1. How did you decide to pursue a career in technology?

My father was a math major and my mother was a physicist. I have two brothers that started out with engineering degrees, one is now a neurosurgeon and the other a tenured professor.  I had the natural inclination and nurturing for science and math, but what keeps me here decades later is my personal passion for continuous learning.  Technology evolves at an extraordinary rate and it’s a constant race to keep up.  People generally find its dynamic nature either exhilarating or exhausting.  For me it’s the former; it is very exciting to be in a field where I can learn something new every day.  I also see the impact of innovative technologies on our lives, everything from medical research to energy conservation to elimination of geographic boundaries when people communicate via the Internet.  I want to participate in a profession that makes the world a better and broader place for my children.

2. Based on your own experience, what skill(s) or characteristic(s) do you think are most important for technical women to succeed?

I think there are three fundamental ingredients for success.  First, you have to find and follow your passion.  Secondly, you need to have the skill for your passion and the drive to continually develop it.  Thirdly, you need a market.  Someone out there has to be willing pay for you to exercise your skill.  Without this last ingredient, what you have is a hobby, not a career.

The bottom line is to produce results.  Most high tech companies are execution based, and it’s important not confuse hard work with clarity of results.  Intelligence and hard work are the necessary but not sufficient conditions for success.  Everything else is an opinion, but results are a fact.  It is evidence of your contribution and tangible proof of your value add to the organization.

Another key skill is communication and how you share your results with others.  It goes well beyond simple data sharing, but demonstrating the technical and business significance of what you have produced, in a context that is meaningful and relevant to your intended audience.  This is how you get exposure and recognition.

Finally, I will make a generalization here, but it’s one that I have observed repeatedly.  Women take no for an answer too readily compared to men, and we give up too soon.  A successful career is a marathon.  Tenacity and perseverance will be rewarded.  Stay with it and don’t accept a dead end.

3. What was the greatest challenge that you overcame in your career?

The most profound challenge for me was having children and trying to negotiate my time.  It was difficult adjustment for me, having two simultaneously strong and conflicting passions.  I learned it’s not about taking a step down at work, getting off critical paths, and scaling down.  If anything, my time with my children was so precious, it raised the bar for what I expected from my time at work to make it just as worthwhile.  If work was going to justify taking my time spent away from them, it had to have influence, significance, and impact at a minimum.

4. How do you deal with work/life balance?

Honestly, it’s not easy.  Balance implies a constant juggling act, but it’s really about making priorities, standing by your decisions, and having the capacity to forgive yourself when you can’t do it all.  Technology has changed our lives forever.  Work is no longer a place we go to, but a thing we do. Cisco is helping enable connectivity of anyone from any place at any time with our borderless network architecture.  This connectivity technology enables seamless work/life integration and greater efficiency.  It helps me multitask and increase my productivity.

5. What advice would you give to women in high tech who want to advance on the individual contributor technical track specifically?

Don’t confuse management with leadership or the number of direct reports with influence and impact.  Individual contributors can be the strongest technical leaders because they are not burdened with additional organizational, budgetary, and management responsibilities.  High tech companies have enormous regard for their technical thought leaders, as they help drive innovation, product strategies, and ultimately market competitiveness.  An individual contributor role doesn’t mean staying in your cube and cranking out homework problems for a career.  It’s being able to take complex problems and not only finding integrated platform solutions with cross-functional teams, but also being able to develop timely cost effective alternatives that are necessary for the next product life cycle and beyond.  If taking your technical ideas and leading the future vision sounds appealing to you, then you are on a good path for a Chief Scientist, CTO, Fellow, or Distinguished Engineer role.

6.  How do you stay current in your technical field?

It’s actually easier now than ever because information access is more readily enabled through the Internet.  I have much more visibility into technology leadership on a global basis through colleagues, international conferences, standards committees, expert collaboration forums, university research, etc., than I did 20 years ago.  I also have a better understanding of the business relevance and market adjacencies which shapes the priorities and perspectives of the problems that technology is going to solve.  Developing a strategy and context helps me filter, authenticate, and sort through the masses of data and get to the critical factors more efficiently.

7. In your opinion, what (if any) are the remaining barriers faced by women in technology?

Things are definitely improving over time, but barriers still exist across all levels.  There is a barrier to entry – there is still a stereotype associated with women in technology as dateless humorless geeks in lab coats with our hair tied back in a bun.  Who would sign up for that?!  Getting more girls into technical fields early on means better odds for them to become women who will reach higher level technical or executive positions later.

There are also barriers to advancement for women.  Some are due to pervasive cultural stereotypes, particularly with a global workplace.  However, many barriers are also self-imposed.  Often, I see women be very well prepared for meetings with sound data, but they don’t know how to convince the audience.  Having the right answer isn’t enough.  Learn what is valued by your company and communicate with influence.  Push yourself out of your comfort zone, take risks, act on feedback, and own accountability for the decisions you make.

Judy Priest is a Cisco Distinguished Engineer and Manager in the Gigabit Systems Group at Cisco Systems, Inc.  She has been working in industry for over 20 years in the area of high speed signaling technology, circuit, interconnect, and timing specification, design, and verification, in chip and system applications.  She works cross functionally with architects, design, marketing, and manufacturing for product optimization.  Judy is a recognized industry expert and is frequently invited to speak at international electronics and packaging conferences, and has participated in several IEEE and JEDEC standards committees.  Judy has previously worked at Digital Equipment Corporation, Hewlett Packard, Silicon Graphics, and Atheros Communications, as well as startup ventures.   She has a BSEE from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and graduate degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northeastern University.