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363- Don't Let Fear Decide w/Charissa Wong · You've Been Heard

• 0:09
  Speaker A: Welcome back to today's episode of Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I'm your host, Doug Kameen, and today I'm talking with Sharissa Wong, director of IT and security at Bowers and Kubota in Honolulu, Hawaii. Welcome to the show, Charissa.
• 0:23
  Speaker B: Thank you, Doug. Appreciate being here.
• 0:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, so this is, this is a first for me. Honolulu is. So. Listeners don't know this because I had a conversation about this on the podcast, but I love Hawaii is like my favorite vacation place to go. You know, I live on the, I live on the east coast, but I. Every time I go, it's like, it's just awesome. So I'm excited to talk to somebody who's, you know, who lives there full time, which, of course, it's a different experience for you than it is for me, but, you know, like, like what, what do you, what do you do? Tell us a little bit about what you do and what, what being in Honolulu is like.
• 1:02
  Speaker B: Is this on just on my off time or during my work?
• 1:07
  Speaker A: We can go both here, right? Cause, like, I mean, your workday, your workday is not sitting on a lovely beach, I'm sure, right?
• 1:15
  Speaker B: Oh, no.
• 1:16
  Speaker A: Oh, see, Yeah, I know. This isn't like, whatever, like Magnum PI where they're like, oh, look, we go home to this thing and we just walk out on the beach all the time.
• 1:26
  Speaker B: Right, Right.
• 1:28
  Speaker A: Yeah. Tell us a little bit about. You Tell us a little bit about. We'll start with your work and then we'll talk a little bit about Honolulu, I guess.
• 1:36
  Speaker B: Sure, sure. Yes. My full time job is I work as the director of IT and security for a local AEC which stands for architecture, engineering and construction management Firm. I've been there about six years and I also have a business doing cybersecurity consulting called Cyber Kia I. On my free time, we like to play volleyball and go to all the neat events that we have around the islands and, you know, just enjoy looking at this beautiful island.
• 2:18
  Speaker A: Yeah. So, so as a local, what are some of the coolest events in Hawaii that somebody like, like is. You're, you're. So he's coming in, you're like, you got to check this out. This is actually the coolest thing. People don't usually go there because only the, like the local people, if you will, know about it.
• 2:33
  Speaker B: Well, okay, so if you're from Hawaii, any event has to revolve around food. Yeah. So I'll talk about. Well, one of them that's coming up is this like, local food truck event where they have Just rows and rows of local food trucks, all different types of foods, and you just go there. It's like a big parking lot, and you go and you take your family and you find whatever you want to eat. Like, you can find anything. Like, it's just amazing and just amazing food. Yeah. So that's, that's my next event coming.
• 3:14
  Speaker A: Up Next, Food Truck City. So, like, and, you know, how do. I mean, Honolulu is very cosmopolitan city. It's like, you know, there's over a million people there. It's, you know, it's a lot of activity, a lot of, you know, a lot of people coming and going all the time. So it's, you know, culturally, there's a lot, you know, you mentioned about the food trucks. You know, you go to this one food truck event and you're going to get everything from, you know, I, I, I don't want to presume the types of foods that are there, but it's a very wide variety of, of different cuisines that are there, not just, you know, Asian cuisines, not just, you know, local Hawaiian cuisines and, you know, American fare and stuff like that. But it's really, it really runs all over the map.
• 3:50
  Speaker B: It does. You know, you have a mix of cultures here. And I think, you know, when I compare, when I travel to the mainland and I, and I, well, I was in, I was, I attended college on the mainland. And versus being in Hawaii, you have a huge mix of different ethnicities. And it's kind of weird because on the mainland, I feel like a minority, and here I don't. We're the majority.
• 4:18
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 4:19
  Speaker B: And it's, it's, when you come here, you know, it's all about making sure you feel like family, and that's just aloha spirit.
• 4:30
  Speaker A: That's awesome. You just mentioned on the mainland, did you grow up in Hawaii? Are you from.
• 4:36
  Speaker B: Yeah, I grew up in Hawaii and then I moved away for college, and then I was planning on staying on the mainland, but I decided to come back. It's funny, because my dad, what happened is my dad. So family is very important here, and my dad has never asked me to do anything really. Just, you know, go out, have fun, learn, enjoy life. And when I graduated college, he said, can you please move back home? So that was the reason why I moved back home, and I stayed here ever since.
• 5:13
  Speaker C: Ladies and gentlemen, IT leaders, before we move ahead, this podcast is not just a stream, it's a stage. And if you are an IT leader with something to say, we want to hear it. Join us Live, interact with the host and guest and if you've got the insight and courage to step up, we promote you to the mic. Apply now@popularitnerds.com waitlist if you have what it takes, join our growing network of over 160 senior IT leaders. Where real voices shape real conversations.
• 5:43
  Speaker A: So shave gears a little bit here and talk a little bit about your. I want to talk about your day job in a minute, but you mentioned in your intro that you have IT security consulting work that you do. So you've developed a specialization, you have a business cyber key and you do IT security consulting. Tell us a little bit more about that and what that entails and who you help.
• 6:06
  Speaker B: Yeah, so on my side, business, it's very important for me to help local businesses, small, medium sized businesses here because especially the small businesses, I noticed that a lot of them don't even have in house it, let alone security. And they are super vulnerable to these cyber criminals, attacks, breaches, whatever you want to call them. We want to make sure we protect the people who might not have the time or the money to, to invest in, you know, full time staff that have to protect their business. So it's very important for me to help out those businesses and they become almost like family too because they really appreciate somebody coming in and helping them and opening up their eyes. And not only their eyes, the owners, but everybody, all the employees within their company. You know, important part of my consulting, it's training and helping them understand what is important. Building security plans and just, you know, social engineering, phishing training, getting them aware that you cannot solve everything by just technology when it comes to security. So it's been very rewarding to be able to help out other businesses and.
• 7:48
  Speaker A: You know, doing that. I was a consultant too. For a lot of years. I was more focused on the IT infrastructure side. And I've been out of like straight consulting for a number of years. So I haven't, I say I probably got out a little before IT security became, you know, the, the as big as IT is today. But having that experience like so many of these small and medium businesses out there, it's just like you said, there's, there's, they don't have their own IT staff. They're, they're kind of like, you know, fumbling their way through a little bit of what's going on here, trying to figure it out themselves. They're, you know, their expertise is over in something else. You know, they're running a grocery store, they're, you know, you know, whatever the business is, you know, pest control business, whatever. And this stuff is complicated and hard and difficult to understand and requires somebody to actually be thinking about it too. It's not just like an afterthought. You know, somebody has to actively be in a certain level of understanding about what's going on and giving solid advice. So you know, definitely commend you there for the work there on that.
• 8:55
  Speaker B: Right. And that's um, that's what important, you know, when especially like when you're consulting that you're speaking a language they understand. And I think sometimes in, in technology we tend to be too technical and then we lose people because they have that stare, you know, that blank stare. Yeah. So I think you know, a lot of my experience with being in upper management, I know how to talk to people. I was in sales for a little while. That definitely helped me understand that you have to talk to their level and get them to understand what's important by using their level of understanding. Yeah.
• 9:37
  Speaker A: And I'm glad you brought that up because I was just the benefit of the podcast of getting a little advanced things. I get to see your LinkedIn profile so mining it for some information here and I see you've spent a little bit of time, you have a long history of being in it, you know, management and director positions but you had a stint where you were doing some sales work there too. So like, like can you tell us a little bit about your background and your leadership journey and, and how you know a lot of folks who've been in been in IT management start. You typically start in IT service and work your way up. But it's less common to have a full on sales experience in your, in your history. So I'd love to hear a little more about intersects with what you learned and what IT taught you. I mean you shared one detail about how the necessity of sharing content at the people's level. But I'm sure there's some other lessons that you took away from that.
• 10:35
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean this is a great story. I love sharing it. So I was with a small local retail company for 13 years. I was their director of it there. And personally my personal life, I found myself in a situation where my two year old son and I, I wasn't making enough money to at that position to be able to afford more than rent. And you know, living in Hawaii is you have to have live with somebody like you have to have a two person income to, to live I would say comfortably with a child, a young child who is about to enter Preschool. So, you know, there was a huge deficit in what I could afford and caring for my child. And I had lunch with one of my vendors at that time and I was telling her about what's going on and I need to find another job. And she's like, come work with us. I'm like, what are you talking about? What are we going to do there? And they did advanced technical services, you know, like virtualization and some other like, MSP type work. And so I was like, what am I supposed to do? And she's like, sales. I'm like, oh, my God. You get into it not to go into sales.
• 12:07
  Speaker A: That's right. That's right. We try to avoid sales like plague. Right? This is how it works.
• 12:11
  Speaker B: That's right. So she said, no, you'll be perfect because you know what the people on the other side are experiencing, you know, the technology. And she was explaining to me that, you know, a lot of difficulties they have with, with bringing in salespeople is they don't know the technology. They can't explain it. When they have these conversations with the person in charge of it, sometimes those keywords that they say that they need could just pass over the salesperson and they wouldn't give the right solution for them. So she's like, you'd be perfect. You'd be like, plug and play, let's go. So I was like. I was like, okay, let's go. Because, you know, in sales, you can make bulk of your money in commission. So I came over and I started as a customer success manager. They had just gone through an acquisition with another company. There's a lot of customers who were not happy or needed to get renewed the services. So that was my job, was to go in and kind of make sure that, you know, if they're unhappy, make them happy and find out their pain points and get them to stay as customers. And then after a little bit, my boss said, hey, you're going to apply for this position, Enterprise account manager. You're going to take care of the top 50 accounts. I was like, let's. And she's like, no, yeah, you. You have to apply. So I applied and I got it and you know, it. Sales taught me a lot. And if you ever want to humble yourself, get into sales because you hear no a lot sometimes.
• 13:57
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 13:58
  Speaker B: But the main thing that sales taught me was, you know, how to speak to different people. You could have different people on the other side of you that is in charge of it. Somebody was just thrown into it because they could fix computers to somebody who's super technical to usually. I don't know why this happens, but maybe this is a local thing or a lot of times it gets pushed under the person in charge of finance. Oh, yeah, cfo.
• 14:31
  Speaker A: That's a common one.
• 14:32
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I don't know why that is, because I feel like there's competing goals there.
• 14:37
  Speaker A: There is. But, you know, I would argue and I, like, this is my just presumption. It is an expense, and finance controls expense, so therefore, boom. You know, that's the. That's the pyramid.
• 14:50
  Speaker B: Right. I thought it was like, oh, we don't know what to do with them. Give them to the person in finance.
• 14:55
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Usually your CFO is your closest to a coo, which is where, you know, the other place. So, like, there's like three common ways that I see it. Report in organizations that I've been through is one is the direct report to CEO, which, if it is a strategic imperative, then your CIO or your director reports to the CEO or the owner or whatever. If you need to manage it as a cost center, then you typically would apply it to a cfo. And then if your organization is large enough to have an operations person like a coo, it's not uncommon for a number of administrative functions to report through a COO to the CEO. That's usually how I see it.
• 15:40
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, I see.
• 15:43
  Speaker A: But yeah, so you moved up pretty quickly in this organization. You got this kind of, like, interesting opportunity. And as you mentioned, the upside is significant because you're working on a commission basis.
• 15:57
  Speaker B: Right, Right. And then sales is hard. I found myself working all the time, and I couldn't spend a lot of time with my son, so I decided to go back into IT management, and that's how I ended up at bars in Kubota. But, yeah, I'd say if I wasn't pushed financially for financial reason to change my job, I probably would have stayed there longer. So. But it was. It's great. I love that.
• 16:33
  Speaker A: Yeah. So I was. And I'm thinking about the lessons. So as working on the sales side, you know, as you mentioned, you hear. No a ton, which is, like, in the pressure to perform. Because, like, the upside is. I don't call it unlimited, but it's extraordinarily high. But it comes with the consequence of you. The. The results you get is usually commensurate with the level of effort you put in. And there's no particular limit on the effort. Like, nobody's like, oh, look, you. You worked 54 hours this week. I guess we'll, I guess we'll give you a win.
• 17:09
  Speaker B: No, they only look at one report is your sales.
• 17:13
  Speaker A: Yeah, so, so like that's definitely. I could see that definitely being a real challenge and you know, particularly hard in, in, in Hawaii, the you. I mean, I'll just put it out there. You live on an island. As a consequence, you have a relatively, you know, it's, it. I will call it difficult. There's plenty of planes going off the, off the island at any given point in time. But if you want to go, say, like connect with other people at other places and stuff like that, it's effort. It's more than just getting in the car and driving down to the next town or going to another city and being like, oh look, there's this cool event in x big city nearby. So, so how does that translate into like your community of IT folks and other direct IT directors and leaders? How do you build those communities with what you've got there and the people you've got there and try to make sure you're staying up with everything else. I mean, I know the Internet makes it easy to see what's going on, but that human connection has a big part of this too.
• 18:16
  Speaker B: Yeah. So I would say within the past five years, I did a lot of work on building that community. Not only, you know, just the level of making sure because you don't know everything, you don't know everything what's going on, you can't possibly keep up with everything. And so I've made an effort to make sure that I'm involved in this industry locally. So some of the things that I did was I joined organizations that, you know, so one of them that I'm the vice president of is the CIO Council of Hawaii. That's made up of all the top IT leaders in the state from large businesses, medium small. That's been super rewarding because what we do is a lot of information sharing and hey, what are you doing about this? What do you. And you know, just getting feedback or you know, vice versa. It's been, it's been very valuable for, I would say a lot of businesses here have a very small IT staff. So. And you have to be like, almost like a jack of all trades. So it's very important to stay involved and to communicate and build these relationships with other professionals in your industry.
• 19:48
  Speaker A: I could see like to what you mentioned about a lot of them having smaller teams in the mid market. A team of five or 10 people is considered a pretty robust team at the Same time, Hawaii is like the. Take Oahu itself. Oahu is like what, like 900,000 people? Maybe a little over a million. So the city, you know, conceptually the city of Honolulu is like a million people. That's a good sized city. At the same time, it can be difficult to scale businesses high enough to warrant like a large IT staff. So then that, you know, I think that feeds the problem that you've mentioned about how do you skill up when there might be a little bit of almost like a ceiling on how big a typical group can get. Just to build an example. I live in upstate New York, so I live outside the city, a smaller city of Binghamton, but there's Buffalo and Rochester and Syracuse, New York and stuff. And if you have a business that's successful at Rochester, your next step is to say, open a branch in Buffalo or to go to Syracuse. So you could build this larger business off of that. But in Hawaii that may not be necessarily possible because the next steps are very significant and there's a lot of impediments to build that next size business. You can maybe dominate Honolulu, if you will. But how do you go from there to the next step is what, Los Angeles. And that's a pretty long plane right away, right?
• 21:20
  Speaker B: Right. Yeah, it is. So some of them go to outer islands and then some of them even go to the mainland. There's, I would say in the industry here it's not a lot. So I'd say it's easier for everybody to, you see them moving more towards the outer islands, but not so much the mainland. Yeah, but there are some. Yeah.
• 21:54
  Speaker A: Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, there's definitely some people that are, you know, like, we're going to do this. And I'm sure you see some coming in from the mainland who try to, you know, want to open up, you know, the beachhead, if you will, on, on, you know, on an island or something. If they see that as an opportunity. But you know, at the same time that, so some of those future opportunities of those big steps, where do you go to get a big corporation? There's probably only a handful available that have very large operations. Maybe like your state governments or University of Hawaii or something like that. Who has really significant, hey look, we got 100 person IT department type of size.
• 22:36
  Speaker B: Yeah, there's very, I don't remember the statistic, but I thought it was like 99% of the businesses in Hawaii is small, medium, 1% is large.
• 22:49
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So like, that's a unique, that's a unique Proposition as an IT practitioner, because there's You. You're frequently asked to do, just like you said, jack of all trades in most of these things. Like, you're a working manager. You're not, you know, there's not an opportunity to escalate your career into a position where you're like, oh, hey, there's 25 people under me, and my job is to really focus on the strategy, if you will.
• 23:15
  Speaker B: Right, right. So I think that's why I have both IT and security under me.
• 23:24
  Speaker A: So, And. And on the security side of things, like. Like, what are you seeing as the. What are the biggest threats you're seeing and what's. What's coming at your. You know, both just the business that you're in, but you're doing a lot of consulting. So what's the biggest things happening right now there?
• 23:42
  Speaker B: Well, definitely AI. Right. That's kind of like the hot topic, I'd say. AI. And also, you know, I think with technology and especially with AI, it just kind of exploded and it. It made a bigger opportunity for, I would say, small little startups who want to create something. It's given them a big platform to be able to start something, start service, or offering some kind of application. And I would say the difficult part is that they're coming up with these amazing solutions, yet none of them are incorporating security into their offerings. So a huge. And I tell people like, you know, kids all the time that, hey, where. Where do you think there's opportunity? And I'm like, okay, well, you're not going to like what I have to say, because if not the glitz and glamour of security. I spent a lot of time doing risk assessments and analyzing these companies that maybe an employee comes and say, hey, we need this latest. A program or service offered by this company that's been in business for two months. And as a security professional, you're like, no, but you have to, you know, you have to come up with ways to bring in this opportunity so the company can make money, and you have to get creative with mitigating your risk. Um, so I would say that, you know, of. Of course, that's. That's not the glitz and glamour of the profession, but it's so important for businesses like, how do you make this thing work or work safely within the company without, you know, having it hurt your. Your profits.
• 25:38
  Speaker A: Mm, interesting. So I'm gonna change gears for a second here because I. I already talked briefly about your stint in sales, but I'd also love to hear a little more about how did you come to be in IT? Leadership and like, what, what was your path to get there?
• 25:54
  Speaker B: Ah, yeah. So when I was in college, I got offered a, an internship for a local gas company, petroleum gas company. And everybody in Hawaii is like, who. You know, it's. You have to be, you know, you have to be know somebody who has an opening. And it's unfortunate, but it's a, it's.
• 26:24
  Speaker A: A small, it's a small town, even though it's a big city.
• 26:26
  Speaker B: Right. And I mean, you know, this is 20 some years later and it's still the same, but. Yeah. So a friend of my father said, hey, we have an opening for an IT intern. We, you know, we heard that Charissa is interested. Would she want to apply? So I ended up getting that internship my. Well, while I was in college. And then that was my freshman going to sophomore year. And every year after that they would ask me to come back. So even during my, my Christmas vacation break, they'd say, hey, are you working? Come. Come and work or are you back home? Come and work with us.
• 27:04
  Speaker A: That's sweet.
• 27:06
  Speaker B: Yeah. So it started off as an intern, and then when I graduated, I went into help desk, you know, the typical, going through the lower rankings. And then I became a systems administrator and then management after that. But I would say for me, and to this day, now that I'm in management, that support function, that role that you play in help desk teaches you so much, you hate it. You want to get to management or a higher position or specialized position, but it prepares you for your entire career. You're learning how to speak to people. You're learning how to solve things on the fly, be prepared for anything being thrown at your face. It's such like. I feel like people who skip that part lose such a big opportunity to learn these things early on.
• 28:01
  Speaker A: Yep. Yeah. So it's funny, I. There's a personal story here about. So I didn't come up through the help desk.
• 28:09
  Speaker B: Oh, we're lucky.
• 28:10
  Speaker A: I did not. But the experience that I had being on a telephone was that when I was in college and like towards the tail end of my. Of college, I worked for a cold call telemarketing firm. So like, you want to get like real brutal on the phone right there, you know, so like you sit with a headset on and this was like the late 90s, so, you know, early computer days of this stuff. So it was computerized, but you'd sit at a computer and like if a call was answered, that would route a call to the you know, if you were the, you know, in queue and available, you might get a call, pop up with the information on there, and you'd have to read through it and, like, deal with people who usually didn't want to be called about what you were calling about. So, like, you would get pretty brutalized doing this unless you were working on. There was like two. Two campaigns that were great. One was Columbia House. Remember? Remember Columbia House? You know, like, you do, like, oh, man, you get like 10 CDs for a penny. You're right. That was the best program because then you'd sit for like, 10 minutes on a call with somebody and be like, oh, man, like, this was the 90s. Be like, oh, you want the new. You know, you want that. Like, you know, oh, you're really into alt rock, like, let's find the latest Pearl Jam albums and stuff like that, or whatever. And, you know, you said talk to people about whatever music and things that they were, they were interested in. But. But yes, I agree with you that having an experience, you know, helping people, supporting people, but also the pressure of being on, like, a help desk itself and. And being in those types of environments, it helps you think on your feet a lot more, and it helps develop a mentality about what success looks like. And I know as a leader, I've had to coach help desk staff about things like, hey, if you're on that call and you can't solve the problem in a minute or a couple minutes, you shouldn't just sit there and spin your wheels being like, oh, man, I'll just, you know, today. Now, of course you can log into computers remotely. And I'll be like, don't sit there clicking around at their computer trying to figure it out. Get somebody else involved, you know, or get this other stuff, like, you have to think through about not just like, this isn't my problem to solve. I need to make sure that I'm solving the problem for the person who's calling as well.
• 30:33
  Speaker B: Right? Yeah. It's very important to have a support team, a supportive team around somebody that is, you know, I have a team of people, and I always make sure that they understand that, hey, you're not alone. So don't try to, you know, feel like overwhelmed that, hey, I. I can't get this thing done. Yeah, you have so many people behind you that is willing to help. So, yeah, so that. That. That's important to build. To build a team and to have that, you know, it's not only about yourself type of mentality. It's A group, group effort.
• 31:10
  Speaker A: So, so if you, if your first experience was you were just drawn into being an intern, were you in school for like technology or anything? Or was it like totally. What did you plan to be, what you were. You're like, you know, I was going to be an, I was going to be, you know, I don't know, an architect. And next thing you know, you're in it.
• 31:27
  Speaker B: So I, I think some people are going to hate me for saying this, but. So back in the day they didn't have it any type of degree major, anything at that. At my school, I was at, I went to University of Oregon. They only had computer science.
• 31:44
  Speaker A: Yep, that's my path too, Computer science. But here I am in it, right?
• 31:48
  Speaker B: Yeah. And oh my God, I got, I do not like computer science. That's what I learned. I don't like it. I feel like, you know, it's a foreign language. Right. And I'm terrible at foreign languages. But yeah, I, I didn't like it. I was in that path. And luckily though, I think my, my senior year they finally opened a computer information technology minor which I took immediately. But that was maybe the beginning of them offering something like technology related. Even though that was my senior year, that was when I was leaving. So. But hey, I got the minor.
• 32:30
  Speaker A: Yeah. So like, so as a, one of the things about computer science and I, I joke about this with people too, having a computer science degree, I went to Binghamton University and the. So so by trade you're, you know, you think about like computer science folks. You've done more math than anyone except math majors. So one step off a math major is what you get in computer science. And I've taught how to be a programmer and stuff like that. I haven't used those skills in 25 years. I can read code, so it gets helpful when I'm supervising programmers because I can follow what's going on and I know the concepts of what's going on and things like that. And if we open some code up, I'm not troubleshooting the code, but I can look at it and be like, oh, okay, here's what's up. So like, I do feel like it gave me a good foundation. But it is funny because I think for the same experience that you had, it's very much like I went to school for and I got a degree that essentially built me to be a programmer and then I promptly went and am not a programmer at all. Like, I'm in, you know, in it. So I'm like One of the few. You come back. If you come back or you talk, you're like, oh yeah, I'm in it. And they're like, what?
• 33:42
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 33:43
  Speaker A: So did you go into it, like our computer science? Like, like, so it. In. You know, when you were a kid, were you like into computers and tech and that's why you chose computer science?
• 33:53
  Speaker B: What got me into. Okay, so what got me into computers was, was my mom. She would. And you know, this was before Windows. All dos. Yeah, that's what got me. So she. Okay, I don't want to say where she worked, but she would come home after long trips and bring home these floppy disks that were copied games from other games and you have to figure out how to play them. She's like, here, here's the game. There's a bunch of games I copied for you on floppy disk. So I would throw them in the computer and I'd have to figure out how to play them because she didn't know either. So that was my experience, my first experience with computers and what kind of made me enjoy and fall in love with, with being, you know, in tech.
• 34:40
  Speaker A: So when I, when you say floppy disk, are we talking about the five and quarter inch, like floppy. Floppy disk? Are we talking about like hard three and a. Three and a quarter.
• 34:46
  Speaker B: The big one? Yeah, the five. The five and a quarter. Yes.
• 34:48
  Speaker A: Five and a quarter. Fluffy discs. Nice. Yeah, my, my dad was an IBMer and you know, so, so we had like an IBM PC back in the 80s and you have five and a quarter inch floppy disks. And you know, that's various, but that's, that's cool to get like a whole set of, you know, just a steady stream of computer games like brought to you to be able to tinker with and try.
• 35:10
  Speaker B: Yeah, some of them didn't work, even though I tried my best. But, but yeah, it was, it was fun being able to figure out. It's almost like a mystery, right? What is this thing? And you couldn't, it's not like you could jump on the Internet and like search. What is this game? All it was was the name on, on the, on the disc and you had to figure it out.
• 35:30
  Speaker A: So what was your favorite game that you could remember? I mean, it's probably a lot here, but was there something that you particularly stick out that you're like, oh man, that was, I love that one.
• 35:41
  Speaker B: What is the one where you have the spaceship on the bottom and then you have to press to like shoot it?
• 35:47
  Speaker A: Then all the aliens, like a space invaders.
• 35:50
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. That was my favorite.
• 35:52
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's like a Space Evaders knockoff. It was. So when I was a kid. Oh, well, what kind of computer was it, by the way? Was it an IBM, like, PC clone or PC?
• 36:03
  Speaker B: It was definitely a PC. I don't remember what model.
• 36:07
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah, it was kind of a PC. Well, we had an IDM eventually. The first computer that we had was a Texas Instruments. So like the TI99.4A was a classic and it had like this cartridge on the side. So you could get games on cartridges and put them in.
• 36:24
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't remember what the brand was, but.
• 36:31
  Speaker A: So that's cool. So you've really always been inspired and into technology and your mom. So I think that's a great story to tell here too, is that your inspiration was not, hey, my dad was in technology. It was that. Your mom was in technology too?
• 36:46
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, my dad. Yeah. Is my mom. My mom, she worked in IT for a long time until she retired. Yeah. So she's always been that influence on me, even though now she's like, can you fix my computer? I was like, weren't you in it?
• 37:03
  Speaker A: It's like these two faggoed things.
• 37:05
  Speaker B: Yeah. The company IT person, the family IT person.
• 37:10
  Speaker A: Then one day, one day that'll be you as the older person. Right. You'll be like, did you make this work?
• 37:16
  Speaker B: Each time they're already boosting their tv.
• 37:21
  Speaker A: Nice. So we're coming a little closer to the end of the podcast here. And one of the things I always make sure to ask our guests is about advice and what you share with the listeners of the podcast. So a lot of the folks here, we focus a lot on the mid market and the folks in this mid market space. If you're giving advice to somebody who is coming up in their career, what advice do you have for them about how to be successful and what they should be focused on?
• 37:52
  Speaker B: Okay, so I want to give two advice. One is in general and one is directly to the women coming up. Because I do a lot of work with girls and women, mentoring and workshops and leadership. So one in general, I would say, is take advantage of every opportunity. Don't let an opportunity pass you. And to the women and girls coming up, I want to say don't let fear. Don't let fear make the decision for you. Be open to putting yourself out there and understanding that, hey, it might be uncomfortable, but it might be a huge lesson in your life that could be beneficial and so worth the chance of just going for it. I think a Lot of times, girls and women won't take that risk. So, like, when you look at job descriptions, a woman would want to make sure she meets every qualification on that job description before she would apply.
• 39:05
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 39:05
  Speaker B: And I think that we need to take more chances. We need to go for it.
• 39:12
  Speaker A: I really. Actually, I'm really glad you brought that up, because it's one of the things that I think would be great to share here on this podcast is, you know, can you share a little bit about your background as a woman in technology here, too? And what are some of the. What are some of the, like, the challenges that you've had to, like, overcome as you've worked your way into your career and into leadership?
• 39:36
  Speaker B: Yeah, I would say some of the challenges, you know, back in the early days, you're always the only woman in the room. And, you know, when you go out to these maybe meetings or conferences, you look around and you're like, oh, only. Only guys here. And, you know, as you. As. As the time went on, you would. You get one or two more women in the room. And. And it's always like, a camaraderie. It's like, hi, how are you? It's like, yay, another woman in the room. And it's such a small, subtle thing that I never really focused on until I got older and I started being in, you know, in more students, especially. And maybe mentors to students or teachers would come up to me and say, hey, would you mind coming and speaking with my class or maybe my cyber camp team? And they would tell me about how. A few of them would tell me how their cybercamp team was all girls. Well, one of them was all girls, and they do better than the boys. And I'm like, oh, wow. So they're like, it would be great if you can come and talk with them. And so a lot of things that. Especially what Sales taught me is to kind of read the room and to understand that and to see the dynamics with, like, differences between boys and girls. So boys will just go out and just ask you questions, will just know. And, you know, we have a thing in Hawaii, like, no shame, just go. Go for it. The girls are a little bit more reserved, hanging out with their groups. Kind of don't want to make a scene and not take full advantage of that opportunity to ask somebody who's there to share with them. Not all, but I would say a majority. And so I think for me, it's important that I go out there and we even hold events for women, and then I participate In a workshop free for grades 4 through 12 called Girls in Cyber. It's all women involved just to build that community and that support system for the women in this industry. So it's, you know, you get, you know, I had my share of stories of, you know, somebody who just started in the company who's not probably just a technician or some low, you know, first level type of person who come and they just kind of talk down to me and, you know, and thinking that they know more than me and hey, okay, so I have my ways of dealing with that and typically that's. I will throw it back in their face because you cannot let them get away with that. You have to stick up for yourself. You have to say something. And maybe they don't realize they're doing it. Maybe that's just how they talk to everybody. So that's important as well, to stick up for yourself and understand that you're there for a reason. You have a wealth of knowledge, share it with others and make sure that you bring people along with you on your journey.
• 42:56
  Speaker A: Yeah, the thing you just mentioned there in that list was, I would call it almost like assume positive intent. Like, you don't know that you've mentioned they might treat everybody poorly. And you don't know that you don't want to start off by assuming that it's because of X reason. But that doesn't mean you don't step in and say something and be like, hey, you know what? Like we're, you know, I'm not, I'm not feeling like, you know, there's, I'm feeling there's a, there's a level of disrespect here. You know, it may not be for the reasons that I hope it's not, but that doesn't mean it's not happening. And I'm not going to say anything about it either.
• 43:28
  Speaker B: Right, right.
• 43:30
  Speaker A: You know, so, yeah, that's the, you know, building, like building, building the bridges and the, the capabilities of, of how to, you know, expand the horizons of folks that are coming into technology. It's such a, it's such a big lift. So, you know, I, I commend you for the work you're doing in it because it is, it's hard. And like I've, you know, I know. Well, I don't personally experience it. I've witnessed these things happen. Like when I have, um. There was a. Back in the day, I was a CIO at a county and one of my deputy directors was a woman. And one of the things that would happen was that if. Outside, you'd get the. She would have to interface with somebody and be like, here's the story. Here's what we can do. Here's what we have to get done. Like, I don't think I like that they have another meaning if I say the same thing. That's a great idea.
• 44:28
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 44:29
  Speaker A: Really, guys, like, you do realize this is the same idea that, you know, we'll call her Jane that Jan brought forward, you know, two or three weeks ago. Right, right. And, you know, like, I'll. I will usually make a subtle way of trying to highlight that fact. Be like, well, this is the idea that Jane brought to you three weeks ago after. But la. After they've been like, oh, this is awesome.
• 44:53
  Speaker B: Well, that's awesome, because that rarely happens. Buying bus. But yeah, I mean, even in sales, too. Like, if a salesperson is in front of me, and then let's say I bring in a technician who's a guy, he'll start talking to him, and I'm like, I'm the one that makes the decision. You talk to me.
• 45:12
  Speaker A: You got to talk to. If you want this to happen. You're talking to the wrong face.
• 45:15
  Speaker B: Right, Right. So, yeah, it does happen. They probably will not get the sale, but it does happen. Yeah.
• 45:25
  Speaker A: Sometimes. Sometimes you could just abandon that sale and it's okay, right?
• 45:28
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Or, I mean, you know, I've done stuff like, you know what? Give me another salesperson, because I just don't appreciate this one. And so, you know, if you just have to build a. You have to protect yourself, your company, you have to deal with people you want to deal with. It's important. It's important that you build that network. You build that network around you.
• 45:54
  Speaker A: Yeah. That's awesome. All right, well, I think that's all the time we've got on the podcast today. So, Charissa, I thank you so much for investing your time with us on Dissecting Puppy IT Nerds.
• 46:06
  Speaker B: Yes. Thank you so much. I appreciate being here and being willing to share. Thank you again, man.
• 46:10
  Speaker A: Those great stories you shared about. Really appreciated learning about your history, the things you're doing, especially the work you're doing in building the roadways and the pathways here for women to be more participants in technology. And it's really been great to hear a little bit about your background and some of the cool things that you did growing up and how you got into this space.
• 46:34
  Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you. Come and visit Hawaii.
• 46:36
  Speaker A: I look forward. I definitely look forward to that. All right. That's a wrap on today's episode of dissecting popular it nerds. I'm Doug Kameen, and we look forward to coming to you on our next episode.