Rachel is a tech-industry leader whose background includes a history of creating new roles, and guiding product vision while delivering financial results and developing her staff.  A veteran people leader at Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, past employees praise her for people-management, communication, and product innovation.  She prioritizes learning from her team and guiding strengths to deliver collective success, and she’s here with us today to share some of her story and staff development approach.  In our discussion, you’ll hear her 3 pillars of career assessment. She’ll describe how she’s influenced product development as a stakeholder, and her model for creating new roles. 

I’ve invited Rachel to ManagerMirror because she’s delivered results at several top tech firms through building high-performing teams, and I wanted her to share those experiences with this audience.  Rachel first worked as a paralegal and real-estate agent before shifting into corporate-America in a Sr. Contracts Manager role at CA Technologies Automation in 2008. She spent 5 years leading negotiations and mentoring colleagues before her first stint as a paralegal with Microsoft in 2012. After a year, Rachel returned to CA Technologies and spent 5 years earning 4 promotions and her first experiences in leading teams.  In 2017, she joined Amazon’s cloud computing organization AWS where she then spent 5 years earning increasing scope of responsibility in roles as Global Lead for channel strategy, Senior Business Development Manager, and Principal, WW GTM specialist.  In 2021, Rachel returned to Microsoft as the Director of Business Development Strategy & Ventures.  Over her years, Rachel applied her legal expertise as she practiced building teams. She created roles, built out new subject matter areas, and provided guidance into the product development process through customer feedback.  Along the way, Rachel’s teams delivered results, grew in scope, and graduated many staff members into corporate leadership roles of their own. Today, Rachel is Resell Strategic Initiatives Manager at Google Cloud Marketplace, and she’s here with us to share her insight, a few stories, and some tips we can put into our own people-management practices.  Follow Rachel on LinkedIn and stay current with her leadership and tech industry content!