Marivi Stuchinsky, Global CTO at Technologent, was recently interviewed in an article by Authority Magazine on Medium.com, as well as Thrive Global Magazine. In the interview, Marivi discusses being a "woman in Tech" and the lessons she has learned along the way.
Read through the full interview here: https://medium.com/authority-magazine/inspirational-women-in-stem-and-tech-assure-your-team-that-they-can-count-on-you-with-marivi-c2a3031ffd54
Or here: https://thriveglobal.com/stories/assure-your-team-that-they-can-count-on-you-with-marivi-stuchinsky/
An excerpt from the interview, by Penny Bauder:
Idecided to start my career in IT due to a life changing event. Almost 35 years ago, I unfortunately was going through a separation/divorce, and about to become a single Mother. My younger brother had started his career in IT and was making a good salary, so that convinced me to go back to school for Computer Science & Programming. I figure that during my mid 20’s, Technology was an industry where I would be able to achieve a career with a good income so I could support my kids. And since it is a male dominated industry, a big plus was that I could possibly meet a new husband! I met hubby #2 at Paramount Pictures in our IT department. We have been married for 25 years and he has always treated my 3 sons from my first marriage as his own, plus we were lucky have added a wonderful daughter to our family. All our boys are now married, and we have 3 wonderful (about to be 4) grandchildren. Ironically, all of our kids ended up in Technology. One is Technical Project Manager, another in Technical Sales, the third a Network Engineer, and our daughter is a Senior Data Management Analyst.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began at your company?
I’ve been at Technologent for 2 ½ years now, although I’ve been working with the Technologent family for the last 10 years as a customer. That is what I find most interesting…that the roles have reversed. Instead of being sold to by Technologent and other solution providers, I am now helping Technologent sell. It is a great position to be in as I know what keeps the CXO’s up at night.
Prior to Technologent, I’ve always worked for large global enterprises, and while I thought that joining a mid-size organization could be a little boring and chaotic because of lack of structure, I was pleasantly surprised that structure does exist and amazed at how fast we can get things done.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
When I started my IT career at a large bank in Downtown LA, our office was located 2 levels underground. I was already at work when the Whittier Narrows earthquake happened. I was drinking my coffee and remained calm, but I decided to put my coffee on my desk, and little did I know, when you are at an underground location of a high-rise building, the lower level floors shake up & down, not sideways. I think my coffee spilling all over my desk made me panic more than the earthquake itself and I didn’t think to follow our emergency response floor warden out of the office. I was one of the last employees that vacated our floor. From that experience, I learned to use a sealed coffee cup and also volunteer to be the floor warden, so I make sure that know man/woman gets left behind over something as silly as spilt coffee!
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Technologent stands out because we are not just focused on selling products, instead, we approach every customers situation to help them solve business problems and achieve business outcomes.
We have an abundance of customer success stories, one that stands out is helping a customer achieve operational efficiencies while undergoing an IT transformation initiative. We started with a current state IT assessment, then worked with their business stakeholders on business and IT capability mapping, resulting in a recommendation for their IT strategy and roadmap which correlates with their business needs.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
My team and I are working on a lot of managed services initiatives. We have seen an uptick in the desire to enhance and automate day-to-day IT Operations. By providing these services, it allows our customers, and more importantly, their people to focus on what really matters to their business.
Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Are you currently satisfied with the status quo regarding women in STEM? What specific changes do you think are needed to change the status quo?
I think the ratio is getting better, but we are not there yet. As an active member of a STEM organization, I think we need to continue encouraging young women to get a STEM education. I did it with my daughter and when she was in her high school senior year, I got her an internship with my employer at that time. She learned a lot from the internship and decided to get a degree in Economics. As I mentioned earlier, she is a Senior Data Management Analyst and has set her sights on becoming a Data Scientist.
I believe we need to continue to support and expand women’s networks, inspire our youth early on in education around all the areas of STEM, and advise those that may want to seek a career in STEM, that it is never too late to start!