Shivani Patel

I've been working in go-to-market pre-sale roles for about 8 to 9 years, starting right after college at Hewlett Packard Enterprise as a global solution architect out of the New York metro area. Most of my time there was spent partnering with account managers, specialists, and channel partners to drive revenue growth and net new business, focusing on the hardware side - specifically servers, storage, and networking. I led many RFPs and product evaluations prior to COVID. During COVID, I was part of the HPE Ambassador Club, which gave me the opportunity to lead projects in healthcare and telco, including accelerated digital technology for COVID-19 vaccine rollouts and working with Pfizer on their vaccine research technology. After that, I saw an opportunity to join VMware to get hands-on experience from the software side when software as a service offerings were at an all-time high. I transitioned from covering enterprise accounts to working in state, local government, and higher education, including covering the United Nations as a global account. I spent a lot of time doing ransomware recovery for the counties and states of New York City and New York State, leading the effort for counties to rebuild after ransomware attacks. I also worked with the United Nations to bring together about 80 missions to deliver technology to kids and families to help them access shelter, food, and water during global food shortages. These accomplishments got me a seat at VMware's President's Club, and I sat on the Public Sector Advisory Council to propose solutions to challenges driving complexity in New York City deals and to improve job satisfaction for females and open up opportunities for millennials who were afraid to get into engineering or pre-sale roles. After that, I joined a startup briefly before joining Pure Storage, where I continued work with state and local government. Now I'm working with a whole different industry - the financial sector - modernizing what companies are doing and setting their strategy from a technology standpoint, especially with AI and everything coming in.