest one for a lot of people and my biggest concern is that people use it in a good honest trustworthy way. Also AI and figuring out how to use it smartly to solve problems but still respecting the human aspect of it all.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Trustworthiness honesty openness being frank but also being kind and nice so you can deliver a hard message in a nice way or a not nice way. I always lean towards nice but firm. And then just follow through. Following through with your commitments. And always be on time or early. That's another one. I hate being late.
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