PegaWorld 2025: Shaping the Future: Empowering Women Leaders

PegaWorld 2025: Shaping the Future by Empowering Women Leaders

It is so exciting to be here. Thank you all for joining us here today. My name is Naznine Tilak and I am VP of Talent Learning and Inclusion at Pega.

This topic is very close to my heart because we all know that innovation, inclusive leadership leads to innovation.

It accelerates business growth and most importantly, it creates pathways for talent. So for those of you who are here last year, you will know that we did this session or a similar session for the first time.

And as a result of the overwhelmingly positive feedback, we decided to bring it back to PegaWorld.

So again, thank you so much. It is really my honor to introduce you the very amazing, very accomplished and gracious panel. Um. All right. So I'm going to start by welcoming Swagata Mukherjee. Swagata is the VP of IT at Primerica, and she's the head of Pega Practice and Enterprise Automation.

With more than 25 years of experience with technology and financial services, she is responsible for technology strategy and implementation. Let's welcome Swagata. Thank you. Then we have Louella Dijon, San Juan. She's a is a technologist with 30 years of experience, primarily in the financial industry, and currently she's the SVP and Head of solutions, Delivery and Application Development at Flagstar Bank. She's also a published author. You can look at her work at Routledge, Bloomsbury and UMass Amherst Archives. And she lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two daughters and three cats. Welcome, Luella. Thank you. We are joined by Ren Zhang. Wren is managing director at Accenture and global head of Industry Solutions. She is expert in data and AI transformations across the financial and the e-commerce industry. She has spent more than 20 years in firms like Amazon, Amex, Prudential and BMO financial. Welcome, Wren. And then we have Cindi Doe. Cindy is a 26 year veteran at NY. She's a partner in the financial services technology practice. Passionate about tech and its impact on personal and professional lives, she's also a mother of three in their 20s. She loves to golf and is a dedicated mentor to the next generation of leaders.

Welcome, Cindy. Thank you. And then we have Kate Parente. Kate. Kate's first and most important job is being mom to four children. And at Pega, she is the chief people officer.

Outside of these two roles, she loves to cook and to host family and friends. Welcome, Kate. Thank you. So before I hand it over to Kate, just a quick reminder. We will have some time to take a couple of questions at the end. So if you would like to submit a question, you can use the QR code on the on the screen here. And if you like to direct your question to a specific panelist, please mention their name in the question. With that, Kate, I'll hand it over to you. Excellent. Thank you, Naazneen, and welcome to all of you, our very special clients. Um, and to you all in the audience, thank you for taking the time for this session.

Um, as Nazanin said, this is near and dear to many of us. Um, we're going to spend I think it is the next 30 minutes, um, with some Q&A here on the stage, and then we'll open it up for your questions for about 15 minutes. So I thought we should start with a little bit of getting to know you all, um, your careers and where you started. Um, first and foremost, I do want to just recognize that we are here at PegaWorld to talk about innovation, the future, and how AI is shaping everything that we do.

And nothing speaks more volume to that than some powerful women in leadership.

So thank you all. Um, back to sort of where you all came from and why you chose the career path that you are in. Um, I remember personally when I was very young, in early in my career, not exactly knowing what I wanted to do. Um, at first I thought I was going to be an engineer. Next, I thought I would be a lawyer. And finally, I met someone in Human Resources who asked me some great Questions. And she said to me, um, what are your friends and family know you for? What are you good at? And I said, uh, I don't know, um, cooking, you know, we kind of went on with our conversation for a bit. And finally I said, you know what? A lot of people call me for advice. Um, whether it's my cousins, my my siblings, my nieces and nephews, they call me for about I don't know why, but they do. And she said, you know, that sounds like a superpower. And if you can combine your superpower with things that you are super passionate about, that's where you can find true happiness in your career and in your life. So with that said, I'd like to open it up to you all to maybe we'll start with you. What is your superpower? Well, I'm going to second what you just said, Kate. I have been, um. I like to talk to people, and I like to listen to people. So what I have found over the years is that is actually a superpower because we generally don't tend to listen. But if you actually do listen to people, you get a plethora of information and you can process, you can advise. And a lot of folks do come to me for seeking advice, seeking what's the best way of doing this? Or, um, how do you think we can navigate through this particular process and so on and so forth. In my work life, as well as the personal as my personal life. So I do think that that has grown on me over the years, and I have been very successful in trying to listen and understand what somebody is saying. And, um, provide not necessarily guidance, but a discussion point in terms of how how do you navigate something, how is it, how is it that you would be? looking at it from not my perspective, but your perspective as in you would be. What works for me may not necessarily work for you. And recognizing that in terms of the discussion is also a superpower in terms of where you're recognizing the potential of the other person and saying, okay, just just because this particular solution works for me may not work for you, but why don't you take it, take it and put a twist that works for you into it and then take it forward. And I have found that that really works in my work life a lot, and not just, um, independent of a gender. I have been I have been sought for advice and sought for, um, you know, communication and discussions in terms of what should I do in this particular area. And I really feel that that is that's a great blessing to have. It's a privilege to have to be able to talk to people. Awesome. Thank you for that. I think my superpower, if I think back, I've always been analytical and I think that's why I've always gravitated toward scientific things. But in reality, I've always enjoyed using my voice and speaking and in writing. And I really enjoy engaging in audience and using my voice, whether it's the spoken word or the written word, to really uplift and lead and engage. And quite frankly, for myself, learn. Well, you're in the right place. Okay, so it's me. If I think of my superpower, I have to say curiosity. I have always been interested in learning new things and uncover the truth behind those complicated matters. It actually shaped my career and how I deal with many things. I believe that's the reason I decided to get my PhD in statistics because there's so much things can be learned. And that also helped me to stay on top of the tech trend, particularly in today's world. You know, tech and AI is just evolving so fast. It also gave me that inner drive for me to dive deep so that I no longer am a tech expert, instead of remaining on the surface, this kind of curiosity not only helped shape me to learn things, it also actually helped me to develop my way of managing my organization and working with partners. So I always feel that no matter sometimes how irrational, unreasonable you think people are doing things, they generally have a reason behind it. You may disagree, but there's always a reason. Uncover that reason is extremely important for you to be able to find the common ground, and be able to come up with a solution that satisfies by both sand, and it's going to stick and going to be. It's going to last. So I think curiosity is so important to me. It helped me to get into all those kind of roles. Typically, our roles allow me to push the boundary of, uh, through innovation now, definitely through AI, and also getting into those roles that require empathy and working with people. Um, well, I hope that will continue to push me forward for the rest of my career. Nice. That's awesome. It's a hard act to follow behind the three of you, but, um, anyway, I would say, uh, for me, um, I'm the daughter of a hardware engineer, and that was my mother, not my father. Uh, she worked at Data General, and I swore I'd have nothing to do with computers because we had motherboards in our dining room and our bedrooms. Um, because she liked to tinker on the weekends. Um, so I went to school and got a degree in finance, which I thought would be as far away from that topic as possible. Um, but what I found is I started to work is that increasingly, I was in front of a computer. I was using technology to solve problems. And, uh, whether reluctantly or not, I ended up falling in love with the topic. Um, and it's been my career really, over the past 30 years, 26 of which have been EY. Um, in terms of my superpower, I would tell you, none of us do this alone. Um, I'm very fortunate. 28 years ago, I was pregnant with my first and my husband was a computer tech person at Polaroid. I was a manager at EY. Now, if you recall, back then, Polaroid wasn't doing so great. My career was doing okay. His was two, but we just looked at, you know, who is going to have the best chance of having a stable income, at least for the next year. So we agreed I would stay at work full time and he would stay home. Um, and 28 years later, he's proud to announce he's now fully retired from being a stay at home dad. All of our kids are out of the house. Um, but he has been my superpower, along with all my family. Um, we can't do any of this race alone. And I would say he has made all the difference for me. So fantastic. I love that my husband calls himself a stay at home dad, but he's actually not one. So, Luella, in some of our prep, you had mentioned how challenging it is to retain women in senior roles, in your view and in your, um, working history.

What steps have been most effective in organizations taken today to ensure the next generation of women have access to those leadership opportunities? Thanks, Kate.

I think that that's a very important question for all of us in the room, women and men.

The first thing that we want to be able to establish and then constantly talk about is the fact that women and girls make up more than half the population in the world, and so therefore supporting leadership in the world, in in our communities and in our corporate value chains is not just call it a social imperative, but it's a strategic economic imperative.

Think of the unlocked potential. Think of the execution and action that you would actually be tapping into if you tapped into that. Now, starting with that as a commercial proposition, you can then talk about companies, good companies, having the leadership to establish really three key things.

Leadership coaching is a very valuable thing, not just to help people, not just women, but everybody navigate, establish an executive presence and also be able to build up winning teams with them.

But it also helps with self-reflection and self-reflection comes drawing healthy boundaries so you can be successful both at work and outside of work. And I know we'll talk about that a little bit later. The second thing is establish mentorship and sponsorship in your company. Mentors talk with you. They get to understand where you're coming from. Listen as you so rightly said, but sponsors talk about you and it is they that help you establish your personal brand and help you uplift your leadership perception in the community so that you can rise to other things in your career. And then the last thing share the difficulty of creating awareness. Women often drive initiatives around inclusion, but it's often not recognized.

And so when you're putting the burden on them, they're often taking that extra time that they could be investing in their own careers. Instead, we should all partner women and men.

We need men as allies. And quite frankly, when we allow women to lean in, we should allow men to lean back.

I remember quite fondly that big guy over there. My husband having to go. Stand up, darling, having to go and pick up our kids. Right. Because we worked at the same company, Morgan Stanley. But he had to take the active choice of being the one to be there, and that was important. So I leaned in and so therefore he leaned over to them. So thank you both. And I'm making a note of that. Mentors talk with you and sponsors talk about you. That's right. All right. On to Ren and Cindy. In a fast changing industry like tech, for example, in the AI revolution, what skills do you believe are most critical for women to develop today? To lead with confidence and impact? Tomorrow I will start.

Yeah. You go first. So if I think about in this kind of fast changing world, one of the skills actually I already mentioned how much I value. I truly believe curiosity is really the leading power. With that, you will be able to decide what you want to learn and what you should learn. Be curious. I view the second power. Extremely important will be active learning. There are so many new things coming up. If I think about skills now, I use mostly at my work. Majority of them are probably not what I learned from school. I'm sure that's probably true for many of you, right? Whenever there's opportunity, either I learn actually from my team when I when I have some new functionality, learn from them. I'm getting to know what's going on and learn from conference like this. Learn from my colleagues in terms of new things. And there are many times I actually have taken classes right outside of my work and truly be hands on as well, so that you truly know what's going on. I think that active learning mode, uh, you know, be present all the time. Whenever you hear something you're not aware of and be just be open to ask questions. Leverage this kind of learning moment. And at the same time actually give back. The third one is extremely important is collaboration. We already know the general sense of collaboration. In today's world. You have to work with people. Another thing I feel is super important in today's world. I believe the biggest collaboration, the biggest innovation actually happen in cross field. So when you bring those two fields or even three, four fields together, that's where the biggest innovation happen. And sometimes it's transferring innovation from one field to another. It may be a standard practice in one, but may be completely brand new in another. So while thinking about collaborating across not only, you know, your peers in the same field, but in other fields, I feel that truly will give you the confidence and lead your organization forward. So those are the three I will pick out. Curiosity. Self active learning and collaboration. Awesome. Those are fantastic. I would definitely agree with those three. Um, the other one I would say is, you know, making a commitment to yourself to invest in your own knowledge and your own growth. It's very easy with our jobs and our families to find very little time to do that, or to put that in the back burner of what you're going to need to do every, every day or every week. But I would say it's so important to make that commitment to yourself and that learning and development can come through reading. I am a voracious reader. Um, it can come through collaboration interactions, but it's really about making the time to actually read up, and it is always about going to a class, although that's a wonderful way to do it. It's about really active listening when you're meeting with your teammates, when you're meeting with colleagues across your enterprise. Um, those are wonderful ways to learn. I would also tell you, sometimes, particularly as your career advances, you might feel a little bit nervous saying, oh, I don't know about that. It's okay. We're all learning along this journey, and there's different things to learn a bunch across a bunch of different spectrums, and you never know where that big idea could come from. It could come from something you read in the newspaper. It could come from a collaboration. You just have to be open to those things and how that can help you develop and advance. Fantastic. At Pega we talk about the lifelong love of learning.

So thank you for that. Um, Luella, you talked a little bit about mentorship and sponsorship. Could you share a personal anecdote or some experience that highlights the importance of each of those in advancing women's careers? Yeah, so I'll share two anecdotes.

So, you know, we've all and we all continue to strive to elevate our role. Right. In this big world, you know, what is the impact that we can bring this life. Right. And sometimes we need mentors to help reflect that back. Preferably not the exact same perspective as you. And so I like to cultivate what I call informal mentors in my head. You know, you don't necessarily have to go, oh, Wren, can we meet for coffee every month? And you can mentor me, right? You know, it can. She can just be a super heroine in your head, right? But you admire her, and you admire her intelligence and her ability to articulate complex processes. So you have this running list of mentors, and you can elevate your conversations by having different friends and colleagues at work that will give you different perspectives. And that's number one. But then number two, the sponsorship, you also want to be able to cultivate these relationships in such a way that you, as you go along your careers, also learn something from each other and you get something from each other. And as those people advance, and oftentimes some of these people will attain more senior positions, they end up becoming a sponsor because at one point they'll reflect back and this happened to me. They'll reflect back upon you how other people see you in a way that you realize this person is a very powerful ally. This could be a sponsor. There was this one woman whom I admired. She was an operations I was in. Technology kind of came up together. She attained some well-deserved senior positions, and we were just shooting the breeze because we maintained our connection. And she said, you know what you're really good at? You're really good at bringing together a whole lot of people and making them care about the same thing. And it was as though a light bulb went off and I said, that's what a sponsor would do. They reflect back and then they amplify what they think you bring to the table. So you can cultivate these without any kind of formal structure. But I do encourage you in all of your positions of responsibility to establish that kind of structure in whatever place you're in. Mentors and sponsors. You need them both to help elevate us all. Excellent. I always say my best mentors in life didn't even know they were mentor. That's right. Thank you. Swagata over to you. How have gender norms across different companies, cultures or countries that you've been involved with influenced your perspective on creating workplaces that truly and genuinely support women? And are there any barriers you have personally faced or been challenged with along the way? That's a great question, and I personally am very inspired and motivated by, like, Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt's of the world.

So I always think, and I truly believe, that history is created only when you step out of the boundaries. It doesn't mean that you don't follow rules, but you have to take a step beyond just the rules. Only then we create history, whether as women or women or men or anybody.

So with that concept, and I have worked in a lot of countries, as have a lot of you over here, the cultures and what the cultures teach us from every country, from every other place that we go to. There are differences. There are differences from what we learn growing up. We we are we grow up in a particular culture. We learn certain sets of values. Some of them apply. Some of them may not apply. When you go to a foreign country, which has a different way of doing things. So I always have felt that asking questions to the right person, not just everybody, but to the right, find that right person and ask the right. Ask the questions to that person. So that and like I was saying that mentorship. So try to find a mentor wherever you are going and try to see what they have to offer. In terms of, um, how does the new culture where you have gone to fit in and how does what does that mean to, uh, you know, assimilate that in addition to what you have learned growing up and take that forward as an improvement as you go along? So, uh, a simple anecdote I would share. Uh, it's it's very common in the USA to hug folks. It's very uncommon in some other parts of the world to do that. So when we, uh, when I growing up in an area where handshakes are. Namaste was more appropriate, uh, coming to areas and not just USA and other places as well, where hugs are very common. I used to be taken aback initially, but then I got got to talk to a mentor and they said that, okay, this is very common here. And it's it's good. And I've actually grown into that and it has become a part of me nowadays. So the point is that we all grow into things and things which can, uh, you know, improve us, which can add to our own values, which can add to the way we are perceived. We should always be able to open to assimilate those in our learnings and go from there. So, um, whether no matter what the culture is, where we are going, it's important to learn that in advance. So that's probably an airplane reading. Or if you can't do it earlier, an airplane reading. Or once you get there, you you find out what you how you want to mingle with people, how you want to turn on that listening as well as Responding to that particular set of culture. And it's different in Europe, it's different in Asia, it's different in Australia, it's different in USA, and it's definitely different in Latin America. So, um, it's but it's a journey which we all want to remember, assimilate and, you know, take the learnings from one country to another and maybe spread it. Thank you. Wren. Let's talk about imposter syndrome. And I'm a survivor. How can how can someone speaking of which, not just women? How can someone navigate challenges such as imposter syndrome or self-doubt? Yeah.

Um, you mentioned that it's beyond women, I agree.

At the same time, we all realize that women probably are more likely to have that.

I mean, there are many reasons culture, social, uh, kind of, um, stereotype over the year, even though it's changing, but still over time, how we raise our children, those kind of values are still somehow slip in. And you know, the desire to be perfect, pushing us too hard and trying to see, um, doing well for multiple roles, I think that also become generally creates those kind of self- doubt. Um, and the third reason a lot of times is lack of role model. I think particularly in some of those areas where, um, historically has been dominant, you know, by a certain type of skill or by certain type of gender when you lack those kind of role models, sometimes it's very hard for you to see what is the right way of behavior. I talk about those reasons first, instead of getting to. The answer is, I feel it's important for us to know where it's coming from. You have to know that then for you to know how to address that. So how do you address it when you are in those kind of, um, Those kind of situations. I just said I'm a survivor as well. I've been through that journey. Am I completely out of it? I don't think so. Still, occasionally I get into that mode. Um, I think the first thing, number one thing probably think about is a reality check. I think lots of times their self- doubt is come to either too high or standard, or you perceive yourself. What you have accomplished is actually lower than what you actually accomplish sometimes. Check the reality when you feel that I'm not qualified, right? Is that true? I think money situation. None of us are 100% expert. There's always something we already said we don't know. But there's also so much we know. A reality check is a key for you to truly know. Um, should I feel this way or. It's just my perception, some of my past emotions haunting me. That's number one. Number two, what you do is that celebrate wins, right? I think celebrate wins is so important. Not for every, um, you know, moment publicly, sometimes privately. I have to say I start doing better of that once I have a team before it's with me. Lots of times, you know, again, come from the culture, the Chinese culture, teaching us to be humble, right. You always think about what you're not doing well rather than talking about what you're doing well. But once I have a team, it's different. I can be humble, but I have to celebrate my team's win. I have to make them feel good so they are recognized. So I feel that's a starting point for me to correct that. In a sense, I need to always celebrate my team. And actually, in return, celebrate my win as well. So I think celebrating win is the second step, extremely important. And the third one, we talk a lot about mentoring, networking. That's extremely important. Somebody gave you a reality check, help you to understand your what you have accomplished. Finding your power I remember there was once I was in a meeting walking out of the meeting. At that time, my boss was telling me he was like, Randy, you realize in that meeting you are the most experienced, the expert in that topic, and so many other people talk way more than you do. They know nothing. They feel you are the expert. How come you're not speaking? Um, and I didn't realize. You have to realize at that moment I already feel, gosh, I'm doing so much better being outspoken. And somebody is telling me you could have say more. We would have benefited from your contribution. Um, I think having those kind of mentors, those network to help you to, you know, get a ground truth about who you are and help you celebrate is extremely important. I think those kind of practice, what I talk about, if you continue doing that, eventually you will be better. You may never completely out of the world. Um, but I think you will have a better perception of who you are and be able to have that confidence to leap forward. Awesome. So much of that rings true for me. And you talked a little bit before about someone who's at the table leaning in and having to lean out. It's always nice when that person shows up again to help you like you just described. That's exactly right. Cindy, you talked about your secret weapon earlier. Let's talk a little bit about work life harmony. Women tend to wear multiple hats both at work and outside of work.

How have you approached competing priorities and what tips do you have in your experience? Great question. This is this is probably one of the things that I have had to work on the most over the arc of my career. Um, I would say being the mother of three. Um, there seems like there's something going on every day, even now that they're in their 20s. Um, it's just different. Um, but I would say one of the things I would really think about is the question that we ask ourselves a lot in business. Is it going to matter in five years? Right. Like, is it going to matter to me, to my children? You know, the fact that I was a big believer in outsourcing, as soon as I could outsource the housekeeping I did, as soon as I could outsource the landscaping, I did so that when we were at home together, we spent time together. So I'm still a big believer in that, even though they're out of the house now. But I'm still believer, big believer in that because I think time together is so important. But I would say it's really challenging yourself. Like I was talking to somebody last night. I said, there are some things I missed in my kids growing up experience that I can't remember why I missed it. I can't remember what meeting was so important, what presentation or whatever it was I was doing was so important that I missed that. So I would really challenge yourself particularly, you know, it may not seem like a big deal, but it can be a big deal, right? So I would really challenge yourself. I really look at what are the things around the house that either can wait. Um, you know, we. If you walked into our house, my kids are growing up, it looked like a bomb went off, but it was clean, right? It was clean. There was always clean. Like I had somebody come in and clean. But it was, you know, chaos in terms of kid clutter. Um, but what are the things that really matter? Um, and then also making sure you take time for yourself. It's very easy throughout our careers and with children to put yourself last. Um, that's true for men and for women.

But it's important that you take care of yourself. And whether that that can be a whole variety of things that can be going to yoga. It can be going to get your hair done. It can be going out and spending time with your friends that see you outside of what you do every day for a living, or being mom or dad. Um, those are all things I would recommend in terms of ways to think about how you navigate this. Nice. I think we can all relate to the chaos at home at times. I know when I take off for a few days, I come home and it looks like I've been robbed. So I think we can all relate to that before we run out of time and move on to the Q&A portion of this, can I do a quick fire round here? In a couple of words, if there was any advice that you could give that you wish you had received earlier in your career and would now pass on to the next generation, what would that be? Well, I would say, let's not be overcritical of ourselves as women.

We really tend to do that. And guess what? Most of the time people don't even notice. If you're making a mistake. Only you are the one. You you know that you're making a mistake because you're the one who's perceiving it as a mistake. So let's not be overcritical. Be happy with what you are. And that's going to. That takes us a long way. I'd say know your limitations. Lean into your strengths and be generous with your colleagues, because you'll always get there stronger and faster when you do it together. I will say we are truly in the era of innovation and all those challenges and incredible opportunities. Truly be able to right now, rely on your curiosity and there's going to be ups and downs. Um, but take all the opportunity. Every challenge is an opportunity for you to grow and just believe your curiosity and perseverance is going to prevail. You're going to get there and trust yourself. Those are all fantastic. Um, I would just add to that. Be bold. I if I go back and wish I'd talked to Cindy at 25, I'd ask her to be bolder, to ask for the things she wanted, not wait for someone to tap her on the shoulder and say, hey, you want to go do this? Um, that would be probably my big thing I would recommend. Great. Thank you. I have two daughters and I do not have to remind them to be bold. They're eight and 14, so. Well, thank you, all of you. On behalf of Pega and everyone here, I'm now going to pass it on to Nazneen for Q&A.

Thank you so much. Let's give a big round of applause to our panel first. Thank you. Before I jump into the Q&A, I want to say someone mentioned in the Q&A that all the advice, everything that you all have talked about actually applies to everyone. So I totally agree, and I think this is a room full of survivors. So I think we have a couple of minutes for questions. So one of the questions were there are a lot of people who've started their career in specialized tracks, and they're looking to move into management roles. What advice would you give to them who are looking for leadership and management roles? And anyone can go.

Well, for one, once you start off your career, moving to management is also about a skill and a flair. If you think you are a people person and you can really extend that mentorship guidance as well as listening to people, that is when you're probably in a spot where you can be managing people. If you are the sort of person where you just want to be a, you know, quiet and isolated and you like being that way and you want to sit and develop, then you're probably better as an individual contributor. And that that's a great thing as well. But just choose your paths. One thing I may add on top of that, sometimes I know even some of my team members come to me and say, I really want to be a manager. How do I get there? It's a chicken and egg thing. Lots of times people, when they are trying to get a leader, they want to look.

Do you have that experience? Without experience, it's hard for you to get that role. So you get into a cycle. What I have telling them is that looking for the opportunity, sometimes you don't need to be a leadership role to lead.

So you could lead a project and you could volunteer for events handling to demonstrate you have leadership skills.

And then where's the opportunity? And sometimes the leader summer intern, you know, those kind of unofficial short term leadership roles.

And make sure that you learn in those opportunities. And also for people to see your leadership skill. And then gradually you will be able to have bigger and bigger role eventually getting to leadership.

So looking for those in unofficial opportunity is my advice to grow. I would agree with all those comments. The one other thing I would just think about is that when you're early in your career, you spend a lot of time building your technical skill set, right? So you go to training, you take on new varieties of projects to really grow that craft. When you start to think about a leadership role, you're starting to transition into softer skills.

So I would tell you, it's important to look for training, advice, mentorship about what that means. Taking these types of opportunities that Wren talked about gives you a sense of flare of that. But I would say that the biggest aha to me, particularly when I took my first leadership role, was how much of this was leaning on my soft skills and how little was leaning on my technical skills.

Not to say I didn't use both, but the soft skills really kind of kicked in. I would concur. I think that everything that these fine ladies said holds true. Plus thought leadership, demonstrating the ability to make a decision, sometimes with very little information, is what people look for in a leader and then navigating through ambiguity.

And if you're able to do that at whatever level you are, people will recognize that you have that leadership ability.

And then if you lean into the opportunities that come along with being able to slice through and make a decision, then you know that you're fit for being a leader and you can be a very effective individual contributor, right, and have leadership in that moment.

So I think it's a give and take and a push and pull, depending on where you are in your life or what role you're playing in the moment as well. I love that influencing without authority when an individual contributor role. Great advice. Um, one other question. Uh, all of you talked about mentorship and sponsorship and the importance of that in advancing women into leadership positions.

What advice would you give to allies in the room and otherwise? What can they do, or even those who are in the position of influencing. I think when you talked about creating the structures, what advice would you give to them? I'll go first. Um, this is a topic I'm very passionate about and I've been the beneficiary of having some amazing sponsors. I would say this is about questioning the the norm in the decision making. It's very easy. And I see this in my firm and with my clients. It's easy sometimes to default to the easy solution. This person did that thing, they did this, they got that. And I would say it's okay sometimes to step back and question, you know, is that the right path going forward to Wren's Point? The rest of my colleagues here, you know, there's we're we're looking at a world that is changing faster than it ever has. So what might have been the right answer even a year ago may not be the right answer now. So I would say question the norms. Ask questions outside the box. Really think about the diverse skills that really are needed going forward, and less about what worked in the past. I would pick up on the the new Cindy, telling the young Cindy to be bold, right? If we were to extend the world that we're going into, we want to change the face of perceived leadership, right? Which we're which we're doing now.

And Pega definitely is showing with the keynote speakers, definitely a wide range of speakers there and not what you would normally dig up when you ask Gen AI, what does a boss look like? But it does mean probably riffing on your point. Active dialog. And then maybe sometimes the blind analysis of the skills. If you're biased by seeing the name or the face versus objectively looking at the skills, you may not realize that you're going to be going toward a certain kind of persona that you wouldn't have expected. So I think introducing a little bit of scientific anonymity as you're evaluating the leader might be a good idea.

The only thing I would add on what you said, um, make sure you reduce the bias in your view. I think we see that a lot, but sometimes it's hard to do. It's in our subconscious. You sometimes didn't even realize you have that bias. Looking for evidence, hard evidence to support your view. It's extremely important and probably introduced in your process as well. So people may not just I feel that way, but there's evidence to support that, actively correct that bias. Um, and then having the future view there are I, there are some skills which is going to really help you grow into the future to scale.

That's important, that kind of open mindedness and be able to get new skills. I think that's a key. P. Um, that probably will help. I've always felt that if my team grows, I grow. And if we are in an organization or in an environment which thinks the same thing hierarchically, you know, we're automatically in the path of success and in the path of growing a continuous growing path. So that really helps. Fantastic advice. I remember in a conversation with one of the sponsors, and they said that the best thing a sponsor or a mentor can do is give. Give others the voice and be the voice when those folks are not in the room. And that has always stuck with me. Well, thank you so much. I know we couldn't just have this conversation and continue for the entire day, but we do need to stop. So thank you so much. It was such an inspiring and such an insightful conversation..