Podcasts about ge digital

What's up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Sandy Mangat, Head of Marketing at Pocus. Summary: AI and outbound prospecting has flooded our inboxes with poorly personalized, irrelevant, and frankly lame template attempts at human connection. But some teams are seeing the light… the purple light. Sandy takes us inside the dimly lit fortune telling parlor of Pocus where we gaze into the swirling galaxies of the crystal ball of modern sales. We travel through visions of product-led sales, network referrals, signal correlation and AI agents all swirling together to fill pipelines. About SandySandy is based in beautiful Vancouver BC, she got her start at GE Digital in Product MarketingShe later moved on to ThoughtWire, a tech company specializing in smart buildingShe then joined Charli AI, a multidimensional AI company specializing in the finance sectorToday Sandy is Head of Marketing at Pocus, an AI-native prospecting platform trusted by high growth companies like Asana, Monday, Canva, and MiroOutbound Needs a Cold Hard ResetThe blunt reality about outbound sales is that automation obsession and meeting quotas have created a wasteland of deleted emails and blocked LinkedIn profiles. Sales teams continue spraying prospects with templated messages, while response rates plummet to new lows. Yet leadership keeps pushing for higher volumes, creating a self-destructive cycle that poisons potential customer relationships before they begin.This mess stems from sales organizations fundamentally misunderstanding what drives genuine business relationships. Sales leaders chase efficiency through automation, treating prospects like data points rather than future partners. The result? Inboxes overflow with desperate attempts at "personalization" that read like they were written by a caffeinated robot trying to sound human. Meanwhile, genuinely interested prospects have built fortress-like defenses against the daily barrage of cookie-cutter outreach.Consider how actual business relationships form: through authentic interactions, shared understanding, and carefully built trust. Successful outbound motions mirror this natural process, whether through thoughtful event networking, well-researched phone conversations, or precisely targeted digital outreach. Even companies swimming in inbound leads eventually require strategic outbound capabilities, especially when expanding into new markets or launching products that demand fresh customer conversations.The path forward demands embracing what experienced sales professionals already know: shortcuts and automation cannot replace genuine human connection. Sales organizations must rebuild their outbound approach from the ground up, focusing on quality interactions over vanity metrics. This means investing serious time in prospect research, crafting genuinely personalized messages, and showing patience as relationships develop organically.Key takeaway: Sales teams have to abandon the lame industrial approach to outbound prospecting and return to building relationships and human-centered selling. Ditch your batch and blast automation addiction, focus on qual over quant, and giving sales professionals the time and tools to build authentic relationships rather than chasing arbitrary activity and volume metrics.Building Sales Teams for Product Led Growth CompaniesProduct-led growth companies harbor a poorly kept secret: they all run sales teams. The idealistic vision of products that "sell themselves" crashes into market realities faster than venture capitalists can say "negative churn." Companies like Miro, Asana, and Canva discovered that relying solely on product-driven acquisition limits their growth potential, especially when expanding into new markets or use cases.The evolution of PLG sales teams reflects a sophisticated marriage between product usage data and human-driven outreach. These teams capitalize on product signals that indicate expansion potential, creating what Sandy calls "warm outbound" opportunities. When users demonstrate specific engagement patterns or hit usage thresholds, sales professionals step in to guide them toward broader adoption or premium offerings. This approach transforms traditional cold outreach into data-informed conversations with already-engaged users.Yet even these PLG darlings recognize the strategic value of traditional outbound sales. They approach their go-to-market strategy like a diversified investment portfolio, using cold outreach to hedge against the limitations of product-led acquisition. This hybrid model proves particularly valuable when testing new markets, launching products, or exploring different use cases. The rapid feedback loop from direct sales conversations provides invaluable insights that pure product analytics might miss.The WordPress.com experience illustrates this evolution perfectly. Despite massive organic traffic and brand recognition, they eventually built a sales team to capture enterprise opportunities and service-based revenue. This mirrors the broader industry pattern where even the most product-centric companies discover that sustainable growth requires a balanced approach combining automated product experiences with strategic human intervention.Key takeaway: Successful PLG companies build sales teams that leverage both product usage signals and traditional outbound tactics. Rather than choosing between product-led or sales-led growth, organizations should create a balanced strategy that uses product data to inform outreach while maintaining direct sales capabilities for market expansion and enterprise opportunities.How Product Led Sales Teams Time Their Customer OutreachThese days every SaaS company wants the magic of product-led growth: minimal sales headcount, viral expansion, and revenue that scales without an army of account executives. Yet behind the glossy investor decks and growth charts lurks an uncomfortable reality about human intervention in the sales process. Even the most automated, product-led companies scramble to hire sales teams the moment enterprise deals enter the picture.The data tells a ruthlessly practical story: throwing sales resources at every free trial wastes everyone's time while ignoring high-value accounts costs serious money. Smart companies obsess over usage patterns, tracking signals that indicate when a prospect needs human guidance versus automated nurturing. They build sophisticated scoring models to spot accounts teetering between self-service success and quiet abandonment, timing their outreach to tip the scales toward expansion.Sandy points out how divergent growth patterns demand radically different playbooks. Some products drive natural expansion through viral team adoption but struggle with initial activation. Others convert early users easily yet hit a wall when trying to expand across departments. These distinct patterns create clear intervention points where human touch generates outsized returns, whether that means helping a complex enterprise implementation succeed or guiding teams toward advanced features that unlock real value.The reality of product-led sales revolves around mapping your market's actual behavior, not following someone else's playbook. Enterprise deals often demand early sales involvement due to security requirements and complex buying processes. Other segments thrive on automated expansion until they hit specific technical or organizational barriers. Companies who understand these patterns build flexible systems that deploy sales resources at precise moments of maximum leverage rather than burning cycles on low-value outreach.Key takeaway: Map your actual user b...

The Gateway is excited to welcome Denis Sitailo a Principal Technical Program Manager with the GE Healthcare IT Business Development Team. Denis has been with the company for 15 years, starting as an intern in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Along his journey, he held multiple positions ranging from completion of the Information Technology Leadership Program, to running IT Infrastructure Integrations for GE Healthcare, GE Digital, and GE Corporate. In his various roles he has made significant contributions to integrating 30+ M&A deals, enhancing GE's digital footprint, and streamlining numerous processes. His expertise spans from understanding wide-ranging technology stacks, assessing W2W business processes, enterprise applications, change management, user enablement, and PMO/program management. Denis holds a bachelor's degree from Loyola University Chicago in Communications Networks and Security. Denis lives in Naperville, IL with his wife and two daughters. Outside of work he enjoys camping, gardening, cryptocurrency, and supporting Ukraine in their fight against Russian aggression.

Send us a textIn this episode of the Consulting Growth Podcast, we sit down with pricing strategy maestro Ethan Williams, who transitioned from real estate investment banking to becoming an authoritative voice in global pricing strategy. Here is Ethan's AI Pricing Advisor: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-MNWgcA4wX-value-based-pricing-advisorHere's Ethan's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethan-williams-8567278/We dive deep into Ethan's experiences at GE Digital, PwC, and McKinsey, and his transformative work at FGS Global. Ethan unveils the secrets behind moving from traditional time-and-materials pricing to value-based models, shedding light on how these shifts not only elevate client value but fundamentally alter business models. Learn about the art of leading pricing transformations and the most common objections consultants face when adopting value-based pricing.Ethan also discusses the impact of AI and automation on consulting practices, making the case for abandoning time-based pricing in favor of more efficient models. Get practical advice on implementing value-based pricing, including strategies for maintaining confidence during negotiations and presenting clients with engaging scope options. We wrap up with heartening insights into how AI and low-code solutions are democratizing advanced tools, leveling the playing field for smaller consultancies. This episode is a must-listen for anyone eager to stay ahead in a rapidly evolving consulting landscape.Prof. Joe O'Mahoney helps boutique consultancies scale and exit. Joe's research, writing, speaking and insights can be found at www.joeomahoney.com

Send us a textField services businesses have undergone significant evolution, incorporating elements of Industry 4.0 and CRM. This convergence may be a key factor driving Salesforce's deep engagement in this market. ServiceMax stands out as a prime example of a company that has demonstrated remarkable potential within the field service sector. Originating as an ISV within the Salesforce ecosystem, ServiceMax has transitioned through various ownerships, including GE Digital, Silver Lake, and now PTC. These transitions have played a pivotal role in shaping ServiceMax's identity and fostering a novel category that transcends traditional boundaries. This category intersects CRM, engineering, and CAD, offering a unique proposition that traditional field service models may struggle to grasp. In light of these developments, it's crucial to assess where ServiceMax currently stands in terms of its capabilities and how it stacks up against other solutions within its category.In today's episode, we invited a panel of industry experts for a live discussion on LinkedIn to conduct an independent review of ServiceMax's capabilities. We covered many grounds including where ServiceMax might be a a fit in the enterprise architecture and where it might be overused. Finally, they analyze many data points to help understand the core strengths and weaknesses of ServiceMax.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs. rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform. 

Greg Petroff discusses the practicalities of executive design leadership, why he believes in ‘make to think', and the ins-and-outs of working with product and engineering. Highlights include: How much advocacy for design is too much? Why do you prefer project-based teams over product-based teams? How do you align the engineering, product and design organisations? How have your recent experiences in the labour market changed you? What does effective compromise look like in enterprise software design? ====== Who is Greg Petroff? A 25 year veteran of the design field, for the past 10 years Greg has led significant design organisations at some of the world's largest and most recognisable companies.  Until recently, he was the vice president and chief design officer of Cisco Secure, where he led the design innovation and transformation of one of the world's largest cybersecurity solutions providers. His highlight reel also includes being the chief experience officer at GE Digital, managing director of Google Cloud, vice president and global head of design at ServiceNow, and senior vice president of design at Compass. One of the early members of our emerging field, Greg is a founding board member of the Interaction Design Association, where he also contributed as the treasurer and as an early conference chair.  A generous contributor to the field, Greg has shared his insights on stages across the world, including at TedX, the Interaction conference, UX Australia, Enterprise UX, and on the most-excellent Finding Our Way podcast. ====== Find Greg here: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gpetroff/  X: https://twitter.com/gpetroff ====== Liked what you heard and want to hear more? Subscribe and support the show by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts (or wherever you listen). Follow us on our other social channels for more great Brave UX content! YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/TheSpaceInBetween/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-space-in-between/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thespaceinbetw__n/ ====== Hosted by Brendan Jarvis: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanjarvis/ Website: https://thespaceinbetween.co.nz/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/brendanjarvis/

Author and UX Legend Greg Nudelman was one of the original guests on In Conversation with UX Magazine over eight years ago. He returns for a rich conversation about the frenzied intersection of UX and AI. Greg has honed his craft as a design lead at GE Digital, Cisco, and eBay and has worked with organizations like IBM, Oracle, Associated Press, and Intuit. He's currently a Distinguished Designer at Sumo and has written numerous books including The $1 Prototype and Designing Search. He joins Robb and Josh to discuss ways that we can iterate faster and further in the age of AI.

Andrea interviews William Ruh, former CEO of Lendlease Digital and GE Digital, about leadership during digital transformation. William shares how cultural alignment and change management are critical for success, often more so than the technology itself. Rue also discusses the need for CEOs to be curious, keep learning, and pivot quickly in the face of increasing complexity. He talks about establishing strong partnerships with boards and maintaining personal resilience to handle the demands of leadership today. Leaders Show BRAND NEW YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC59dect0RJ5cuxIXsX7hCRw KEY TAKEAWAYS Digital transformation success depends heavily on cultural alignment and change management skills like communication, empathy and enrolment. Leaders should identify and partner with "the coalition of the willing" in the organisation to drive change rather than trying to change everyone at once. Monetisation strategy for digital innovation must be clear - either embedded in existing offerings or as a new line of business. Running an internal start-up has unique challenges - the speed of a start-up with the processes of an established business. With the increasing pace of change, CEO resilience, learning agility and the ability to quickly pivot strategy are critical leadership capabilities. Strong board relationships and a personal support system are essential to handle the pressures faced by modern CEOs. BEST MOMENTS "The soft skills are the most important thing. How you help the organisation through [digital transformation] is more important in some ways than what your technology is." "You've got to be able to make that cultural shift. Existing cultures and businesses often find it very difficult to embrace the change." "I realised that I'm responsible for seeing the world change. I'm responsible for learning gen AI...I'm responsible for figuring out where things are going." "If you're not good at managing your board, the board is going to manage you. So that is the challenge many CEOs definitely wrestle with." VALUABLE RESOURCES Like the show? Please leave or write a review on your favourite podcast platform! The World Class Leaders Show YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC59dect0RJ5cuxIXsX7hCRw Let Andrea know your thoughts or share your comments via LinkedIn or via email For more information on Andrea's work and access to other valuable resources, please visit the website    If you don't want to miss any episode and receive the full article in your inbox, subscribe today to our blog Need more? Book a 30 min call here: Need more? Book a 30 min call here: https://calendly.com/andreapetrone/strategy-call-30. ABOUT THE GUEST Mr. William Ruh most recently served as the Chief Executive Officer for Lendlease Digital. In this role, he built two new businesses to help transform the real estate industry. LendLease Digital is developing the world's first set of Autonomous Building products to automate design, supply chain, and operations. He serves on the Board of Directors for both start-ups. Prior to joining Lendlease, Mr. Ruh was the CEO of GE Digital and the Chief Digital Officer for GE. During his tenure, Mr. Ruh led the charge to develop the first cloud-based platform for the industrial world and established the GE Digital business unit. A recognized expert in the emerging Industrial Internet of Things he helped establish the Industrial Internet Consortium and was a member of the US Dept of Commerce Digital Economy Board of Advisors. ABOUT THE HOST My name is Andrea Petrone. I'm a Human Performance and Leadership Advisor, Executive Coach and International Speaker. I help leaders and their teams to change their mindsets and master their leadership capabilities so they can achieve extraordinary performance. I've been in the corporate world for more than 20 years working globally - in 6 countries and 3 continents - for medium-large companies.

Industrial Talk is onsite at SMRP 31 and talking to Paul Casto, APM Industry Principal at GE Digital about "The trends and benefits of being connected with SMRP.org".  Here are some of the key takeaways from our conversation: Securing operational technology with zero trust. 0:00 Palo Alto Networks offers zero trust security for operational technology, simplifying management and protecting assets. Industrial talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. 1:16 Scott Mackenzie welcomes listeners to the SMRP 31 conference in Orlando, where he will be talking to Paul GE Digital about industry trends and innovations. Paul Casto discusses APM, maintenance, reliability, and asset performance management, highlighting the differences between these concepts. Asset management strategies and technology adoption. 4:55 Paul Casto emphasizes the importance of aligning asset management with business outcomes, identifying blockers to achieving those outcomes, and addressing them through strategic planning and asset performance management. Paul Casto highlights the need to think about asset management as a strategic part of the organization, rather than just a maintenance or reliability issue, and to prioritize value creation through asset-focused initiatives. Successful organizations prioritize sustainability and adoption when implementing new technologies. Prioritizing assets for maintenance and reliability. 9:27 Leaders must prioritize and educate operational teams on asset management to ensure proper execution. Continuity between leadership is crucial for long-term success, but it can be challenging to maintain as executives move on. Risk management and asset performance in maintenance and reliability. 13:30 Paul Casto emphasizes the importance of embedding risk management into the organization's culture, as it's hard to do it if it were easy. Paul Casto and Scott MacKenzie discuss how to infuse risk and quantify risks, dynamically, using criticality analysis and asset health data. Scott MacKenzie highlights the importance of dynamic risk management in asset performance management, particularly in the context of GE Digital's work with customers. Paul Casto discusses the growth of SMRP, including the organization's certifications, training, and working relationships with other organizations globally. SMRP certification and its impact in asset management. 19:29 Scott MacKenzie interviews Paul Hall about SMRP, a professional organization for asset management, reliability, and maintenance. Paul Casto provides contact information for SMRP and encourages listeners to reach out for more information. Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “

Megan Bickle is the Director of Culture, Employee Engagement and Employee Listening at Western Digital. In Megan's experience, roles can be viewed as a collection of skills. Viewing roles this way allows organizations to be more responsive to the evolving needs of the business in terms of the skills needed for development and hiring. Megan believes that job architecture is essential to becoming a skills-based organization. Skills were a part of their overall integrated talent management strategy, infused throughout the organization. Capability models and job structures were built in tandem. In this conversation, Megan shares her experience building a skills-based organization as the Global Talent Management and Organizational Development Leader at GE Digital. You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in...Learning more about Megan Bickle [4:45]What a skills-based organization is [6:03]Why job architecture is important in skills-based organizations [9:04]How a capabilities-based architecture works in practice [18:06]Accounting for the evolution of the skills themselves [22:13]How learning/development dovetails into talent practices [24:34]Managing the ownership of the architecture [28:19]The lightning round [33:07]How the skills effort evolves over time/lessons learned [36:48]How people analytics were involved in the process [39:30]The strategy for assessing employee skills [42:37]Why Megan does the work she does [48:32]Resources & People MentionedBOOK - Good to Great by Jim CollinsConnect with Megan BickleConnect on LinkedInConnect With Red Thread ResearchWebsite: Red Thread ResearchOn LinkedInOn FacebookOn TwitterSubscribe to WORKPLACE STORIES

Monetizing clean energy tax credits is already tough enough. Critical to clean energy deployment, tax equity financing is both inefficient and undersupplied. And it could get a lot worse.A rule proposed by banking authorities could have big impacts on the few remaining tax equity financiers by upending how they weight project risk. Simply put, the rule would quadruple capital requirements for banks holding tax equity investments.Episode 62 of the Factor This! podcast features Hilary Lefko, a partner at the law firm Norton Rose Fulbright.Lefko shares why the “Basel III” ruling could lead to "dire consequences" for the tax equity market and clean energy goals.Watch the full episode on YouTubeTransition-AI: New York is a one-day conference and workshop being held in Manhattan on October 19th. It features experts from Microsoft, GE Digital, AES, National Grid, Oracle, and a diverse range of experts who are building AI strategies right now. Factor This! listeners get 10% off. Go to transition-ai to your ticket, and use the code pspods10. You have probably heard a lot about artificial intelligence lately. The market for AI in energy will be worth $13 billion in the next few years. If you want to understand this space and how it will impact clean energy, you should come to Transition-AI: New York on October 19th. Factor This! listeners get 10% off by using the code pspods10.

This Week in Cleantech is a new, weekly podcast covering the most impactful stories in cleantech and climate in 15 minutes or less. Produced by Renewable Energy World and Tigercomm, This Week in Cleantech will air every Friday in the Factor This! podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts.This week's episode features Wall Street climate finance reporter Amrith Ramkumar who breaks down a major fundraising deal for green hydrogen startup Electric Hydrogen. This Week in Cleantech  — October 6, 20231. Americans don't hate living near solar and wind farms as much as you might think — The Washington Post and Renewable Energy Is Reckoning With Its Perception in Rural America — CNET2. The US power grid quietly survived record summer heat waves without outages — Vox3. Renewable energy stocks hit hard by higher interest rates — Financial Times4. Underground thermal energy networks are becoming crucial to the US's energy future — MIT Technology Review5. The Secret Behind the First $1 Billion Green Hydrogen Startup — The Wall Street Journal Watch the full episode on YouTubeHelp make This Week in Cleantech the best it can be. Send feedback and story recommendations to ThisWeekInCleantech@tigercomm.us. And don't forget to leave a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts.Join us every Friday for new episodes of This Week in Cleantech in the Factor This! podcast feed, and tune into new episodes of Factor This! every Monday.This Week in Cleantech is hosted by Renewable Energy World senior content director John Engel and Tigercomm president Mike Casey. The show is produced by Brian Mendes with research support from Alex Petersen and Clare Quirin. Transition-AI: New York is a one-day conference and workshop being held in Manhattan on October 19th. It features experts from Microsoft, GE Digital, AES, National Grid, Oracle, and a diverse range of experts who are building AI strategies right now. Factor This! listeners get 10% off. Go to transition-ai to your ticket, and use the code pspods10.

Covid, Inflation, Supply Chain interruptions and more have caused very volatile markets. A&D has also seen its share of volatility…and it is ever adapting to the environment.   With the squeeze on labor, working capital and raw materials organic growth seems difficult - but not impossible.   It's a market of contradictions. The deal flow is there, but it's also a tumultuous time to borrow money. There are a lot of great contracts, but with a backed up supply chain, manufacturers don't have the capacity to fill them. How are M&A advisors helping clients through these challenges? Where are the most surprising opportunities right now?   In this episode, I'm joined by managing partners at Coeptis Consulting Group, Chuck Adams and Corbin Metz. They share why it's equally an exciting and challenging time to be in this industry, and navigating the exciting world of A&D from an entrepreneurial perspective.   Space is growing faster than people think, and there's a big renewal in focus on it, especially on the commercial side. -Chuck Adams   Things You'll Learn In This Episode   -The drive for diversification How are the companies getting pummeled by current supply chain constraints responding to these challenges?    -Private equity…a gift and a curse With an industry-wide squeeze on working capital, what are the challenges of taking the route of a strategic buyer?   -Raytheon GTF - a cause for concern Will this engine's recent setbacks affect its perceived reliability?   -Step out and bet on yourself What drove Chuck and Corbin to leave big Corporate America and venture out on their own? What are the biggest differences between entrepreneurship and working for a huge company?     Guest Bio   Chuck Adams is the managing partner of Coeptis Consulting Group. He brings years of experience to the firm with a background in the aviation/aerospace, automotive, and industrial goods industries. His deep, technical engineering expertise, combined with his business background, provides our clientele with a comprehensive, technical-business examination when providing our services. Prior to co-founding Coeptis Consulting Group, he spent over six and a half years at GE Aviation  providing engineering & business services, interacting with internal & external production and MRO shops around the globe on various product lines, including the CFM56, LEAP, GE90, and CF34 commercial lines, as well graduating from GE's Engineering Development Program. Before GE, he also spent time in the automotive, food manufacturing, industrial goods, construction, and video game industries. Additionally, he has founded a few companies, including a profitable residential & commercial construction firm in the local Idaho area, and is well-versed in data analysis, including programming (Python, MATLAB, SQL, and more). Chuck holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Boise State University, a MS in Mechanical Engineering from North Dakota State University, and an MBA from Indiana University.   Corbin Metz is the managing partner of Coeptis Consulting Group. She has spent well over a decade driving value in organizations across the aviation/aerospace, rail transportation, and industrial goods industries. Her deep operations experience compliments her strong expertise in the digital transformation & solutions space, allowing thorough understanding & implementation of solutions, observing best practices, and simplifying operations to drive business value, including the usage of techniques such as Lean Six Sigma, Change Management, and AGILE development. Prior to co-founding Coeptis Consulting Group, Corbin has spent over a combined decade alone at GE Aviation, GE Global Operations, GE Digital, and GE Transportation, delivering savings and simplification in many facets of the businesses. Also, she is a graduate of GE's well-renowned Operations Management Leadership Program (OMLP), and has deep front-line experience in the production shop environment. Corbin holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering & MMBA from Miami University, and a Master of Supply Chain Management from Penn State University.    To find out more, go to https://www.coeptiscg.com/ or phone 253-720-9058.     Learn More About Your Host: Co-founder and Managing Partner for Northstar Group, Craig is focused on recruiting senior-level leadership, sales, and operations executives for some of the most prominent companies in the aviation and aerospace industry. Clients include well-known aircraft OEMs, aircraft operators, leasing / financial organizations, and Maintenance / Repair / Overhaul (MRO) providers.   Since 2009 Craig has personally concluded more than 150 executive searches in a variety of disciplines. As the only executive recruiter who has flown airplanes, sold airplanes, AND run a business, Craig is uniquely positioned to build deep, lasting relationships with both executives and the boards and stakeholders they serve. This allows him to use a detailed, disciplined process that does more than pair the ideal candidate with the perfect opportunity and hit the business goals of the companies he serves.

Nina Gigele tut das, was sie liebt und was ihr am meisten Spaß macht. Sie verbindet die Herausforderungen der Wirtschaft und der Digitalisierung mit Sport und ist dabei immer auf der Suche nach dem Guten. Als ehemalige Leistungssportlerin weiß sie, wie es ist, die eigenen Grenzen zu überschreiten, die eigene Komfortzone zu erweitern und Rückschläge zu überwinden. Genau das begeistert sie auch heute noch: immer außerhalb ihrer Komfortzone zu sein und nach neuen Herausforderungen zu suchen. Im Podcast-Interview spricht Nina Gigele mit Podcast-Host Robert Pacher über ihre schwere Verletzung, ihre Unternehmungen, Smartphone-Konsum und Social Media. ⬇️ **Nina Gigele** Gründerin Boutiq Vision

✅ Request A Customized Workshop For Your Team And Company:  http://assertiveway.com/workshops Ever wondered how to engage with a mentor without feeling awkward? Our guest has found out how. Kelly Thomas is an accomplished Operations and Pricing Leader for power generation, oil, and gas at GE Digital. Not only is she a beacon of candid communication and DEI advocacy, she also serves as the Women's Network Co-Chair, and is a proud mom, mentor, and budding runner. Tune in to this episode to discover: ✔️The subtle art of engaging with your mentor even in the face of initial awkwardness. ✔️The transformation of mentors into sponsors and how it paves the way to success. ✔️The importance of using your mentor not just as a venting machine, but as a tool for growth. ✔️The essence of Lean Thinking and how it can be used to gain support and buy-in. ✔️A real-world approach to applying Lean Thinking in group problem-solving scenarios. ✔️The fulfillment derived from giving and receiving feedback with candor. Through her own journey and experiences, Kelly unveils the powerful blend of mentorship, Lean Thinking, and candid feedback that is required for individual and team success. Join us for an enlightening conversation and start embracing the power of effective communication today!   ✅ Follow Ivna Curi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivna-curi-mba-67083b2/     ✅ Other Episodes You'll Like Mastering Mentor & Sponsor Connections: Insider Advice from 5 Trailblazing Professionals (Compilation): https://speakyourmindnow.libsyn.com/mastering-mentor-sponsor-connections-insider-advice-from-5-trailblazing-professionals Leadership and Advocacy: Creating Positive Change: https://speakyourmindnow.libsyn.com/leadership-and-advocacy-creating-positive-change Ask and You Shall Receive: How to Make Requests that Unlock Success and Propel Your Life Forward: https://speakyourmindnow.libsyn.com/ask-and-you-shall-receive-how-to-make-requests-that-unlock-success-and-propel-your-life-forward What People Get Wrong About Trust: https://speakyourmindnow.libsyn.com/what-people-get-wrong-about-trust 13 Bad Reasons Why You Don't Ask For What You Want: https://speakyourmindnow.libsyn.com/13-bad-reasons-why-you-dont-ask-for-what-you-want The Art of Asking for Feedback: Tips and Techniques: https://speakyourmindnow.libsyn.com/the-art-of-asking-for-feedback-tips-and-techniques How to Respond to Constructive Criticism: Learning to Love Negative Feedback: https://speakyourmindnow.libsyn.com/how-to-respond-to-constructive-criticism-learning-to-love-negative-feedback How To Receive Feedback Gracefully (And What Not To Do): https://speakyourmindnow.libsyn.com/how-to-receive-feedback-gracefully-and-what-not-to-do How To Take Criticism Without Getting Defensive (an assertiveness technique with examples): https://speakyourmindnow.libsyn.com/how-to-take-criticism-without-getting-defensive 5 Better Ways To Say Good Job : https://speakyourmindnow.libsyn.com/5-better-ways-to-say-good-job     ✅ Free Resources Podcast Summaries & More Email Newsletter: https://assertiveway.com/newsletter Our Linkedin Blog Articles:  https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6863880009879306240/   Women in Tech Leaders Podcast Interviews: https://assertiveway.com/womenintechpodcastguests/ TEDx Talk How To Speak Up Safely When It's Psychologically Unsafe: https://assertiveway.aweb.page/safespeak 10 Day free Assertive And Liked Challenge: https://assertiveway.aweb.page/beassertiveandliked Assertiveness free training: https://assertiveway.aweb.page/getahead Other Free resources: https://assertiveway.com/free/ Podcast page: https://assertiveway.com/podcast-speak-your-mind-unapologetically/   ✅ Work With Us Workshops: http://assertiveway.com/workshops   Services: https://assertiveway.com/offerings Contact me: info@assertiveway.com or ivnacuri@assertiveway.com Contact me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivna-curi-mba-67083b2 Website: https://assertiveway.com   ✅ Support The Podcast Rate the podcast on apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/speak-your-mind-unapologetically-podcast/id1623647915 Ask me your question for the next episode: https://www.speakpipe.com/speakyourmindquestion   ✅ Podcast Topic Compilations 8 Real Life Examples On How To Deal With Difficult Coworkers (Compilation): https://speakyourmindnow.libsyn.com/8-examples-on-how-to-deal-with-difficult-coworkers Mastering Mentor & Sponsor Connections: Insider Advice from 5 Trailblazing Professionals (Compilation): https://speakyourmindnow.libsyn.com/mastering-mentor-sponsor-connections-insider-advice-from-5-trailblazing-professionals How To Find Courage To Speak Up (Compilation): https://speakyourmindnow.libsyn.com/how-to-find-courage-to-speak-up-4-examples 4 Examples On How To Get The Promotion You Want (Compilation): https://speakyourmindnow.libsyn.com/4-examples-on-how-to-get-the-promotion-you-want 4 Tips On How To Successfully Share Your Ideas At Work (Compilation): https://speakyourmindnow.libsyn.com/4-tips-on-how-to-successfully-share-your-ideas-at-work-compilation How To Cope With Stress At Work (Compilation): https://speakyourmindnow.libsyn.com/how-to-cope-with-stress-at-work-compilation     #Mentorship #LeanThinking #CandidCommunication #SpeakYourMindUnapologetically

Join Andreas Senie and special guest Charli AI Intel's CEO Kevin Collins as they dive deep into the state of Artificial Intelligence, AI's place in Commercial Real Estate, and talk about how AI can be used and misused in the workplace.Kevin has more than 30 years of experience and extensive knowledge in artificial intelligence and machine learning, both as an entrepreneur and a corporate executive. As Founder and CEO at Charli AI, he oversees a team of expert scientists that are pushing the boundaries of innovation in the AI-driven intelligent content management space. Before founding Charli AI, Kevin was CEO and Co-Founder at Bit Stew Systems, a data intelligence platform, which was acquired by GE Digital for its AI and ML capabilities in 2016. Prior to his time in Silicon Valley, Kevin worked in the high-tech networking and security field, and led technology firms specializing in cryptography, public key infrastructures and high-performance and scalable networks. As a serial entrepreneur, Kevin is passionate about sharing his expertise in building and growing successful startups. Before founding Charli AI, Kevin was CEO and Co-Founder at Bit Stew Systems, a data intelligence platform, which was acquired by GE Digital for its AI and ML capabilities in 2016. Prior to his time in Silicon Valley, Kevin worked in the high-tech networking and security field, and led technology firms specializing in cryptography, public key infrastructures and high-performance and scalable networks. Sector Interviews are bonus episodes of CRECo.ai Real Estate Roundtable - Your comprehensive all-in-one view of what's happening across the real estate industry -- straight from some of the industry's earliest technology adopters and foremost experts.This bonus episode of the RoundTable included: Andreas SenieHost, Founder CRECollaborative Non Profit & For Profit Business Technology Transformation ChampionCRETech Thought Leader, Founder & Brokerage Owner ABOUT THE ROUNDTABLE: Your comprehensive all-in-one view of what's happening across the real estate industry -- straight from some of the industry's earliest technology adopters and foremost experts. Join us live at 6 PM EST on the 1st Thursday of each month, across all major social media channels and wherever you get your podcasts. This three-part show consists of:Part I: Introductions and what's new for each panelist and the business sectorPart II: Sector Focus on the past month's most prominent news and paradigm shiftsPart III: What does all this mean for real estate businesses, and what you can do for the next 30 daysJoin us as we dive deep into Technology, Marketing, Capital, Construction & Cyber Security trends affecting your business. #datadrivenbusiness #businessmanagement #commercialrealestate#podcast #AI #business 

On the podcast this week, Clint re-visits some of the best moments from the conversations he's had so far this year.Cathy Orquiola, West Region VP of PCL ConstructionDoug Bawel, CEO of Jasper Engines & TransmissionsDr. Brett Walkenhorst, CTO of Bastille NetworksDr. Franklin Chang-Diaz, Chairman & CEO of Ad Astra Rocket CompanyDr. Olga Kubassova, Founder & CEO of Image Analysis GroupEd Mas, President of VOXX AutomotiveJames Sanduski, President of Sharp Electronics Corporation USAJohn Zahurancik, President of the Americas of FluenceKristen Sanderson, VP of Customer Advocacy & Chief Diversity Officer, GE Digital.Thank you to all my guests for joining me this year and sharing your thoughts, ideas, and expertise.

How do we modernize the grid when fast-moving technology innovation hits the seemingly glacial pace of change in regulated markets like energy? To explore that quandary we gathered  the CEOs of an earlier stage, a growth stage and a later stage innovative grid solutions companies. Kaitlyn Albertoli of Buzz Solutions, Bill Burke of Virtual Peaker and Josh Wong of GE Digital. Listen in as they dive into market barriers, utility adoption cycle, culture of innovation, funding landscape and more. Can utilities break through the ‘death by pilot' dilemma? Can promising solutions companies navigate complex approvals processes? How do solutions scale to meaningful commercial levels? We cover the key issues related to what it takes for game-changing solutions to come onto the electric grid. 

Julio Mestroni, former Chief Commercial Officer – Power Digital, GE Digital - Digital Energy by Momenta

In this episode, Clint has a conversation with Kristen Sanderson, VP of Customer Advocacy and Chief Diversity Officer at GE Digital. During their chat, Kristen shares strategies for building a sense of inclusion amongst all team members, defines unconscious bias and gives examples, and talks about making the transition from engineering to people management. Plus, Kristen gives some key advice for leaders looking to improve their communication clarity. This is the second part of a two-part discussion.

In this episode Clint has a conversation with Kristen Sanderson, VP of Customer Advocacy and Chief Diversity Officer at GE Digital. During their discussion, the two chat about Kristen's 30-plus-year career at GE, the joy she gets from helping her customers succeed, and why using inclusive language is integral to being a leader of global teams. Plus, Kristen talks about her work with the GE Girl's camp, a program that encourages girls to get involved in STEM. This is the first part of a two-part discussion.

Daniel Langley chats with Luke Smaul, VP Professional Services at Flashpoint. Luke has worked in the digital industry for over 20 years, applying strategic thinking to new go-to-market and business models. He has successfully spearheaded large multinational digital transformation projects for Fortune 100 companies before going out on his own to bring his expertise to others. Luke's passion is creating new business models across a range of verticals in both the discrete and process space using IoT Edge sensors, big data, and advanced analytics. He advises global and early-stage firms focusing on digital strategy, sales/marketing, and go-to-market (GTM) planning leveraging his prior executive experience at GE Digital, Flashpoint, and his own firm, Chakra. We hope you enjoy this episode! All feedback is welcome and we'd love for you to comment your views on each show. #manufacturingIT #manufacturingtechnology #MES #industry40 #ManufacturingOperationsManagement #ManufacturingIntelligenceSystems #ManufacturingExecutionSystems #ProcessAutomationSystems #IndustrialInternetofThings #IIoT #ComputerSystemValidation #ProcessControlSystems #DataHistorianSystems #AdvancedAnalytics #SCADA #Syncade #DeltaV #Pasx #RockwellFactoryTalk #rockwell #PlantPAx #AllenBradley #RSLogix #SiemensSimatic #siemens #SimaticBatch #PCS7 #Step7 #WincCC #Wonderware #GE #SAP #PomsNet #Apriso #Werum #OSI #LIMS #800xA #flashpoint

Industrial Talk is onsite at the 30th Annual SMRP conference and talking to Paul Casto, APM Industry Principal at GE Digital about "Focusing on Asset Reliability is Critical to your Industrial Success". Get the answers to your "Reliability" questions along with Paul's  unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview! Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2022. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy! PAUL CASTO'S CONTACT INFORMATION: Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-casto-2b8bb218/ Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ge-digital/ Company Website: https://www.ge.com/digital/ PODCAST VIDEO: https://youtu.be/TAnzFXBpWMM THE STRATEGIC REASON "WHY YOU NEED TO PODCAST": OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES: NEOM: https://www.neom.com/en-us AI Dash: https://www.aidash.com/ Hitachi Vantara: https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/home.html Industrial Marketing Solutions:  https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-marketing/ Industrial Academy: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-academy/ Industrial Dojo: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial_dojo/ We the 15: https://www.wethe15.org/ YOUR INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TOOLBOX: LifterLMS: Get One Month Free for $1 – https://lifterlms.com/ Active Campaign: Active Campaign Link Social Jukebox: https://www.socialjukebox.com/ Industrial Academy (One Month Free Access And One Free License For Future Industrial Leader): Business Beatitude the Book Do you desire a more joy-filled, deeply-enduring sense of accomplishment and success? Live your business the way you want to...

As Martyna Lewinksa explains in this episode, everything is a learning opportunity! And to be the best entrepreneur you can be, don't ever stop learning. This episode is a lesson in the value of having an open mind, being honest and transparent, and asking for feedback! About Martyna Lewinska:Martyna Lewinska is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Fiat Republic. She has over eight years of experience in technical and leadership roles across multiple industries, and most recently, she served as the Head of Platform Engineering at OpenPayd (payments), Ex-Habito (mortgages), GE Digital, and ABB.Episode highlights: Being authentic and transparent with potential hires is a much better approach than pretending that everything is perfect. Honesty creates trust, and mutual trust is one of the foundations of a solid team. (15:30) Never stop learning! Every situation you face and every person you meet offers an opportunity for learning if you are open to it. (19:49) Failures are inevitable along your journey as an entrepreneur. Rather than trying to avoid them, accept the fact that you will make mistakes and be open to learning from them. (20:33) You won't know if you're good at something until you try, so just go for it! (21:40) If you want to continuously improve as an entrepreneur, always ask for feedback from the people around you who you trust. That way, you can learn what areas you need to focus on and improve. (22:50) Martyna's best advice for entrepreneurs:“We're constantly evolving so I need to keep learning all the time. I learn from every situation, every problem that I face, every conversation that I have. For me, everything is a learning opportunity.” (16:59)  Connect with Martyna: LinkedIn Twitter Website Follow Beyond 8 Figures: LinkedIn Twitter Website

With over two decades of experience in digital products, I have created consumer web and mobile experiences for consumer and enterprise companies such as GE Digital, Salesforce, Rhapsody and eBay.

On the show, I speak to Yanyan Wu, the Vice President of Data and Analytics at Verisk. Yanyan shares her strategies, from structuring to scaling an analytics team. Key Takeaways: Challenges in building and scaling an analytics team. Dealing with the technology gap Getting the right people on your team, Roles and responsibilities of a team leader Learning metrics that matter to your members. Challenges in finding someone technically strong and a great analyst. Ways to Identify the future leader in your team and traits that must-haves. About today's guest: As a vice president and data analytics expert, Yanyan Wu develops innovative data analytics strategies and transformed data platforms for big data used in the oil&gas industry. She layout the multi-year product development roadmap and execution to deliver the data and data insights to internal and external clients to enable them to make smart investment decisions/recommendations. Yanyan's 15-year career in product management and digital technologies spans the head of data analytics in Halliburton digital solution, Principal digital production manager at GE Digital and Senior production manager at GE Oil&Gas from transforming digital technologies to new product development and its commercialization in financial service and energy businesses. She led the team to help businesses to increase productivity by more than LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wuyanyan/ ___ Thank you so much for checking out this episode of The Tech Trek, and we would appreciate it if you would take a minute to rate and review us on your favorite podcast player. Want to learn more about us? Head over at https://www.elevano.com Have questions or want to cover specific topics with our future guests? Please message me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand)

On this week's Industrial Talk we're onsite at DistribuTech 22 and talking to Scott Reese, CEO of GE Digital about "Expediting the Energy Transition by Leveraging Powerful Software".  Get the answers to your "Energy Transition" questions along with Scott's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview! Finally, get your exclusive free access to the https://industrialtalk.com/wp-admin/inforum-industrial-academy-discount/ (Industrial Academy) and a series on “https://industrialtalk.com/why-you-need-to-podcast/ (Why You Need To Podcast)” for Greater Success in 2022. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy! SCOTT REESE'S CONTACT INFORMATION: Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottreese1/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottreese1/) Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ge-digital/ (https://www.linkedin.com/company/ge-digital/) Company Website: https://www.ge.com/digital/ (https://www.ge.com/digital/) PODCAST VIDEO: https://youtu.be/JkJPPM2UezA THE STRATEGIC REASON "WHY YOU NEED TO PODCAST": https://industrialtalk.com/why-you-need-to-podcast/ () OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES: NEOM:  https://www.neom.com/en-us (https://www.neom.com/en-us) Hitachi Vantara: https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/home.html (https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/home.html) Industrial Marketing Solutions:  https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-marketing/ (https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-marketing/) Industrial Academy: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-academy/ (https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-academy/) Industrial Dojo: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial_dojo/ (https://industrialtalk.com/industrial_dojo/) We the 15:https://www.wethe15.org/ ( https://www.wethe15.org/) YOUR INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TOOLBOX: LifterLMS: Get One Month Free for $1 – https://lifterlms.com/ (https://lifterlms.com/) Active Campaign: https://www.activecampaign.com/?_r=H855VEPU (Active Campaign Link) Social Jukebox: https://www.socialjukebox.com/ (https://www.socialjukebox.com/) Industrial Academy (One Month Free Access And One Free License For Future Industrial Leader): https://industrialtalk.com/wp-admin/inforum-industrial-academy-discount/ () Business Beatitude the Book Do you desire a more joy-filled, deeply-enduring sense of accomplishment and success? Live your business the way you want to live with the BUSINESS BEATITUDES...The Bridge connecting sacrifice to success. YOU NEED THE BUSINESS BEATITUDES! TAP INTO YOUR INDUSTRIAL SOUL, RESERVE YOUR COPY NOW! BE BOLD. BE BRAVE. DARE GREATLY AND CHANGE THE WORLD. GET THE BUSINESS BEATITUDES! https://industrialtalk.com/business-beatitude-reserve/ ( Reserve My Copy and My 25% Discount) PODCAST TRANSCRIPT: SUMMARY KEYWORDS ge, problems, cloud, utilities, scott, industrial, software, asset, computable, world, transition, grid, manufacturing, event, people, power, talking, broadcasting, happen, solution SPEAKERS Scott MacKenzie 00:00 Industrial Talk is brought to you by Armis. Yes, you were in the digital transformation game. Yes, you need to find trusted companies, trusted individuals to help you along with that journey. The Armis platform delivers complete asset intelligence, you know what that means, insights into your connected assets, you're in the digital transformation game, you have to have the insights into what is connected, go to armis.com Find out more, you will not be disappointed. Also, AiDash AiDash is on a mission to create a greener, cleaner, safer planet from space. AiDash helps core industries become more resilient, efficient, and sustainable through the power of satellites and AI, go out to AiDash.com find out more. Thank you very much for joining industrial talk on this episode, we are broadcasting from distribute tech 22. And it was just an incredible event highlighting some of the great leaders in the utility space, and...

Collecting data is important. Examining it is fascinating. But putting it to work is where the rubber meets the road – or in the case of aviation – when it's applied to improving operational safety.  In Digital Data Tailored Training, FlightSafety International's Richard Meikle and GE Digital's Joel Klooster discuss how FlightSafety is harnessing GE Digital's C-FOQA data to tailor simulator training not just to your specific aircraft make/model, but also to your specific flight operations – to help improve your safety and travel experience from runway departure to arrival.

How to manage and monetize distributed energy resources is one of the most rapidly changing pieces of the energy transition.Every few weeks it seems a new software startup has raised tens (sometimes, hundreds) of millions of dollars in pursuit of those challenges. Meanwhile, utilities are watching the electricity distribution model that has stood up for a hundred years get turned on its head.In a special edition of Factor This!, live from DISTRIBUTECH and POWERGEN International in Dallas last May, hear from Jim Walsh, who leads GE Digital's grid software business, about the enabling forces behind the energy transition.Factor This!  is produced by Renewable Energy World and Clarion Energy. Connect with John Engel, the host of Factor This!, on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Logan and Evan discuss Climavision partnering with GE Digital and take requests for OpenAI's DALL-E to create (we recommend watching the video for this one). Watch Middle Tech's Friday Updates LIVE at 8:30am EST on Instagram every week! @MiddleTechPod Today's Friday Update is sponsored by KY Innovation and Bolt Marketing Visit us at MiddleTech.com

Full Description / Show Notes Gafnit explains how she found a vulnerability in RDS, an Amazon database service (1:40) Gafnit and Corey discuss the concept of not being able to win in cloud security (7:20) Gafnit talks about transparency around security breaches (11:02) Corey and Gafnit discuss effectively communicating with customers about security (13:00) Gafnit answers the question “Did you come at the RDS vulnerability exploration from a perspective of being deeper on the Postgres side or deeper on the AWS side? (18:10) Corey and Gafnit talk about the risk of taking a pre-existing open source solution and offering it as a managed service (19:07) Security measures in cloud-native approaches versus cloud-hosted (22:41) Gafnit and Corey discuss the security community (25:04) About GafnitGafnit Amiga is the Director of Security Research at Lightspin. Gafnit has 7 years of experience in Application Security and Cloud Security Research. Gafnit leads the Security Research Group at Lightspin, focused on developing new methods to conduct research for new cloud native services and Kubernetes. Previously, Gafnit was a lead product security engineer at Salesforce focused on their core platform and a security researcher at GE Digital. Gafnit holds a Bs.c in Computer Science from IDC Herzliya and a student for Ms.c in Data Science.Links Referenced: Lightspin: https://www.lightspin.io/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/gafnitav LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gafnit-amiga-b1357b125/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. We've taken a bit of a security bent to the conversations that we've been having on this show and over the past year or so and, well, today's episode is no different. In fact, we're going a little bit deeper than we normally tend to. My guest today is Gafnit Amiga, who's the Director of Security Research at Lightspin. Gafnit, thank you for joining me.Gafnit: Hey, Corey. Thank you for inviting me to the show.Corey: You sort of burst onto the scene—and by ‘scene,' I of course mean the cloud space, at least to the level of community awareness—back, I want to say in April of 2022 when you posted a very in-depth blog post about exploiting RDS and some misconfigurations on AWS's side to effectively display internal service credentials for the RDS service itself. Now, that sounds like it's one of those incredibly deep, incredibly murky things because it is, let's be clear. At a high level, can you explain to me exactly what it is that you found and how you did it? Gafnit: Yes, so, RDS is database service of Amazon. It's a managed service where you can choose the engine that you prefer. One of them is Postgres. There, I found the vulnerability. The vulnerability was in the extension in the log_fdw—so it's for—like, stands for Foreign Data Wrapper—where this extension is, therefore reading the logs directly of the engine, and then you can query it using SQL queries, which should be simpler and easy to use.And this extension enables you to provide a path. And there was a path traversal, but the traversal happened only when you dropped a validation of the wrapper. And this is how I managed to read local files from the database EC2 machine, which shouldn't happen because this is a managed service and you shouldn't have any access to the underlying host.Corey: It's always odd when the abstraction starts leaking, from an AWS perspective. I know that a friend of mine was on Aurora during the beta and was doing some high-performance work and suddenly started seeing SQL errors about /var/temp filling up, which is, for those who are not well versed in SQL, and even for those who are, that's not the sort of thing you tend to expect to show up on there. It feels like the underlying system tends to leak in—particularly in RDS sense—into what is otherwise at least imagined to be a fully-managed service.Gafnit: Yes because sometimes they want to give you an informative error so you will be able to realize what happened and what caused to the error, and sometimes they prefer not to give you too many information because they don't want you to get to the underlying machine. This is why, for example, you don't get a regular superuser; you have an RDS superuser in the database.Corey: It seems to me that this is sort of a problem of layering different security models on top of each other. If you take a cloud-native database that they designed, start to finish, themselves, like DynamoDB, the entire security model for Dynamo, as best I can determine, is wrapped up within IAM. So, if you know IAM—spoiler, nobody knows IAM completely, it seems—but if you have that on lock you've got it; there's nothing else you need to think about. Whereas with RDS, you have to layer on IAM to get access to the database and what you're allowed to do with it.But then there's an entirely separate user management system, in many respects, of local users for other Postgres or MySQL or any other systems that were using, to a point where even when they started supporting IRM for authentication to RDS at the database user level. It was flagged in the documentation with a bunch of warnings of, “Don't do this for high-volume stuff; only do this in development style environments.” So, it's clear that it has been a difficult marriage, for lack of a better term. And then you have to layer on all the other stuff that if God forbid, you're in a multi-cloud style environment or working with Kubernetes on top of all of this, and it seems like you're having to pick and choose between four or five different levels of security modeling, as well as understand how all of those things interplay together. How come we don't see things like this happening four times a day as a result?Gafnit: Well, I guess that there are more issues being found, but not always published but I think that this is what makes it more complex for both sides. Creating managed services with resources and third parties that everybody knows. To make it easy for them to use requires a deep understanding of the existing permission models of the service where you want to integrate it with your permission model and how the combination works. So, you actually need to understand how every change is going to affect the restrictions that you want to have. So, for example, if you don't want the database users to be able to read-write or do a network activity, so you really need to understand the permission model of the Postgres itself. So, it makes it more complicated for development, but it's also good for researchers because they already know Postgres and they have a good starting point.Corey: My philosophy has always been when you're trying to secure something, you need to have at least a topical level of understanding of the entire system, start to finish. One of the problems I've had with the idea of microservices as is frequently envisioned is that there's separation, but not real separation, so you have to hand-wave over a whole bunch of the security model. If you don't understand something, I believe it's very difficult to secure it. And let's be honest, even if you do understand [laugh] something, it can be very difficult to secure it. And the cloud vendors with IAM and similar systems don't seem to be doing themselves any favors, given the sheer complexity and the capabilities that they're demanding of themselves, even for having one AWS service talk to another one, but in the right way.And it's finicky, and it's nuanced, and debugging it becomes a colossal pain. And finally, at least those of us who are bad at these things, finally say, “The hell with it,” and they just grant full access from Service A to Service B—in the confines of a test environment. I'm not quite that nuts myself, most days. And then it's the biggest lie we always tell ourselves is once we have something overscoped like that, usually for CI/CD, it's, “Oh, todo: I'll go back and fix that later.” Yeah, I'm looking back five years ago and that's still on my todo list.For some reason, it's never been the number one priority. And in all likelihood, it won't be until right after it really should have been my number one priority. It feels like in cloud security particularly, you can't win, you can only not lose. I always found that to be something of a depressing perspective and I didn't accept it for the longest time. But increasingly, these days, it started to feel like that is the state of the world. Am I wrong on that? Am I just being too dour?Gafnit: What do you mean by you cannot lose?Corey: There's no winning in security from my perspective because no one is going to say, “All right. We won the security. Problem solved. The end.” Companies don't view security as a value-add. It is only about a downside risk mitigation play.It's, “Yay, another day of not getting breached.” And the failure mode from there is, “Okay, well, we got breached, but we found out about it ourselves immediately internally, rather than reading about it in The New York Times in two weeks.” The winning is just the steady-state, the status quo. It's just all different flavors of losing beyond that.Gafnit: So, I don't think it's quite the case because I can tell that they do do always an active work on securing the services and their structure because I went over other extensions before reaching to the log foreign data wrapper, and they actually excluded high-risk functionalities that could help me to achieve privileged access to the underlying host. And they do it with other services as well because they do always do the security review before having it integrated externally. But you know, it's an endless zone. You can always have something. Security vulnerabilities are always [arrays 00:09:06]. So everyone, whenever they can help and to search and to give their value, it's appreciated.Corey: I feel like I need to clarify a bit of nuance. When your blog post first came out talking about this, I was, well let's say a little irritated toward AWS on Twitter and other places. And Twitter is not a place for nuance, it is easy to look at that and think, “Oh, I was upset at AWS for having a vulnerability.” I am not, I want to be very clear on that. Now, it's certainly not good, but these are computers; that is the nature of how they work.If you want to completely secure computer, cut the power to it, sink it in concrete and then drop it in the ocean. And even then, there are exceptions to all of that. So, it's always a question of not blocking all risk; it's about trade-offs and what risk is acceptable. And to AWS is credit, they do say that they practice defense-in-depth. Being able to access the credentials for the running RDS service on top of the instance that it was running on, while that's certainly not good, isn't as if you'd suddenly had keys to everything inside of AWS and all their security model crumbles away before you.They do the right thing and the people working on these things are incredibly good. And they work very hard at these things. My concern and my complaint is, as much as I enjoy the work that you do and reading these blog posts talking about how you did it, it bothers me that I have to learn about a vulnerability in a service for which I pay not small amounts of money—RDS is the number one largest charge in my AWS bill every month—and I have to hear about it from a third-party rather than the vendor themselves. In this case, it was a full day later, where after your blog post went up, and they finally had a small security disclosure on AWS's site talking about it. And that pattern feels to me like it leads nowhere good.Gafnit: So, transparency is a key word here. And when I wrote the post, I asked if they want to add anything from their side, and they told that they already reached out to the vulnerable customers and they helped them to migrate to their fixed version. So, from their side, it didn't felt it's necessary to add it over there. But I did mention the fact that I did the investigation and no customer data was hurt. Yeah, but I think that if there will be maybe a more organized process for any submission of any vulnerability that where all the steps are aligned, it will help everyone and anyone can be informed with everything that happens.Corey: I have always been extraordinarily impressed by people who work at AWS and handle a lot of the triaging of vulnerability reports. Zack Glick, before he left, was doing an awful lot of that Dan [Erson 00:12:05] continues to be a one of the bright lights of AWS, from my perspective, just as far as customer communication and understanding exactly what the customer perspective is. And as individuals, I see nothing but stars over at AWS. To be clear, ‘Nothing but Stars' is also the name of most of my IAM policies, but that's neither here nor there.It seems like, on some level, there's a communications and policy misalignment, on some level, because I look at this and every conversation I ever have with AWS's security folks, they are eminently reasonable, they're incredibly intelligent, and they care. There's no mistaking that they legitimately care. But somewhere at the scale of company they're at, incentives get crossed, and everyone has a different position they're looking at these things from, and it feels like that disjointedness leads to almost a misalignment as far as how to effectively communicate things like this to customers.Gafnit: Yes, it looks like this is the case, but if more things will be discovered and published, I think that they will have eventually an organized process for that. Because I guess the researchers do find things over there, but they're not always being published for several reasons. But yes, they should work on that. [laugh].Corey: And that is part of the challenge as well, where AWS does not have a public vulnerability disclosure program. [unintelligible 00:13:30] hacker one, they don't have a public bug bounty program. They have a vulnerability disclosure email address, and the people working behind that are some of the hardest working folks in tech, but there is no unified way of building a community of researchers around the idea of exploring this. And that is a challenge because you have reported vulnerabilities, I have reported significantly fewer vulnerabilities, but it always feels like it's a hurry up and wait scenario where the communication is not always immediate and clear. And at best, it feels like we often get a begrudging, “Thank you.”Versus all right, if we just throw ethics completely out the window and decide instead that now we're going to wind up focusing on just effectively selling it to the highest bidder, the value of, for example, a hypervisor escape on EC2 for example, is incalculable. There is no amount of money that a bug bounty program could offer for something like that compared to what it is worth to the right bad actor at the right time. So, the vulnerabilities that we hear about are already we're starting from a basis of people who have a functioning sense of ethics, people who are not deeply compromised trying to do something truly nefarious. What worries me is the story of—what are the stories that we aren't seeing? What are the things that are being found where instead of fighting against the bureaucracy around disclosure and the rest, people just use them for their own ends? And I'm gratified by the level of response I see from AWS on the things that they do find out about, but I always have to wonder, what aren't we seeing?Gafnit: That's a good question. And it really depends on their side if they choose to expose it or not.Corey: Part of the challenge too, is the messaging and the communication around it and who gets credit and the rest. And it's weird, whenever they release some additional feature to one of their big headline services, there are blog posts, there are keynote speeches, there are customer references, they go on speaking tours, and the emails, oh, God, they never stopped the emails talking about how amazing all of these things are. But whenever there's a security vulnerability or a disclosure like this—and to be fair, AWS's response to this speaks very well of them—it's like you have to go sneak down into the dark sub-basement, with the filing cabinet behind the leopard sign and the rest, to even find out that these things exist. And I feel like they're not doing themselves any favors by developing that reputation for lack of transparency around these things. “Well, while there was no customer impact, so why would we talk about it?”Because otherwise, you're setting up a myth that there never is a vulnerability on the side of—what is it that you're building as a cloud provider. And when there is a problem down the road—because there always is going to be; nothing is perfect—people are going to say, “Hey, wait a minute. You didn't talk about this. What else haven't you talked about?”And it rebounds on them with sometimes really unfortunate side effects. With Azure as a counterexample here, we see a number of Azure exploits where, “Yeah, turned out that we had access to other customers' data and Azure had no idea until we told them.” And Azure does it statements about, “Oh, we have no evidence of any of this stuff being used improperly.” Okay, that can mean that you've either check your logs and things are great or you don't have logging. I don't know that necessarily is something I trust.Conversely, AWS has said in the past, “We have looked at the audit logs for this service dating back to its launch years ago, and have validated that none of that has never been used like this.” One of those responses breeds an awful lot of customer trust. The other one doesn't. And I just wish AWS knew a little bit more how good crisis communication around vulnerabilities can improve customer trust rather than erode it.Gafnit: Yes, and I think that, as you said, there will always be vulnerabilities. And I think that we are expecting to find more, so being able to communicate as clearly as you can and to expose things about maybe the fakes and how the investigation is being done, even in a high level, for all the vulnerabilities can gain more trust from the customer side.Corey: DoorDash had a problem. As their cloud-native environment scaled and developers delivered new features, their monitoring system kept breaking down. In an organization where data is used to make better decisions about technology and about the business, losing observability means the entire company loses their competitive edge. With Chronosphere, DoorDash is no longer losing visibility into their applications suite. The key? Chronosphere is an open-source compatible, scalable, and reliable observability solution that gives the observability lead at DoorDash business, confidence, and peace of mind. Read the full success story at snark.cloud/chronosphere. That's snark.cloud slash C-H-R-O-N-O-S-P-H-E-R-E.Corey: You have experience in your background specifically around application security and cloud security research. You've been doing this for seven years at this point. When you started looking into this, did you come at the RDS vulnerability exploration from a perspective of being deeper on the Postgres side or deeper on the AWS side of things?Gafnit: So, it was both. I actually came to the RDS lead from another service where there was something [about 00:18:21] in the application level. But then I reached to an RDS and thought, well, it will be really nice to find thing over here and to reach the underlying machine. And when I entered to the RDS zone, I started to look at it from the application security eyes, but you have to know the cloud as well because there are integrations with S3, you need to understand the IAM model. So, you need a mix of both to exploit specifically this kind of issue. But you can also be database experts because the payload is a pure SQL.Corey: It always seems to me that this is an inherent risk in trying to take something that is pre-existing is an open-source solution—Postgres is one example but there are many more—and offer it as a managed service. Because I think one of the big misunderstandings is that when—well, AWS is just going to take something like Redis and offer that as a managed service, it's okay, I accept that they will offer a thing that respects the endpoints and then acts as if it were Redis, but under the hood, there is so much in all of these open-source projects that is built for optionality of wherever you want to run this thing, it will run there; whatever type of workload you want to throw at it, it can work. Whereas when you have a cloud provider converting these things into a managed service, they are going to strip out an awful lot of those things. An easy example might be okay, there's this thing that winds up having to calculate for the way the hard drives on a computer work and from a storage perspective.Well, all the big cloud providers already have interesting ways that they have solved storage. Every team does not reimplement that particular wheel; they use in-house services. Chubby's file locking, for example, over on Google side is a classic example of this that they've talked about an awful lot so every team building something doesn't have to rediscover all of that. So, the idea that, oh, we're just going to take up this open-source thing, clone it off a GitHub, fork it, and then just throw it into production as a managed service seems more than a little naive. What's your experience around seeing, as you get more [laugh] into the weeds of these things than most customers are allowed to get, what's your take on this?Do you find that this looks an awful lot like the open-source version that we all use? Or is it something that looks like it has been heavily customized to take advantage of what AWS is offering internally as underlying bedrock services?Gafnit: So, from what I saw until now, they do want to save the functionality so you will have the same experience as you're working with the same service that not on AWS because you're you are used to that. So, they are not doing dramatic changes, but they do want to reduce the risk in the security space. So, there will be some functionalities that they will not let you to do. And this is because of the managed party in areas where the full workload is deployed in your account and you can access it anyway, so they will not have the same security restrictions because you can access the workload anyway. But when it's managed, they need to prevent you from accessing the underlying host, for example. And they do the changes, but they're really picked to the specific actions that can lead you to that.Corey: It also feels like RDS is something of a, I don't want to call it a legacy service because it is clearly still very much actively developed, but it's what we'll call it a ‘classic service.' When I look at a new AWS launch, I tend to mentally bucket them into two things. There's the cloud-native approach, and we've already talked about DynamoDB. That would be one example of this. And there's the cloud-hosted model where you have to worry about things like instances and security groups and the networking stuff, and so on and so forth, where it's basically feels like they're running their thing on top of a pile of EC2 instances, and that abstraction starts leaking.Part of me wonders if looking at some of these older services like RDS, they made decisions in the design and build out of these things that they might not if they were to go ahead and build it out today. I mean, Aurora is an example of what that might look like. Have you found as you start looking around the various security foibles of different cloud services, that the security posture of some of the more cloud-native approaches is better or worse or the same as the cloud-hosted world?Gafnit: Well, so for example, in the several issues that were found, and also here in the RDS where you can see credentials in a file, this is not a best practice in security space. And so, definitely there are things to improve, even if it's developed on the provider side. But it's really hard to answer this question because in a managed area where you don't have any access, it's hard to tell how it's configured and if it's configured properly. So, you need to have some certification from their side.Corey: This is, on some level, part of the great security challenge, especially for something that is not itself open-source, where they obviously have terrific security teams, don't get me wrong. At no point do I want to ever come across a saying, “Oh, those AWS people don't know how security works.” That is provably untrue. But there is something to be said for the value of having a strong community in the security space focusing on this from the outside of looking at these things, of even helping other people contextualize these things. And I'm a little disheartened that none of the major cloud providers seem to have really embraced the idea of a cloud security community, to the point where the one that I'm most familiar with, the cloud security forum Slack team seems to be my default place where I go for context on things.Because I dabble. I keep my hand in when it comes to security, but I'm certainly no expert. That's what people like you are for. I make fun of clouds and I work on the billing parts of it and that's about as far as it goes for me. But being able to get context around is this a big deal? Is this description that a company is giving, is it accurate?For example, when your post came out, I had not heard of Lightspin in this context. So, reaching out to a few people I trusted, is this legitimate? The answer was, “Yes. It's legitimate and it's brilliant. That's a company that keep your eye on.” Great. That's useful context and there's no way to buy that. It has to come from having those conversations with people in the [broader 00:24:57] sense of the community. What's your experience been looking at the community side of the world of security?Gafnit: Well, so I think that the cloud security has a great community, and this is one of the things that we at Lightspin really want to increase and push forward. And we see ourselves as a security-driven company. We always do the best to publish a post, even detailed posts, not about vulnerabilities, about how things works in the cloud and how things are being evaluated, to release open-source tools where you can use them to check your environment even if you're not a customer. And I think that the community is always willing to explain and to investigate together. And it's a welcome effort, but I think that the messaging should be also for all layers, you know, also for the DevOps and the developers because it can really help if it will start from this point from their side, as well.Corey: It needs to be baked in, from start to finish.Gafnit: Yeah, exactly.Corey: I really want to thank you for taking the time out of your day to speak with me today. If people want to learn more about what you're up to, where's the best place for them to find you?Gafnit: So, you can find me on Twitter and on LinkedIn, and feel free to reach out.Corey: We will, of course, put links to that in the [show notes 00:26:25]. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time today. I appreciate it.Gafnit: Thank you, Corey.Corey: Gafnit Amiga, Director of Security Research at Lightspin. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, and if it's on the YouTubes, smash the like and subscribe buttons, which I'm told are there. Whereas if you've hated this podcast, same story, like and subscribe and the buttons, leave a five-star review on a various platform, but also leave an insulting, angry comment about how my observation that our IAM policies are all full of stars is inaccurate. And then I will go ahead and delete that comment later because you didn't set a strong password.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Notifications North Star, sponsored by Courier!Guest: Vatasha White is a Senior Software Engineer at Courier. Previously, she built software at Lacework, LaunchDarkly and GE Digital. She is a graduate of Smith College in 2015.Questions:Having been a prior customer of Courier, what excited you about the solution?What is your favorite use case for the tool?So now that you work at Courier... what impact do they have that really motivates you?What are you working on now, that really excites you about the product?Linkshttps://www.courier.com/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Kara Cleary kara@communicatorawards.com The Communicator Awards, 212.675.3555 THE 28th ANNUAL COMMUNICATOR AWARDS ANNOUNCES WINNERS Congratulations!!! - Kelsunn Communications, Inc.(www.kelsunn.org) Wins an "Award of Distinction" Judging has been completed for your submissions to the 28th Annual Communicator Awards, and we're excited to let you know that your work has been selected by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts to be recognized as a Communicator Award winner! Excellence and Distinction award recipients named. New York, NY (May 10, 2022) - The winners of the 28th Annual Communicator Awards have officially been announced by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts. With over 4,000 entries received from across the US and around the world, the Communicator Awards is the largest and most competitive awards program honoring creative excellence for communications professionals. Please visit communicatorawards.com to view the full winners list. For more information about the Communicator Awards, please visit communicatorawards.com, email the Communicator Awards at info@communicatorawards.com, or call (212) 675-3555. About The Communicator Awards: The Communicator Awards is the leading international awards program honoring creative excellence for marketing and communications professionals. Founded by passionate communications professionals over two decades ago, The Communicator Awards is an annual competition honoring the best digital, video, podcasts, marketing, mobile, and print work the industry has to offer. The Communicator Awards is widely recognized as one of the largest and most coveted awards of its kind in the world. The Communicator Awards are judged and curated by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts (AIVA). The AIVA is an assembly of leading professionals from various disciplines of the visual arts dedicated to embracing progress and the evolving nature of traditional and interactive media. Current AIVA membership represents a "Who's Who" of acclaimed media, advertising, and marketing firms including: GE Digital, Spotify, Condè Nast, Disney, Republica, Majestyk, Fast Company, Upstatement, and many others. See aiva.org for more information. Kelsunn Communications (www.kelsunn.org) is proud to re-share this award-winning production with everyone once again to celebrate this great achievement in honor of Juneteenth!!! Please listen, like, share, download, and comment. Also all and any donations of any amount would be greatly appreciated!! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/kelsunn-on-the-air/support

GrayMatter's emPOWERUP Podcast hosts Steve Pavlosky, GE Digital's Principle Product Manager of Proficy Historian. Proficy Historian "collects industrial time-series and A&E data at very high speed, stores it efficiently and securely, distributes it, and allows for fast retrieval and analysis — driving greater business value." emPOWERUP Podcast Host Jeremy Boren of GrayMatter talks with Steve about the latest Proficy Historian 2022 updates including Configuration Hub enhancements, Python collector scripts and support for Power BI visualizations. To learn more about Historian and schedule a SCADA Assessment briefing with GrayMatter, visit: graymattersystems.com/automation-controls-offering/

This episode features Jeff Epstein, Partner at Bessemer Ventures, and Twilio CFO, Khozema Shipchandler. Jeff Epstein brings his own unique perspective as a former CFO at Oracle and Nielsen to the conversation with Khozema Shipchandler about his career path. Most of that career was built in-house at GE Digital, the venerable U.S. corporation with a reputation for innovation and leading-edge management practices. We'll hear about Khozema's decision to make the jump from GE to modern communication juggernaut Twilio just a few years after it went public.Khozema brings over 20 years of experience in finance, most recently serving as GE Digital's Chief Commercial Officer. In addition to his role as CFO, Khozema also oversees Twilio's trust and security teams. Khozema previously served in a variety of positions within GE, including as the CFO and EVP of Corporate Development, and the Vice President of Corporate Audit Staff. Khozema earned his bachelor's degree from the Indiana University Bloomington and graduate coursework at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

“To me, Steve Jobs is a true epitome of product management. If you think about his role, it draws a lot of inspiration. Not only was he the brains behind Apple, but he helped design it. He helped develop and sell it. And that's why I refer to product managers as the CEO of their product.”If there's anyone that knows how to build products, it's Frederick John, who is a 20-year veteran of the product industry and a go-to thought leader in both product development and product management with a diverse domain background —including working with giants like Deloitte, GE Digital, ADP and NCR Corporation.He currently brings that expertise to Diebold Nixdorf as the Vice President of Global Product Management, Banking.TOP TAKEAWAYSWhy are Product managers the CEO of their products?How to vet different aspiring product managers coming from diverse backgrounds?Impact of the pandemic on product manager workflowDifference between product managers: Early-stage versus Enterprise-StageThe biggest mistake that product managers make. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTSWhy are Product Managers CEO of their Products?Frederick currently leads a team of 50 product managers and product developers. According to him, they act as mini CEOs of their products; they go out and help others. The indirect or dotted line influence of the product team is actually throughout the entire software organization. The concept of keeping product management is relatively new. The agile transformation led to the need for product managers. The iterative approach of agile requires product managers to build everything in two weeks.How to Vet Different Aspiring Product Managers Coming from Diverse Backgrounds?The background doesn't matter, but it is their approach to products in general that matters. A product leader must check if someone from a technical background understands pain areas and good points developed for their clients since empathy isn't a scoring criterion in interviews. Impact of the Pandemic on Product Manager WorkflowPandemic has affected product development, which is visible in the details of product design, stories, understanding of development, and quality team. There is absolutely nothing in a virtual environment that can replace the power of 8 people stuck in a room looking at a whiteboard. Difference Between Product Managers: Early-Stage Versus Enterprise-StageThe good thing about large companies is that the reach is much wider If you want to know about what is happening in the world. Offshore or nearshore development capabilities let you create products quickly and economically. You can also tap the diverse talent pool available across the globe. Smaller companies have agility, skill, and flexibility; they can soon move in the direction of technology or in which clients are moving. Hence, innovation happens faster, the concepts and deployment of new technology occur rapidly. Product managers can't have that agility at the enterprise level.The Biggest Mistake that Product Managers MakeMost product managers treat the products as babies, and it is hard to call the babies ugly. Hence, they end up making the biggest mistake by not stepping back and doing a course correction. They should have the humility to view with the lens of pure facts versus emotions. Follow Frederick John on LinkedInProduced by: Priya Bhatt Podcast host: Abhash Kumar

As a young woman, Jane Goodall traveled from her home country of England to Tanzania to do research on chimpanzees. Others had studied the animals in the past, but Jane's method was different. She immersed herself in the chimpanzees' world. She lived among them, observed them and folded herself into their way of life. And it was through that experience that the eyes of the world were opened to what was really happening with these animals, what their challenges were, how they worked, and what their lives actually looked like. It was only through being fully embedded that true understanding was possible. That's the same idea that GE Digital puts into practice to fuel the digital revolution of the biggest companies operating around the world.Pat Byrne, the CEO of GE Digital knows that the best way to help someone is to get to know them and the best way to find a solution is to first thoroughly understand the problem.  Find out how he and GE Digital does that to power business solutions on this episode of Business X factors.  Main takeaways:  Love the Problem and Then the Solution: To develop solutions that create impact, it is important to understand what clients have to deal with on a daily basis, the problems they are trying to solve, and the challenges they face. Figure out what customers are trying to accomplish. What is important to them? Why? Fall in love with the customer's problem before you fall in love with the solution.Go to Gemba: Gemba translates as the ‘real place,' and in business, it refers to the real place where value is created.  To find it, you have to fully immerse yourself with companies from the c-suite to the shop floor. You have to learn and understand what is happening across every level of a business to optimize the value stream and find the point of maximum impact to avoid solving the wrong problems.Avoid the "Innovate in Isolation" Trap: Developers and designers need to be mindful that they are designing with their users in mind and not just creating insular products. They too often approach a challenge with a specific end product in mind that is meant for expert users when in reality it might not solve the problems of the majority of users. Get to know the users of a solution before you jump in and institute a co-design process in order to ease the adoption of solutions and technology.---Business X factors is produced by Mission.org and brought to you by Hyland. For over a decade, Hyland has been named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms, leading the way to help people get the information they need when and where they need it. More than half of 2019 Fortune 100 companies rely on Hyland to help them create more meaningful connections with the people they serve. When your focus is on the people you serve, Hyland stands behind you. Hyland is your X factor for better performance. Go to Hyland.com/insights to learn more.

Data analytics is one of the hottest buzzwords in manufacturing today and, as a data scientist with GE Digital, Sarah Lukens specializes in it. In this episode, Sarah talks about combing through as many as millions of data points, then transforming them into actionable insights for manufacturing. She explains industrial AI, technical language processing, and moving form predictive to prescriptive analytics.

Learning and development plays a vital part in the efforts of any business to level up. Today we are joined by Sunita Arora, the Head of Learning and Development at GE Digital. Sunita is a learning and development strategist with over 20 years of experience working with Fortune 500 companies in Silicon Valley startups. She is known for her global leadership development, instructional design, workshop facilitation, project management, communication, and organization development skills. Today she joins us to discuss the importance of understanding your business's main need in learning and development and ruthlessly prioritizing your focus. Tuning in, you'll hear how to approach leadership buy-in through demonstrating the impact on the business, the types of programs that Sunita's designed that have been the most effective, and the different ways to measure the success of a program. Find out what ‘built-in nudges' are and how they can remind people what they have learned long after they have completed a program. With a wealth of experience, Sunita shares some great advice with us and provides helpful examples of how she has implemented these concepts in her own work, so tune in today! Key Points From This Episode: An introduction to Sunita Arora and her career in learning and development. The importance of understanding the business's need and prioritizing it. How to approach leadership buy-in and the importance of it. Sunita's advice to a new or expanding talent development team: start with the North Star. Sunita shares the success story of how she used this principle to develop a training program and a framework for the leaders of an engineering company. How she incorporated the input of the leaders to develop this framework. How she helps companies ruthlessly prioritize their focus, and how this is especially important when resources are limited. The most effective types of programmes that Sunita has designed for managers and emerging leaders. What ‘built-in nudges' are and how they can remind people what they have learned long after they have completed a program. The different ways that the success of a program can be measured. How training is different for managers and emerging leaders versus senior executives. Sunita's views on the challenges posed by the ongoing pandemic as well as some of the opportunities it presents. Sunita's go-to resources and how her company has been using newsletters. What advice Sunita would give her former self when she started to take on leadership responsibilities.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in significant talent management challenges, including hiring freezes and layoffs, a sudden shift to remote work, and increased employee stress and burnout. This week, we welcome Megan Bickle, Head of Talent and Performance Management at Dropbox. We discuss how organizations can rethink how work gets done, navigate burnout, and ultimately support employees during these challenging times and in the transition to what will hopefully be less challenging times! Megan joins us with over a decade of talent experience, focused on leveraging people analytics within talent management strategy, leadership development, designing culture, HR technology, and talent assessments. She has held roles at Ubisoft, GE Digital, and Electronic Arts and is passionate about shaping an organization's culture through talent and organizational development initiatives. Tuning in, you'll hear Megan emphasize the double-edged sword of challenge and opportunity that companies are facing in their transition to the ‘new normal' and what they can do to adapt to and support employees in an increasingly virtual work environment. Make sure not to miss this stimulating conversation! Key Points From This Episode: Megan shares how she found her way onto her career path and organizational development. How the technology companies she has worked for have approached employee experience differently to more traditional organizations. Defining what employee experience should be by focusing on an employee's lifecycle. The greatest challenges facing employers during COVID, including navigating and preventing employee burnout. Welcoming employees back to the office now that vaccination programs have started. Why not having a playbook is both an opportunity and a challenge. Megan borrows the phrase ‘retention cliff' to reflect on employee retention during COVID. The benefits for companies of tapping into different markets to source great talent. How companies are leveraging resources like Modern Health, providing employees access to coaching, and monthly wellness days. Find out how training has changed to adapt to a more virtual work environment. Megan's predictions for how the idea of work will evolve over the next 24 months. Where companies are falling short, like not ensuring HR is a critical part of future strategy. While there are numerous opportunities to exploit, it also takes a lot of work. The resources Megan recommends: Talent Development Think Tank and Microsoft's People Analytics data. Her advice for her former self: find a business coach!

GrayMatter emPOWERUP Podcast host Jeremy Boren talks with GE Digital's Richard Kenedi, General Manager - Manufacturing and Digital Plant, about GE Digital's latest updates to Proficy Historian, iFIX and Ops Hub, along with how GE Digital is investing in R&D and learning from customers. The interview was recorded for GrayMatter's Transform.virtual Spring event in April 2021. Learn more at graymattersystems.com/transform-virtual-2021/ About Richard Kenedi: Richard Kenedi is the General Manager of the Manufacturing | Digital Plant business segment for GE Digital. In this role, Richard is responsible for driving profitable growth for the Automation and Manufacturing Execution System product and service portfolio, serving manufacturing verticals and digital plants across the globe. Prior to joining GE Digital, Richard served as the President Core Markets within NETSCOUT, a global supplier of network service assurance products. Prior to NETSCOUT, he held the position of President Tektronix Communications, an operating company within the Danaher corporation. Prior roles within Tektronix Communications included Vice President, Products and Portfolio Management, Vice President and General Manager for the Test & Optimization and Core Test Businesses. Additionally, prior to Tektronix Communications Richard held senior roles in SOMA Networks and Nortel Networks. Richard holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto and an MBA from the University of Dallas.

A big appeal of working for a startup is the possibility of making it big! But is a startup the right career move for you at this point in your life? In this episode of TechTalk Tuesdays, we discuss evaluating startup career options with Sunil Phatak. Sunil is an experienced engineering and executive recruiter who has worked with Uber, Google, GE Digital, and others. He is currently the Director of Executive Recruiting at Coupang, the fastest growing e-commerce startup. In this discussion about evaluating startup options, learn how to evaluate the risk and reward of working with startups, how to make sense of what's real and what's fluff in a startup offer, and how to manage regret when you pass on an offer for a startup that turns out to be the next big thing. Sunil Phatak is the Director of Executive Recruiting at Coupang, one of the world's largest and fastest-growing consumer internet companies. He is an engineer by education and started his career with Citibank's Banking Software division as a Software Engineer. As an experienced leader in Talent Acquisition, Sunil believes that recruiting philosophy shapes the future of organizations. While Engineering Leaders are developing the product roadmap for success, Sunil focuses on helping organizations design recruiting strategy, plan recruiting capacity, build powerhouse talent acquisition teams, and track & monitor Recruiting Metrics to ensure that companies hire the best talent to help Engineering. To check out the full videos or snippets of our recorded webinars, visit https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3bKKnZxyFOYoq-jYQlzKzA You can also visit us at https://bayonesolutions.com/ and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter

In this episode we will be speaking with Arjun Ramamurthy, the Head of Video Product, O&O at Verizon Communications, a leading multinational telecommunications conglomerate that offers wireless products and media services. Before becoming the Head of Video Product at Verizon Media, Mr. Ramamurthy worked as a Senior Director of Product Management at GE Digital. To learn more about the Global Student Economics Forum (GSEF), visit us at www.gsefofficial.org.

Design thinking and mental health: Episode Notes Leaders often miss the close connection between design thinking and mental health. This happens mostly because they think of design as something purely aesthetic that is not relevant for their business.Design thinking is a hyper-iterative process that encourages individuals to fail fast in order to keep experimenting and improving over time. Specifically, design thinking helps cut through rigid frameworks and radical systems by making use of creativity and navigating new processes of creation through three key lenses:ViabilityFeasibilityDesirabilityBecause of the dynamic nature of design thinking, individuals understand that it is ok to make mistakes and deliver suboptimal performances in the initial stages of any process. On top of that, people who embrace this mentality learn to value the power of human-to-human connections that stem from open-mindedness and collaboration. Ultimately, to design an organization around people means to create a safe space where all stakeholders have their own voice.In order to achieve that, managers need to act as sponsors and lead by example, so that everyone around them is drawn to help co-create a new structure based on the right values. By the end of our conversation, Emily suggests a practical way to re-assess your personal balance in a few easy steps:Get a hold of (sticky) notesWrite down what areas in your life are consuming too much energyWrite down what areas in your life take little energyCompare steps 2 and 3Should there be a significant imbalance, redesign your personal system Our Guest: Emily Anding Emily is a thought leader in design thinking and learning, with a background in organizational & experience design, change management, and strategy. She has led projects around the globe for Lyft, IDEO U, GE Digital, and General Mills (the most exciting in Saudi Arabia, although the best street food goes to Bosnia), across industries including digital transformation, aerospace, manufacturing, higher education, oil and gas, and transportation. She believes that innovative solutions are created by leading with empathy, spotting patterns among disparate data points, and thinking beyond seemingly disconnected lenses.Emily is on a mission to bring authenticity, silliness, and play to her teams, empowering people to do their best work. Outside of the office (virtual or brick and mortar), you can find Emily rock climbing somewhere in the desert, fossil hunting, playing banjo, propagating plants, or trying a new combination of spices to make the best sourdough pancakes in the world. She holds an MBA from the College of William and Mary and a BA in Environmental Policy from The Colorado College.References:Emily Anding Linkedin profileBraiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall KimmererUntamed by Glennon DoyleWomen who run with the wolves by Clarissa Pinkola EstésBrené on FFTs (from the Unlocking Us Podcast by Brené Brown)  Listen to the next Episode All Podcast Episodes

This week's episode of Leading Voices in Real Estate features Alex Mehran Sr., the Chairman of the Board of Sunset Development Company and the immediate past Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Sunset Development was founded in 1951 by Alex's father who had emigrated from Iran, and today it is in its third generation of leadership, run by Alex's son. Under Alex's leadership, the company acquired and developed Bishop Ranch, a 585-acre mixed-use community in the Bay Area with best-in-class offices, retail, and entertainment. The development includes over 9.5 million square feet in workspace for 30,000 employees with 600 tenants including IBM, AT&T, Chevron, and GE Digital. Matt and Alex discuss the constant evolution of suburban office park developments, the successes of a multi-generational family business, and Alex's civic leadership roles.Alex is a San Francisco Bay Area native. He graduated from Harvard College with honors and continued his higher education at Cambridge University in England where he earned a Law Degree, also with honors. After completing his formal education, Alex joined J. P. Morgan of New York where, for three years, he managed real estate companies and assets owned by the Bank. Shortly after, Alex joined Sunset Development in 1977.Beyond his civic engagement with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Alex is the Chairman of the Contra Costa Economic Partnership, a Trustee of the California Institute of Technology and a member of the International Council of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. Alex has two adult children. He and his wife, Carolyn, live in San Francisco.

Bill Brennan sheds significant light on building a portfolio of sustainable & ESG investments in the water sector. Bill discusses characteristics of companies he looks for, distinguishing those companies, and digging into the data to determine how those companies are impacting water in a positive way. Also, Reese Tisdale joins the podcast for a market update on the water sector, including a deep dive on GE Digital and more insights on GE's divestiture of GE Water to Suez, in our Bluefield on Tap segment.

In this episode, Allison Pickens (Chief Customer Officer, Gainsight) sits down with Ray Mitra, Global Head of Customer Success & Services at GEDigital to discuss how he and his team are driving innovation through cutting-edge customer success programs, why finding purpose outside of work is crucial to driving customer outcomes and more.

Listen to Bill Ruh, Chief Executive Officer of GE Digital, describe the genesis of GE Digital in 2011 when he joined GE from Cisco.   Bill explains the lessons learned in establishing the leading industrial internet of things player and why GE Digital's offerings are what they are today.  Listen to Bill describe how to … Continue reading Bill Ruh, CEO, GE Digital →

Listen to Eddie Amos, Chief Technical Officer of GE explain how, since joining GE Digital via its acquisition of Meridium, he has focused on digital products ranging from manufacturing solutions to Asset Performance Management (APM) applications and other technologies that allow customers to digitize their operations and unlock the productivity of industrial equipment. Learn more about … Continue reading Eddie Amos, CTO, GE Digital →

Sam Cates: @SamCates | GE Ventures Show Notes: 02:01 - What Corporate Investing Looks Like 03:48 - Presenting Ideas For Funding 09:01 - Democratizing Venture Capital 10:17 - ICOs and Cryptocurrency 13:53 - Evaluating Companies to Fund 21:09 - Investing in Potential Competitors 24:42 - Looking For Funding as a Company 28:04 - “Mentoring” Ideas/Companies 30:07 - Monitoring/Evaluating Company Metrics 32:47 - Putting Together a Basic Business Plan 36:05 - Making Choices: Investor and Company-wise Resources: Resin.io Series A, B, C Funding Angel Investor Seed Money Initial Coin Offering (ICO) AngelList Crunchbase Fred Wilson's Blog: (AVC.com) Transcript: CHARLES: Hello everybody and welcome to The Frontside Podcast, Episode 92. My name is Charles Lowell, a developer here at The Frontside and I am your podcast host-in-training kicking it off in 2018. [Inaudible] of our first episode. We've got Elrick also joining us. Hello, Elrick. ERICK: Hey. How you doing, Charles? CHARLES: I'm doing well. I'm doing well. You having a good new year so far? ERICK: Yeah, it's great. There's a snowstorm passing through today. So, I'm going to break in the New Year shoveling. CHARLES: Let us know if we need to parachute in some shovels for you. ERICK: [Laughs] CHARLES: And then with us today, we have Sam Cates on the show who is… a lot of times we have developers on the show. He's actually a venture… what would you describe yourself as? SAM: Yeah, I'd say I'm a venture investor with GE Ventures. So, on the corporate investing side. CHARLES: Okay. Now, I didn't even know that GE actually had a corporate investing side. Is that pretty common for a large company? SAM: You know, it's becoming increasingly common. I think in 2015 there was actually a peak of activity coming from corporate venture capital groups. And I've only seen the number of firms escalate since then. Although the dollars invested stays pretty consistent. But if you look at a lot of big companies, particularly in the common tech world like Cisco, Google, Intel, they have historically had large venture firms inside of themselves. And then GE and a lot of other industrials have since followed suit. We've been at it for about five years and we see it increasingly. CHARLES: And so, have you been with them since the beginning? SAM: Yeah, just about. I've actually been with GE for about nine years now. So, I was on the operating side in a number of the industrial businesses before I joined GE Digital and then GE Ventures. And so, it was just after GE Ventures got kicked off. CHARLES: Oh, that's exciting. So, what is it… now, we actually got connected to you through one of the companies that you actually invested in. It's something that we use and we're very interested in. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what your job looks like on a day-to-day basis and what companies you invest in? SAM: Sure. I really focus a lot of my time on Internet of Things companies. So, that's a really big trend that GE has been a part of and a leader in over the past few years. And so, we spend time investing in companies that are directly working with GE or playing in similar spaces to us. And so, Elrick and I actually met at a hackathon for one of those companies. And I always like to use that as an example because it's a good one, to demonstrate the kinds of investments we make. And that's Resin.io. I know you guys have done an episode or two talking with them. But that for example was a ‘Series A' investment that we made about two years ago. And then company essentially helps developers build connected products. And so, that's something that GE cares a lot about. We had people inside the company who found the product and loved it and that's actually how we met. CHARLES: When you say ‘Series A', can you give a brief overview of what the different stages of funding of a startup might be? SAM: Yeah, yeah, certainly. So, maybe if I take a step back and answer your original question on what I do on a day-to-day basis. A lot of my job is meeting with all kinds of new companies, whether they be early stage, usually things that would be seed funding – and we'll go into what some of those things mean – all the way through the late stage which would be companies that are maybe on the border of going public or are already profitable. And so, if we go into what kinds of investors there are, I think that's probably an interesting subject to talk more about. But they're a whole wide variety. When I said ‘Series A' I just meant a company that was at what we would call the ‘Series A' stage, and the letters act just like you'd expect. So, there's ‘Series A', ‘Series B', ‘Series C', and so on. And they all, they tend to look similar at those stages in terms of sizes and progress. But there is a range, and no two company is the same. ERICK: In today's world, it's very easy for people to create a startup. They can write some code and they can either come up, get a Raspberry Pi or some microcontrollers or whatever it is, and either do an IoT startup or a software startup. Now, when you get to the point where you have an idea and you kick it off initially, how do you go about then saying, “Let me get some funding.” How do you even get funding? SAM: Sure, yeah. And to your point, there's a huge range of technologies that are making it easier to start almost any kind of company. It's a great time to be an entrepreneur, whether it be 3D printing for hardware products, all the technologies that you were mentioning, AWS, all this stuff is contributing to reducing the cost to allow companies or people to create companies. And so, once people have gone out and experimented with some of these things and built what they think is a product the market wants, often if they require more money which may be for acquiring customers through things like Facebook Ads or simply doing further product development to make sure the product is somewhere that more customers could use it, often they can't finance it just through their own revenue. And so, there are typical stages and types of investors that people go approach looking for money. ERICK: Okay. What are those Series? I remember you mentioned something like a ‘Series A' investment. So, initially when you're looking for an investment, is that where you would… category you would be in as a startup looking for investment? They would consider you a ‘Series A' startup? SAM: Well, I want to caveat and just say every company is different. So, I see companies that… ERICK: Gotcha. SAM: Start out at a much later stage because they're able to bootstrap to that point. And bootstrap is the word that I use for a company that funds its own investment. They get paid by customers and they use that money to continue building the product. But if I talk about the range of types of financing a company may go for, I think the way that most people categorize this, first people often raise from friends and family or angels. And so, it's just money to get off the ground and maybe to pay the rent while you're doing some of that experimenting we were talking about. And then commonly after that is a seed round. And a seed round tends to be a little more institutional. So, it's maybe a more formal set of funds who exclusively invest in companies that are often pre-revenue but they have a product, or at least the beginnings of a product. And so, that's a really common category of investors. And then you get to ‘Series A' and the letters can escalate from there to the point where… ERICK: Gotcha. SAM: There can be some later rounds when they'd be ‘Series F' or even beyond, I guess. CHARLES: Right. So now, what are generally the terms on these? So, for my angel investments or my seed investments, I assume what distinguishes these is essentially how much ownership of the company you're getting for how much money. And those kind of, those change as the product solidifies. SAM: Yeah. CHARLES: And the potential becomes more visible. SAM: Yeah, it's a wide… and again, these are all… the venture is a world of ranges. There's a really wide difference between the two ends of any spectrum. So, I'll just talk in generalities though. So, I think the latest report that I've seen at least for an annual basis was PitchBook's 2016 report. And they were laying out some of the medians. So, for seed stage deals I believe it was something like one and a half million dollars raised was the median on a pre-money valuation of six and a half million. And that just means the company is worth, investors say the company is worth six and a half million dollars today. And we're going to give you a million and a half dollars invested at that price. CHARLES: So roughly, a sixth… they would take a sixth of the company then in return? SAM: Yeah. CHARLES: Okay. ERICK: Ah. CHARLES: Okay. ERICK: Okay. CHARLES: I see. That makes sense. So now, back to Elrick's original question. If I'm, I've got my product. Or I've got this idea. I've written some code. I've turned it into a prototype product. Maybe I'm moving through these various stages. What type of VC am I going to be looking for? How do I actually find the right type to be talking to? I guess what types are there even? SAM: Yeah. And one part… we mentioned a lot of the technologies that are making it easier to start companies. One part that also makes it easier is the proliferation of financing options, whether it be even more investors in these traditional structures we talked about like seed and A. And then there are other options that are emerging, things like you see a lot of people raising through what they call Initial Coin Offerings or ICOs. And then there are also things like AngelList which are attempting to democratize the investing process, make it more accessible. So traditionally, a lot of the seed A, B investors, they tend to be network-based, which can be a challenge for a lot of people that are maybe not in Silicon Valley or not a part of that network already. And so, one thing you can do is obviously go search databases that are on the web, things like Crunchbase. It's a free resource. It has a lot of deal history for investments that people have made. And it's a great resource for knowing, “Okay, this investor cares about these things.” And then in addition to that, there are also platforms that people can put their companies on. Like I mentioned, AngelList. And that's somewhere that you can list your company, you can meet investors, and they actually have some backend to actually support the investing process as well. CHARLES: So, there were two acronyms in there, or two specific technologies. [Chuckles] CHARLES: You talked about ICOs which I assumed that you said it was Initial Coin Offering. Not like insane clown offering. [Laughter] CHARLES: Which I would love to see. And then AngelList. So traditionally, these had been very network-based which brings to mind the capitalists of Old England or whatever where there's a bunch of people with cigars in a room and I realize it's not actually like that. What are each of these things? The AngelList and the ICOs? And how do they democratize that process? SAM: It's funny you should mention the old times. I think a good example of that is there are a lot of stories about the founding of General Electric. It's a 126-year-old company and back then it was largely, it was Thomas Edison working with I believe was JP Morgan to get it off the ground. And so, today there's still a bit of the network piece you're mentioning. But I think of AngelList as a place that you can essentially market to investors. If you think about the types of people that are on there, it's people that are looking to invest money in early stages in startups. And I'm not a big user of AngelList because I tend to be investing a little bit later. So, I really recommend anybody who's interested, just go check it out. It's I believe just Angel.co. CHARLES: And what about an ICO? SAM: So, an ICO is a more modern one. And it's kind of fraught with some concerns around regulations and transparency today. But I think since Thanksgiving there's been a massive wave of conversation about cryptocurrencies. And an ICO is essentially a way of creating your own cryptocurrency. The way I always explain to people, I love the analogy that people make around, think of it like I want to go build an amusement park. And in that amusement park, everything, rides, food, everything, is going to be denominated and payable in Sam-bucks. CHARLES: Ah, right. SAM: And… [Chuckles] And so, my options… CHARLES: [Laughs] That makes sense. SAM: Yeah. And my options are I can go to a bank and borrow money, I can go to investors and say, “Hey, give me the 10 million dollars it's going to take to build it,” or I can just go to the people in the place where I'm building it and say, “You want this amusement park to exist? Why don't you pre-buy these Sam-bucks?” And each one is going to cost a dollar today. And we create this universe of Sam-bucks and they're essentially valuable once you can use them in the park. And there are certainly exceptions. There are other versions of cryptocurrencies and other uses for them. But that's a conversation for another day. CHARLES: Ah, mm. SAM: I think that's just a good, easy way to understand it. CHARLES: Oh no, I like that. It's like, well not quite like carnival tickets. But yeah, that's something that everyone's familiar with. Same thing as the Xbox Marketplace. Very similar thing. So, the idea is you would buy a bunch of Sam-bucks… you would get them at pennies on the dollar, so to speak, today. SAM: Yeah, right. By the time it opens, maybe a hotdog would cost just one Sam-buck. CHARLES: Right. SAM: Whereas, when it's coming in, we'd have to spend five dollars to get that one Sam-buck. Right, the idea being those people who got in early will be rewarded. And you can see it's like a further extension of a Kickstarter or something else that you're allowing people to pre-buy into a network. CHARLES: Right. Right, okay. I can see that. ERICK: That's very interesting. [Laughs] CHARLES: And so, it's got a range of options too, because if you're really interested in the services you can go ahead and spend them on the services and get a lot of value that way or you can actually trade for someone who does want the services if you don't. SAM: I think that's exactly right. And it's just, the one that I think I would just caveat is there is a huge amount of concern at the moment, and maybe concern is too strong a word, but uncertainty around one, what are the value of these coins, these tokens? And two, how will governments react to something that looks potentially like a security or a currency? And so, that's something that still is being worked through. And even though they haven't figured that out there's still a massive amount of money being raised through these ICOs. CHARLES: [Laughs] So, it does beg the question. Why is a cryptocurrency necessary? Why not just use Xbox Marketplace points? Why not just say, “Here are Sam-bucks.” SAM: [Chuckles] CHARLES: And there's a row in my database. [Laughter] CHARLES: That's your balance of Sam-bucks. SAM: So, I think we're about to get way beyond the [inaudible] [Laughter] SAM: But I think the argument would be that some of these things are better decentralized. So in my example, you're right. That might just make more sense. But I think there are some examples around cryptocurrencies that are supporting a network of decentralized services where a centralized database historically was inconvenient or didn't provide the amount of transparency that people were looking for. CHARLES: Right, right. SAM: And so, that's a topic for a whole other podcast. CHARLES: Yeah, right. No, it makes sense. SAM: [Laughs] CHARLES: I think it's a matter of scale, right? If you're going to be just buying services but if you're going to have secondary markets where you're trading in this currency, I can see that. So, let's… [Chuckles] We'll reel that back in. SAM: [Chuckles] CHARLES: And ask a question that occurred to me. So now, we talked about your day-to-day. What exactly, when you're looking at a company to basically give money to, what are you looking for? What are the things you're like, “Oh man, I want to throw dollars at this company,” versus, “Mm. I'm going to keep them and give them some feedback and send them on their way.” SAM: There's always a set of factors that we evaluate. And I think the waiting is probably different for different types of investors. And then there's I'd say for me as a corporate VC being a part of GE, there's an extra lens which is, how is this relevant to GE? What does it mean for GE to be an investor? But if I think about just the kind of general industry lines it's: team is a really big one. So, who's building this company? Do I believe in their ability to reach this vision that they're laying out for me? Another one would be technology. What have they actually built? Is that hard to build? Do the things they want to build in the future, will those be hard to build? And do they have the skills and the people to do it? Then their technology, maybe an extension of that would be intellectual property. And besides intellectual property, just defensibility of a business in general. So then, you start thinking about, can somebody else just come along and to the same thing? Because if so, then maybe there's not a strong advantage in what the company has done so far. And then lastly, it's also just traction. How far along are they? How much have they proven the ability to execute on the plan that they're laying out? CHARLES: Right. ERICK: So, you're a corporate investor. So, there's other types of investor like an institutional VC? What are the differences between an institutional VC and a corporate VC and the other types of VC? Potentially what they'd be looking for, in terms of what they wanted best. SAM: Yeah. So, I think generally I categorize investors as institutional or corporate. And corporate [inaudible]… ERICK: Yeah. SAM: Corporate or strategic. And then there are people who exist on a spectrum there. But generally, an institutional means this is a group that is raising money from a set of limited partners who are the people who invest in the fund that are pension funds or wealthy individuals. They're large pools of institutional capital and their pure purpose is to earn return. And they may have a certain focus because they believe in this part of the market, or they like this kind of company or the stage of company. But essentially, their job is to return more money to the limited partners of that fund that were put in. That's their role in the world. And then on the corporate side, if we go the most extreme version of corporate VC, this is a group that is a part of a larger corporate. They're investing that company's money. So, in this case for me it's GE. I'm investing GE's money into these startups. And that means that I only have a single backer being GE. And I also maybe have a different lens, because my purpose is one, to earn financial return. I want to go out and I want to find good companies. I want to earn returns just like the other institutional venture capitalists. But I also have the goal of, and the strategic goal may differ by company, but for me it's about how can I help GE advance? How can I help GE understand a market? And how can GE be helpful to this company in achieving their goals? And so, for each company we use that lens as well, as a corporate. CHARLES: What I'm hearing is that you want to invest… I guess the thing is you can experience return that's not just cash. It's not just dollars. You'll experience return in raising the ocean of the business that GE is in, right? So… SAM: You said it much better than I did. [Laughter] CHARLES: Well, it's all… paraphrasing is actually easy. [Laughter] ERICK: Oh, yeah. SAM: An important skill. CHARLES: That makes a lot of sense. So, the question I have then is, you said you were looking for companies that kind of swim in a specific ocean. And each company is farther along. Are you usually finding this company I want to work with, like you are going out and finding them? Or they're coming to you looking for investment? Or is it really just, depends. SAM: So, we call that part of the process sourcing, sourcing investments. And they come from all over. So for us, there are a few different ways. One is we tend to be thesis-driven. Meaning we go out and we say, the world is changing in this way and therefore we're interested in this kind of company. And so, we'll proactively go out and research. We're also, I mentioned, a little later stage. So, I don't tend to do seed investments. I tend to do ‘Series A' and more often ‘Series B' and later. So, companies that have often already raised a seed round or raised a ‘Series A' round. So, I can actually search databases to say, “Okay, in the last two years who has raised a seed round or ‘Series A' round and these other things I'm looking for whether it be location or tied to investors or other things.” So, that's one way of being proactive is saying I want to go out and look for companies in this space that look like this. And that can be either like I mentioned, desktop research like searching the web, searching databases. Or it can be just going to conferences, right? So, on thing we spend a lot of time on in the IoT world is artificial intelligence and machine learning. It's been a big, big topic over the last year that a lot of people have invested in. So, we may go to different conferences that focus on that topic, meet lots of people that are working on it. Some companies, some individuals that are either investing in or advising their companies. And we'll talk to them. What companies are rising out of that space that we should be looking at? What technologies are changing in that space that we should be thinking about? And just trying to get smarter so that we can make the right investments and help the right companies find their way to work with GE and make our products better and help them advance their own enterprise. CHARLES: Are you investing with a mind that eventually GE might acquire this company and integrate it into GE itself? Or is it really just, “Hey, we're just going to take a part of it. We're going to have maybe a seat on the board to be able to steer a little bit. But we're pretty much going to let it be its own thing with its own autonomy and go where it was and just benefit through those secondary and tertiary effects.” SAM: Yeah, acquisitions from our portfolio by GE happened. But they're certainly not the explicit goal or our focus. I know we've had one, maybe two of our portfolio companies acquired by GE, one that I was directly working with called Bit Stew. So, we made the investment in the company. It was with the goal of using their data management platform for a lot of our applications. And at some point in working with GE and GE Digital, they decided, you know, this would make sense to be a part of GE. That wasn't why we made the investment. But it did end up being acquired by GE. And I know the team is doing really well. And it's been at GE for about a year now. So, it does happen. But when I said one or two, that's versus a portfolio of a hundred plus companies. CHARLES: Right. SAM: Since we started investing. And so, that's not what we're looking to do every time. Much more often it's about again, how does the company make GE more competitive and a better company, a better place to work. And then how do we help them advance their goals? Whether it be bringing them developers, or finding them other routes to market, or just being a customer. CHARLES: Right. SAM: So, that's really how we think about strategic value. There's a lot of different ways to create it. CHARLES: Yeah, I'm curious. Because it seems like also in a lot of these companies you're investing in potential competitors. Extensively you're operating if not in the exact same market, maybe very similar markets. There's a little bit of overlap. And so, you're kind of investing in potential competitors, right? So, where's the balance of here we're funding our competitors versus we're going to move into these markets ourselves. SAM: Yeah, and funding of “competitors” can happen. I think that we talk about that more in theory and say, “Oh sure, we'd be willing to fund a company that's out disrupting the space that we're playing in.” And we do that. It's rare that you see startups that are directly head-on competing with much more established companies like GE or other industrials or even other consumer companies. They don't take these companies head-on because that's not a way that startups have been successful in the past, right? We talk much more about disruption and saying, how is this company doing something that may indirectly compete with GE? So, you think about things like, for anybody that's not familiar with GE… actually, a lot of people associate us with our appliances which we actually don't manufacture anymore. That's [inaudible]. [Chuckles] SAM: We sold that business a few years ago. Almost everything we sell is like big, heavy industrial equipment. So, we sell aircraft engines, locomotives. We sell gas turbines, wind turbines. So, here and there a couple of things that do power generation. One trend that's affecting that industry is distributed generation of energy, energy storage. And those are parts of the market that are a less significant part of GE's business than say, heavy-duty gas turbines that sit in a power plant and generate a massive amount of power. And so, if you look at that and say, “Wow, GE Ventures is out funding storage companies. Does that mean they're funding competitors?” Well, it means that we're funding innovation that may disrupt the future of our business, but that's part of being a VC and that's part of the value that GE Ventures brings to GE. CHARLES: Right. SAM: We're out there looking at markets before they're large enough or in scope for GE. CHARLES: Mmhmm, right. And so, yes you're disrupting the space but then you're going to be a part of that disruption and have strong connections to those markets if you need to actually migrate your business completely over to them. That's kind of what I'm hearing. SAM: Yeah, absolutely. Better to disrupt yourself, right? CHARLES: [Chuckles] SAM: And be a part of the ecosystem in the future because I think the future happens with or without you. And it's really key that we get out in front of it and a part of that, a part of that discussion, a part of that process. CHARLES: And so now, you've been saying that this is, GE, this has been pretty explosive? There's a lot more happening through GE Ventures. There's a lot more happening in other companies globally, having these corporate ventures. Where do you think the balance is going to lie to say, “Hey,” I'm just going to throw out some numbers, just for theory here, it's like, “10% of our business is essentially this distributed network of semi-autonomous or mostly autonomous startups. And then we have our core business.” Does that stabilize at 50/50? Does it stabilize at 75% the other way with GE essentially becoming a capital management company? Or is it somewhere in the middle? SAM: So, GE Ventures will never be a meaningful part of GE's revenue, a meaningful part of its business as a percentage. The overall venture industry is full of funds that are on the order of like, bigger funds are on the order of, in the billions. The single-digit billions. And GE itself is a much, much larger company. Well over a hundred billion dollars in enterprise value. So, I think GE Ventures will always be a small part of the company financially. And the impact will be largely felt through how we help the rest of GE navigate the future. ERICK: You said that sometimes you go and look for companies, startups to invest in or sometimes startups come to you or come to a VC looking for funding. Now, I'm a developer or a startup founder. And I'm going to look for funding. What are some of the mistakes or pitfalls that you see that startup founders or people with an idea fall into when looking for funding that you can help them avoid? SAM: Yeah, and we do see companies that come to us. So, I mentioned a lot about how I go out looking for companies based on a thesis or a set of relevant factors or relevant things for GE. But we do have a number of inbound requests. People know some of the bigger VC brands. They know GE the big company. So, we do get inbound interest and we also get referrals from networks of VCs and some are employees and other things. But for the companies that are seeking us out, the ones that are going out looking for funding, there are some things that are really well-known in Silicon Valley and other places, or you could research online and find, but may not be obvious at first. And so, I think the first one is, who are you talking to? What investors are you seeking out? Depending on what stage you're at, what kind of business you're in, you have to understand what the landscape of potential investors are and which ones might be interested in a company like yours. So, I think there are tons of good mentors that can help people navigate that. Maybe less commonly outside of Silicon Valley, in Boston, New York, in the places where you have traditional venture ecosystems. But you see a ton of resources available online whether it be things like Fred Wilson's blog, AVC.com, or Crunchbase, TechCrunch. You can read and understand and from headlines tell what people care about. And I think that's fundamentally a really important first step. You don't want to waste an hour talking to somebody who will never… this is somebody that invests in really late-stage growth equity companies and I'm coming to them for my first investment. That's not going to work. So, I think finding the right people, step one. I think when you're going through the process of pitching and talking about your business, the pitfalls are all about understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your business and where you are today. And so, for every company, that's different. But I think just being open and honest versus glossing over a lot of the risks, these are all really risky companies. If they were easy, then you'd have a lot more competition. And so… [Laughter] SAM: I think that's one thing that I see, too. You have some company that comes in and say, “Look, here are the parts I've figured out and here are the parts I still have to figure out.” And that's a really good conversation to have. There are other companies where they say, “Look, we've figured the whole thing out. We just want you to give us some money.” And I don't think a lot of investors necessarily buy into that. And certainly, there are investors of every stripe. So, I may be speaking too broadly. But I think that's a really important part of the venture investment process, right? You're looking not just for money but also for counsel and for somebody that you're going to work with over the next, sometimes seven years or longer. CHARLES: Yeah. SAM: [Inaudible] going to be on your board and participating. So, it's a really important part. CHARLES: So, you're looking, you're actually looking not necessarily for all the answers but you're looking for the questions that they're asking, too. SAM: Yeah, absolutely. And demonstrating they understand the ins and outs of the business. And that they have the capacity to carry this onto that next stage and hopefully beyond. CHARLES: Mmhmm. So, now you said something that caught my interest there that you work with some people sometimes seven years. You enter into these long relationships. Do you generally ever do any type of, I want to say almost like… mentoring might be too strong of a word, but in the pre-investment, in other words before you actually invest in a company, do you ever work with them to prepare them for investment to say, “Hey, I think there's potential here. Work on A, B, and C and then let's talk.” And you have this image in your mind. You go, you pitch to an investor, and it's either thumbs up or it's like thumbs down and you never talk to them again. Versus, is there some ground in between where there's a conversation that evolves that eventually ends up in an investment being made? SAM: Absolutely. I think one of the parts of this industry is even when I'm not an investor in a company, I may know a company and say, “It's not a fit for me for GE Ventures but I still think that we can provide help.” It's one of the things I love about tech and about venture in general, is that people are often willing to pitch in, even when they don't have a direct financial incentive. And so, I see that a lot whether it's helping a company where we've met them and we later see an opportunity and say, “Oh, you should go and talk to this company or that company.” And then often, we may see a company that's pitching us ahead of where we would typically invest. Maybe they're looking for a ‘Series A' but given the space that they're in or what we're doing at the moment, it may not be the right time for us. And so, we'll continue to track along and keep up and get updates. Some companies do a really good job of actually providing proactive updates and sending out monthly or quarterly reports to investors they've met with before. I think there's a wide range of ways that founders do this. But it is a really good way to keep people interested in the prize. And then when you come back and say, “Hey, now I'm out raising my ‘Series B',” that's not a surprise. I knew that you were hitting these milestones, that you were doing everything you said you were going to do. And you've demonstrated a level of credibility that really adds to the pitch that you made the first time around. ERLICK: You said something, metrics. So, a venture capitalist, after they make an investment, what are some of the expectations that they may hold this startup that they just invested in… what are those expectations that they may hold them accountable for? Or those metrics that they'll be looking at? SAM: Yeah, so I think some of the really high-level ones that are common across businesses, generally growth is a really big one. So, I almost said revenue. But I wanted to caveat… [Laughter] SAM: And say growth could mean different things. It could mean number of developers. It could mean number of downloads if you're an app. It depends on what the business is. But I think growth is a huge one. Growth is a really important, that top line, that's what's going to drive a lot of the value in the business. And then below that, demonstrating that you can hit the milestones around things like margins. So, how profitable is each unit you're selling? Or how profitable is each customer? And lastly, how are you doing managing your spend? So, that's great that you're earning the right amount of money for each customer, but are you doing it by… do you have a massive number of employees and offices and all the things that are too expensive to allow you to use your money wisely as you reach the next stage? And so, those are the big milestones. It's really just growth, margins, and operating cost or burn rate as we call it. CHARLES: Mmhmm. So, that sounds like a lot of work to actually evaluate these companies. Do you do your due diligence once you've already moved in pretty solidly into the process? SAM: Yeah, these processes can move really fast. And depending on the timing, generally it's, you jump in, you learn as much as you can, as fast as you can, and you make a decision so the company can move on. I'll say there's a lot of work that goes into considering and deciding which companies to spend more time on, both for us and for them. We don't want to waste a company's time evaluating, going through more meetings, if it's not a really strong candidate for us. Because they could be spending that time better with other investors who are a better fit. And I'm not going to pretend to like the evaluation part. I have a lot of respect for the amount of not just work but of a person's energy and really, their life goes into these companies. And so, I think the hard part is building the company. And so, it's hard for me to say that evaluating is a hard part. I'm trying to understand as much as I possibly can in a month or two. I'm not going to know as much about the business as the founder does. And I'll be wrong a lot. I may miss something and not understand, whether it's because I don't see the market but it's there or because I have some underlying assumption about the way things should work that they don't meet. And I think that that's something that investors have to come to grips with. You try and get as smart as you can as fast as you can, but you're not always going to get to the right answer. ERLICK: You said that it was growth, spend, and profits were some of the metrics. That is almost all of the essential components of a business plan. I remember one time, one of our previous conversations, you emphasized how important it was for companies, or even at just a simple startup, to put together a basic business plan. Is that something that you can elaborate on a little? SAM: Yeah. So, most companies show up with a pitch deck. So, they have a set of PowerPoint slides and then they have a set of materials behind that where if you go deeper into an area they may have a white paper about their technology and they may have an Excel financial model that explains why they have these expectations about what growth and margins and all those things will look like. So, there are all of those pieces that come together into a business plan. The business plan could be written or it could be that PowerPoint. But very traditionally, it's a PowerPoint or some kind of presentation that is shared in person. There's usually a version that's sent in advance to confirm that the company and the investors should meet. And then once you clear that bar, there's a deeper presentation that often you'll give to either one or a set or a whole team of investors. And you'll go through and explain why it is you think this is a good investment opportunity for them and why you'd like to work together. And then you have a discussion about whether that's a good fit, about some of the underlying assumptions, and come to either a set of next steps for the diligence or a decision that it's not the right fit, it's not the right time to take the relationship further with more diligence and that kind of stuff. ERLICK: Yeah, because I see… well, I know a few people that have startup ideas and they kind of put the business plan on the back burner and put the actual prototype more at the forefront. They say, “Oh, we can worry about the business plan later.” [Laughs] SAM: [Chuckles] Well, I think… there's something to be said to that. There's something to be said for product and growth winning. So if you… Let's start at the early stages. If you have something that's working and that's really obvious, you may not need a… ERLICK: True. SAM: To go raise money. It all comes down to, do you have enough to get enough investors interested to raise the round that you want to raise? Because you want to have enough investors involved, enough demand, that you can be selective about who you want to work with and on what terms, right? So, what valuation and how much of the company am I giving them, and all of those things. So, if you can do all of those things with nothing but an app and one chart that shows a hockey stick of growth, that's awesome. CHARLES: You're hot. [Laughter] SAM: Often it does require much more and a much longer plan. So, even if you say, “Look, it's growing like crazy,” there's usually some set of questions behind that. So, that's great. Your free app is growing like crazy. How are you going…? [Laughter] SAM: To get paid for that? And you'll talk about that. And you'll say, “Here are the things we're planning on doing,” or here are the assumptions that we're making. And the more original, the more unique the business model is, the more discussion and explanation that may require. And that's where the business plan and a pitch deck come in handy, because it's a really good presentation aide or pre-reading to get to that answer faster. ERLICK: So, this evaluation it seems, is a two-way street. The VCs evaluating the company and also the company or the startup evaluating the VC to know whether it's going to be a good relationship. SAM: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, the best companies have choice. They have a number of investors who are interested in funding them. And certainly, that might be different at different stages or at different times, depending on what's going on in the economy and in tech and in other places. But generally, VC is a very competitive industry. I'm trying to sell my money and services as an investor versus other options that you have. And so, while it's maybe not as competitive as only one of us can buy the company like in an M&A situation. There are often more than one investor. There's still a very intense set of competition around, okay, who's going to be involved in the deal? How much money will they be able to invest? So, that's something that really can come in handy for founders. ERLICK: And what was that you just said there? M&A situation? SAM: Oh, sorry. When a company is being bought. So, when a company is being bought, it can look kind of like a fundraising process, but instead of selling a part of a company, you're selling the whole thing. And so, in that case, obviously it's a competitive situation where there's only one winner. And this is a different process. Often, the rounds that we're a part of, we're not… we're buying a minority stake just like any VC. We may be buying 5% of a company, 10% of a company. And often we're being joined by other venture investors. We really actually commonly partner with the institutional firms and they'll take a board seat. We'll invest alongside them and be an observer on the board and provide counsel. And so, it is a very competitive process. And that, while M&A is a winner-take-all, there is one buyer who is ultimately going to own this company going forward, the investing process for a venture is much more collaborative. But it is still competitive, because there can only be so many investors in one company. CHARLES: And you want to choose the right one on both… the right set. Alright. Well, I think we're running up against time. This has been a fascinating conversation into an aspect of our industry that really is providing the fuel that drives so much of this forward. So, I guess I'll close by asking you, already talked about Resin. We had them on the podcast. We love them. Are there any conferences or products that you're investing in that you feel like our audience might want to know about or anything like that? SAM: Well one, you mentioned Resin. CHARLES: Yeah. SAM: I know you guys have been a good friend to them and Elrick and I met at their hackathon. I would recommend to anybody, go try it out. It's a really cool way to play with hardware products. I am not a developer and I required a lot of help from Elrick at the hackathon. [Laughter] SAM: But at the same time, it is something that almost anybody can pull out of a box and start playing with. So, I think that's a great one. The episode you did on them were fantastic. So, I really enjoyed those ones. I'd say in general, I'm always out looking to meet new companies that are going to benefit from working with GE. I spend a lot of my time not just trying to invest but also trying to find partnerships for companies that we're looking at within GE, either selling to us or working with us. And so, if somebody thinks that there's an opportunity to do that, then I encourage them to reach out. Because I think there's a ton of opportunity. It's a really big company that really has a ton of opportunity for other partners. CHARLES: Alright. If they wanted to reach out, how would they get in touch with you? SAM: Yeah, I think maybe the best way to initially make contact, I tend to be pretty active on Twitter. So, my handle is just @SamCates. S-A-M-C-A-T-E-S. And you can also learn more through our website. If you're curious about some of the businesses I mentioned, so just GEVentures.com. And it's about to go through a whole refresh. So, go check it out. CHARLES: Alright. Well, fantastic. We will definitely look for that. And for everybody else, you can get in touch with us on Twitter at @TheFrontside or send us a line at info@frontside.io. Thank you everybody for listening. Thank so, so much Sam, for being on the podcast. SAM: Yeah, of course. It was a blast. I'm a big podcast fan and I've really enjoyed catching up on your episodes. CHARLES: Ah, and thank you Elrick, always. ERICK: It was great. SAM: Elrick, when you finish building your Raspberry Pi Battleships, I want to play. CHARLES: [Laughs] ERICK: Oh, yes. Yes. It's in the works, man. It's in progress. SAM: Alright, I'm waiting. CHARLES: Alright. Well, take it easy, everybody.

In this podcast, @CRGutowski from @GE_Digital talks about the importance of data and analytics in transforming sales organizations. She sheds light on challenges and opportunities with transforming the sales organization of a transnational enterprise using analytics and implement a growth mindset. Cate shared some of the tenets of the transformation mindset. This podcast is great for future leaders who are thinking of shaping their sales organization and empower them with the digital mindset. Timeline: 0:29 Cate's journey. 7:40 Cate's typical day. 9:07 How does the sales cope up with disruption? 13:25 Data science in sales. 14:48 Planning a digital software for 25000 workforces. 18:00 The thin line between marketing and sales. 22:13 Safeguarding the workforce against tech disruption. 24:57 The culture of sales. 27:55 Designing a digitally connected strategy. 30:08 Designing customer experience. 33:48 Sales strategy for a startup. 36:43 Selling transformative sales strategies to executives. 40:55 How can organizations go digital? 43:25 Digital thread. 44:14 How can a sales organization deal with IT? 45:54 Pitfalls in the process of digitization. 48:44 Challenges for sales folks amid disruption. 50:30 How does Cate keep herself updated? 52:10 Cate's success mantra. 54:06 Closing remarks. Youtube: https://youtu.be/3jcpYgvIli4 iTunes: http://apple.co/2hM9r5E Cate's Recommended Read: Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek http://amzn.to/2hGvc6w Podcast Link: https://futureofdata.org/crgutowski-ge_digital-using-analytics-transform-sales/ Cate's BIO: Cate has 20 years of technical sales, marketing, and product leadership experience across various global divisions in GE. Cate is currently based in Boston, MA, and works as the VP – Commercial Digital Thread, leading the digital transformation of GE's 25,000+ sales organization globally. Prior to relocating to Boston, Cate and her family lived in Budapest, Hungary, where she led product management, marketing, and commercial operations across EMEA for GE Current. Cate holds an M.B.A. from the University of South Florida and a Bachelor's degree in Communications and Business Administration from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. About #Podcast: #FutureOfData podcast is a conversation starter to bring leaders, influencers, and lead practitioners to discuss their journey to create the data-driven future. Wanna Join? If you or any you know wants to join in, Register your interest @ http://play.analyticsweek.com/guest/ Want to sponsor? Email us @ info@analyticsweek.com Keywords: #FutureOfData, #Data, #Analytics, #Leadership Podcast, #Big Data, #Strategy