Celebrating Kantata’s Women in Technology: Customer Success and Engineering Teams
Each month we are sharing a collection of candid interviews with the women at Kantata from a variety of roles and different teams. Each overview highlights their impressive achievements and unique experiences in the technology industry and will focus on some of the most inspiring and impactful moments from the interviews.
In this post, we’re looking at some of the women on Kantata’s Customer Success and Engineering teams. Read and watch their answers below to hear their insights on questions relating to their achievements and experiences, or use these links to jump to one person in particular: Fiona Sarno, Sr. Customer Success Manager; Sarah Edwards, Chief Product Officer; Diana Acuna, Sr. Director, Customer Success Transformation; Michelle Walker, Customer Success Manager; Naz Sarfraz, Sr. Customer Success Manager; and Aysha Williams, Sr. Software Engineer.
Q: Do you have a message or advice for other women working in tech?
My advice to other women who are working in tech would be, speak up when you know you have something to say, get involved. So if there are Women in Tech sessions, if there are projects that you have time that you could do some work on, or if there are networking opportunities within the tech and wider teams, get involved. It builds confidence and it gets you out there. And it may put you in someone’s head if they are looking for new team members in the future.
Q: Do you have a message or advice for other women looking to get into tech?
Q: What advice would you give your younger self when you were just starting out?
The advice that I would give to myself when I was younger, would be to trust myself. We probably all heard that saying, fake it til you make it, and I would say I disagree with that statement, “fake it til you make it.” I think sometimes we may suffer from imposter syndrome, and so we feel like we need to fake it till we make it, or sometimes maybe we don’t trust ourselves, although we may have been put in situations, because other people see that we’re ready for those situations. Trust yourself. We’re doing a better job now in companies, and just as a society we’re also talking about imposter syndrome, which I think is great. Yet also, I think maybe sometimes it can be confusing, and sometimes you may be in a scenario where you’re just new, and this is a new challenge and you’re growing. And so again, it’s just a scenario where you need to trust yourself that you are completely ready for the position that you’ve been put in. So I would say, in either case, I don’t think you ever need to fake it. It’s more of a situation where you just need to face where you are until you’ve mastered it.
Q: What first sparked your interest in working in the tech industry?
Q: What has been your favorite project to work on while at Kantata?
I have to say there is not one project I am not passionate about. Even the difficult ones, in every engagement I throw everything at it. I am constantly thinking about how I can improve the client’s experience, their use of our solution, and how to solve a specific problem they are having. The client’s failure to renew or achieve what they want to do is for me a personal failure if I can not come out of the experience and say to myself that I leveraged all the resources available and explored every possibility.
My favorite ‘project’ hands down is a client based out of Germany and India. A client since 2014, I took over oversight in 2020. It is wonderful to partner with them as they have scaled from an SME to an Enterprise level organization. Over the years, the client has worked together to deflect internal competitor risk, continued to share their organizational goals and business direction, and work with us to ensure we aligned from a functional perspective. We are in this next phase of how we can support and sustain their requirements as they continue to scale.
Q: What can organizations do to grow more women into leadership roles?
It’s extremely helpful to have a discussion with someone else in a leadership position about the role of leadership. For me, I didn’t think of myself as a leader because I had this stereotype in my head of what that meant. It wasn’t until I reached out for mentorship and sponsorship that I realized my potential for leadership. I was very apprehensive about it, but I had managers, coaches, and colleagues who saw my potential, and that encouragement helped me see my own potential I realized I didn’t have to be a stereotypical leader, in fact, there are different leadership roles and styles that work for me.
Learn More
The interviews featured above highlight some of the many ways that women at Kantata are driving results both within their organization and within the technology industry. To hear more stories from the women at Kantata, browse the entire series here or check out our most recent post featuring our professional services team. Keep an eye out for the next installments in the series, as we’ll be featuring a number of interviews with women from a variety of teams at Kantata over the coming months. To learn more about career opportunities at Kantata, visit this page.