Paying It Forward To Aspiring Women Leaders, With Tracey Newell

Confidence, leadership, and bold decision-making—these are the keys to success, but many aspiring women leaders hesitate to take the next step. Tracey Newell knows this struggle firsthand and has dedicated her career to breaking barriers for women in business. In this conversation with J.R. Lowry, she shares her journey from sales to the boardroom, the power of sponsorship, and why women should give themselves permission to lead. They discuss insights from her new book, Hers for the Taking: Your Path to the C-Suite & Beyond, and the lessons she’s learned about career growth, work-life balance, and making an impact. If you’re ready to take charge of your career and reach new heights, this episode is for you.

Check out the full series of Career Sessions, Career Lessons podcasts here or visit pathwise.io/podcast/. A full written transcript of this episode is also available at https://pathwise.io/podcasts/tracey-newell/.

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Paying It Forward To Aspiring Women Leaders, With Tracey Newell

Board Member, Former C-Level Executive, And Author Of Hers For The Taking

The Career Journey Of Tracey Newell

My guest is Tracey Newell. Tracey is a multi-time board member and veteran of the tech sector. Her operating role was President of Informatica where she was responsible for sales, marketing, revenue, operations, and customer success. In our conversation, we are going to be talking about Tracey’s career journey, her new book, Hers for the Taking, her thoughts on leadership, and her board and nonprofit work. Let’s get going.

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Tracey, welcome. Thank you for doing the show with me.

Thank you. It’s a pleasure and an honor.

Let’s start by talking about your career journey. You’ve had multiple C-level roles and multiple board roles. I gather from reading your book that you didn’t foresee this for yourself. Tell us a little bit about your upbringing and what you thought you were going to be doing at that point in your life.

I don’t know too many CEOs or people who are running companies that were going to be doing that when they were in their teens and twenties. Like many, I fell into running sales and revenue organizations. It wasn’t the plan. I was raised by a mother and father who were the first in their family to go to college in their family. The one thing they instilled in us from a very early age is that we can have anything we want in this world as long as we are willing to get to work and keep our eye on the prize. That was a key lesson that I carried with me throughout my career.

I hadn’t thought about this in a long time. I started my career in the Air Force, and I was in ROTC in college. I can remember telling somebody, one of my fellow ROTC cadets at the time, “I want to run my own company someday.” I was clear even then that being an entrepreneur at some point in my life was something that I wanted to do. Most people have no idea. You fall into things and your career takes different turns from what you had expected.

For me, it wasn’t necessarily that I didn’t want to run a company. I don’t think I had the confidence. Who am I? I didn’t know. I thought people who ran organizations were born that way. They went to prep schools when they were five, their great-great-grandfather ran companies, and they had all kinds of credentials. They had MBAs, Master’s, and PhDs. I don’t have any of those things. It’s one of the things that I have focused my career on, trying to help others to pay it forward. If I can do it, why can’t you do it? Why can’t you run North America? Why can’t you run engineering? Why wouldn’t you try?

What were some of the early things you did at the beginning of your career?

I did fall into sales. I was going to be an attorney. My dad was an attorney. I think a lot of kids follow whatever their parents are doing. I was right in line with that. I worked hard in college because my dad said I had to have a 4.0 if I was going to be a good lawyer and get into a good law school. I was very literal, so I was doing that.

In my senior year of college, AT&T was looking for people to sell calling cards, which most of your readers don’t know what that is. That was a thing that allowed you to make phone calls back then before the days of cell phones. I applied for the job and ran that program quite successfully. I made a bunch of money. I didn’t find it very difficult. I thought it was pretty easy to make these sales. As a result, AT&T, after a lot of begging on my part, hired me into sales when I got out of college. I took a few laterals along the way, but I fell in love with bringing revenue in for companies. I thought that was a pretty fun and exciting thing to do and also pretty lucrative for people who enjoy that.

I worked in the telecom industry many years ago. Those companies had pretty good sales cultures. You could learn a lot as a young person coming in, not understanding the craft of sales. They were good companies to learn from.

They invested in people. That was in the days of IBM and GE. They put a lot of time, energy, and money into training folks early in their career. That certainly changed my career trajectory as well. I’m a linear thinker and pretty structured. I may not be the smartest tool in the shed coming up with all the ideas, but if you tell me how to do something, I can follow the pathway to get there. The training was superb.

I know you ended up ultimately at Cisco. A lot of our readers think of the tech sector as the Magnificent Seven, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and others, but back in its day, Cisco was probably the marquee name in the Valley for a period of time. What was it like to work there when you were there?

It was scary at first. It was a little frightening because I was coming from the phone company, which was very methodical and predictable. Their stock was splitting 2 to 3 times a year, but the reason they were doing so well was that the internet was new and they were the winner taking the lead. Everybody wanted to work there, much like people want to work with those companies you mentioned.

It was hard to get in. We had to sign something that, for any reason, if we weren’t making the grade in the first 90 days, we were going to say goodbye pretty quickly. That was a little terrifying, but I decided to take a risk and give it a try. That’s something that I encourage everyone to do. Women can be a bit risk-averse. Yet, to do something great, you have to take a chance. You should always be a little nervous when you are taking a new job. That means you are going to learn and grow. I had a very exciting time. I was there for ten years and I learned an awful lot when I was at Cisco.

I know you had a pivotal moment, which you described in your book, where you were ready to walk away, maybe not from your job, but from corporate life overall. What precipitated that thought?

I was in my early 30s. For many of the people reading, I felt stuck. I felt pigeonholed. I didn’t see a path to move forward. I knew I wanted to do something different but didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I decided to write this book to help women. I’ve been doing a lot of diversity work throughout my career. Women run into some roadblocks that are pretty unique.

I was going to quit my job at Cisco and I happened to have a meeting at that time with my boss’s boss. He was running North America at the time. I walked into his office with nothing to lose and started rattling off all of the things that the company needed to do differently to enable their sales teams and their field teams to be successful. It was a bit of a rant. It was probably a bit inappropriate, but I had nothing to lose.

Halfway through the conversation, my boss at the time, named Doug, stopped me and said, “Do you want to come work for me?” I looked at him and went, “Doing what?” He goes, “I’m thinking about creating a new role. You’re going to be in charge of strategy. You can follow me around for six months and then you can go be me in meetings and represent me. I will be able to scale a whole lot better. I thought about it. I said, “I’m leaving, so I might as well take a chance.” It goes back to risk-taking.

A lot of people said I was crazy. It was a new job. It was an unproven job. They said, “What are you doing?” I thought, “Why not? I will go learn something.” Not only did that gentleman do me a huge favor, because I should not have been quitting to write a book at that point and I have the experience to do that, but he followed through. I learned more in a year and a half than I would have learned in ten years. That changed everything for me.

Those kinds of relationships, especially with somebody who’s more senior, can create that sponsorship for you. It could be a massive accelerant in your career if you are fortunate enough to find those kinds of situations. Not everybody is in the right place at the right time and takes full advantage of it to use it as the rocket ship that it can be.

Sponsorship is the right word. A lot of people do look for mentors. I get asked a lot about, “How do you get that person?” A sponsor is an advocate, to your point. It’s someone who’s often behind closed doors that you don’t have access to that’s saying, “J.R. and Tracey, I think they can do more. Let’s give them a chance at this project. Let’s move them into this lateral role.” That’s where the real learning begins.

We both mentioned your book a little bit. Let’s talk a little bit more about it, Hers For The Taking. Who is it written for, and why did you write it?

Diversity is something I have been doing a lot of work on for a long time. I hesitated to do the work early in my career because I thought, “Nobody’s helping me. What about all my guy friends that I like so much? It feels a little discriminatory.” At the time, Cisco was trying hard to get more women into the company, not because it was the right thing to do, but because the best-run companies represent their buyers in all different kinds of ways. 51% of decision-makers and employees are women. People buy from people they like.

I started doing diversity work and I was shocked at all the challenges. I knew about the voices inside of women’s heads talking them out of promotions instead of taking some risk and trying to do something great. I still get asked to speak all the time on how we can help to get more women in the C-Suite. The Russell 3000 as of 2023 had 16% women in the named executive officer role.

It’s pretty bad.

How Women Can Build A Leadership Pipeline

We have a lot of opportunities. My thesis in the book is that the problem statement as to why we don’t have women in the boardroom and the C-Suite is because there’s not enough pipeline. My goal in the book is to do a couple of things. One, encourage more women earlier in their careers in their 20s, 30s, or early 40s to start thinking about, “If you were given the opportunity in 10 or 15 years, would you take that job?” My goal is to have more women say, “Yes, I will take a shot at that.” It starts with the belief that and the aspiration to go take those jobs. Inspiring more women to go for it is a primary driver.

The second piece of the book is to teach people. Much of it applies to men and women.  You’ve decided to go do something big and great. How do you get there? How do you set a North Star? How do you create initiatives and strategies that are truly exciting? How do you get people to want to follow you all throughout your organization? How do you hire? How do you get mentors? It is all those kinds of things.

The last piece of the book is about moving from success to significance. If you step back a little bit, your career is a big part of your life, but it’s not your life. It’s not who you are. Spend a little time earlier in your career thinking about what you want your legacy to be, whether it’s family, philanthropy, community, or faith. What are the things that matter to you? How do you build that into your life? That should be a key component of how you spend your time as well.

You ultimately chose to become a leader. You asked that question of other people about whether they foresee that role or would want that role for themselves. Not everybody makes that choice. Some people are happy being in the trenches or being in the middle.

If that’s truly what you want, that’s wonderful. That’s great. We all get one go in this world that we are living in, so live it to your fullest. I do believe a lot of people never give themselves permission to even think about doing something that great. I was in my mid-30s when I knew I wanted a career change. I was still with the company. I hadn’t left yet but I knew I wanted a new change. I didn’t know what it was.

I was with a mentor. She said, “What do you want to do?” I said, “I want to have more impact.” She started belly laughing and was like, “What is that? I don’t even know what that means.” She went on to say, “Everybody in my org, if I ask them that question, especially men, they will tell me, “Like you, I want to be a CEO. I want to run a startup. I want to be a founder.” You have to be able to answer the question.

She said, “Do you want to run sales here at Cisco?” I thought, “We are a $20 billion company. I’m 35 years old. What are you talking about?” I said, “No, I’m not capable.” She said, “Give me another reason,” and this is where the women’s issues come in. I go, “I have 2 little kids under 6 years old. I can’t do that right now.”

What she said changed my life, and it is a big part of the book. She said, “Would you do that in 10 or 15 years when your kids are in high school or college?” I thought, “Here’s this person running a company asking me if I want to do that when I have time to do that.” I said, “Maybe.” She said, “Get the experiences over the next 10 or 15 years so you have that option.” I have been repeating that for 25 years to women and men. Why not you? If not you, then who? A lot of people will go for the brass ring if you give them permission, courage, and belief. Help them to believe that they could do it.

There’s a difference there often between men and women. You’ve referenced that you hear this common adage of men will apply for a job if they have half the skills listed and women won’t apply for a job even if they have 90% of the skills listed. It’s amazing that it still persists now, but it does.

At every level. I coach women who are 30 years old in their first manager job as well as executives in the C-Suite and the Fortune 500. They will all say when they are in a safe environment, “I don’t think I’m good enough.” I’ve done it. I remember working for a CEO and I told him, “I want to be a CEO someday, but I don’t think I’m ready because I’m not comfortable talking.

I need to know the P&L better so that I can talk to investors.” He looked at me and started laughing. He goes, “You’ve been running a P&L for ten years. The CFO has to know the P&L. You need to hire a good CFO.” We talk ourselves out of things. There’s an inner voice that’s pretty strong telling you, “You can’t do it.” You have to move past that.

Managing Through Influence And Work-Life Balance

One of your chapters in the book is about managing through influence. My favorite story from the book is the exchange you had with your boss, whether it was the gentleman, Doug, or somebody different at that point.

It was Doug.

I will let you say it. I don’t have to say it for you.

Thank you. You’re kind. I’m in this strategy job. Doug ran North America, which was half of Cisco at the time, which was a big deal. At the end of a year and a half, I said, “I can’t believe all the things we have gotten done. We changed this, that, and the other thing. None of these people reported to me. Look at what we did. We changed the trajectory of the company.”

He looked at me, smiled, and said, “That’s my advice for the rest of your career. Pretend that no one ever reports to you. People know who the boss is. You don’t have to tell them who the boss is. If you can win hearts and minds, people will follow you anywhere and they will run through walls for you.” That was another life-changing moment for me that I kept with me for the rest of my life.

It’s a memorable one, for sure. You have another one that you talk about. You were in a training program and talking about the sand and the rocks.

I get asked about work-life balance. Men and women struggle with work-life balance, especially women. They want to be perfect. I talk about going through Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits. I took a class on that. It was popular at the time. The instructor had a huge fishbowl and there’s sand at the bottom, maybe 25%, and all these big rocks. These rocks had important things all over them that said Life, Work, Balance, Health, and whatever that might be.

What we were talking about is work and life balance, time management, and how you fit all the things in. Everybody is selecting a rock that they want to go into the fishbowl. A family goes in and all the things that matter to people go in. Pretty soon, the bowl is full and there are still important rocks around. People were like, “What do you mean? We are not going to worry about my relationship with my partner or my spouse. That’s got to go in there. My job has to go in there.” The instructor says, “Sometimes, there’s not enough room.”

He takes everything out. He takes the sand out. He starts to put all the rocks and the big rocks that matter. Suddenly, all the rocks fit. He takes the sand, pours it around, and shifts the bowl a little bit. Suddenly, everything fit, all of the critical rocks and sand. He went on to explain that the sand represents the noise in life. It’s the emails, texts, and all the calls coming in. It’s your long list of things that you have to get done at some point. If you want to have your version of work and life balance, and sometimes work gets 100% and sometimes life feels like it gets 100%, you have to be clear on your priorities.

I have used that strategy throughout my career to make sure that what gets on my calendar gets done. If you are going to be an executive, you have a pretty full calendar. What matters in my life goes into my calendar, too. I don’t move those things, like the key birthdays, if I need to buy a gift for a party, or if I want to go to the gym three times a week. I put things that matter to me on my calendar so that I can make sure that I have the right balance of work and life.

Everybody’s got their own system, but you have to make time for the things that are important to you, even if it means putting it in your calendar, protecting it, and planning around it. If it’s like, “We have a deadline on Friday and I have this thing on Thursday night,” it means you have to get it done before you leave work on Thursday. It takes discipline. A lot of people struggle with that. They fall into a habit of not feeling like they are in control.

If you work for somebody who’s demanding and is also very last-minute, it’s hard to be fully in control. People have more control over protecting the things that are important to them than they give themselves credit for, but it’s the critic, that voice you talked about. The voice is like, “I’m going to feel guilty if I leave the office before everybody else does,” or, “I’m going to feel guilty if I miss this meeting because my kids got something at school.” Everybody struggles with that more than they should. In some ways, they are their own worst enemies.

I have a funny story, too. You talked about guilt and life balance. A lot of guilt is a big deal for women. I’m still working for Doug. I worked for him for several years. I’m at a conference in Arizona and I’m talking to his communications manager. I say, “How’s it going?” She says, “I miss Max.” Max is her five-year-old. I said, “It’s so hard to travel when you have little ones because I had little ones too.”

Doug said, “What are you guys talking about?” I said, “You don’t understand. We want to be perfect at work and be there for our family all the time. We have a hard time balancing both.” He said, “What do you mean I don’t understand? I have 4 kids and I travel 80% of the time.” I said, “I know, but it’s different.” He goes, “How is it different? I’m providing for my family. I have three girls. I’m showing them that they can do what I do someday.” The conversation stayed with me. I kept thinking, “Why is he okay and I’m not? Why am I torturing myself?” I came to the conclusion, which is exactly what you said. He had chosen not to feel bad and chosen not to feel guilty.

A week goes by and I’m driving my five-year-old to school, which was a rare event. She says, “How come you don’t come to kindergarten and read to us, correct our papers, and bring the brownies?” I thought of that conversation and I said, “Here’s the deal. There are moms who work inside the home, and that is amazing. That is a huge, important job, but there are other moms who work outside the home. I’m one of those, and I’m good at my job. I have an important job.” My job was important but I was still early in my career at the time. She thought about that and we moved on.

Fast forward a couple of days and I have three 5-year-olds. She was with her two little friends in the back of the car. I hear my little girl going, “My mom’s got a big job and she’s good at it.” I started smiling and thought, “We don’t have to make ourselves feel so terrible all the time.” Our people want us to be happy. That’s all they want. They want to know, “Are you doing what you want to do? Are you comfortable and happy with your choices?” That was something that also stuck with me. I have shared it a few times.

I can remember an interchange with my daughter. She was maybe 8 or 9 at the time. She said to me, “Daddy, how come none of the other daddies have to travel as much as you have to travel?” It was right to the heart. This was several years ago and I still remember that. I remember exactly where we were, having that conversation. It does make you think. Even for men, the guilt is there because it’s hard to do everything you want all the time. Big rock, sand, or whatever, sometimes, it doesn’t feel like it fits even if it might.

For me, I tried hard that when it was Friday night at 5:00, I was present, I was home, and I was all-in until they went to bed Sunday night or Monday morning. It’s not to say I wasn’t there during the week, but like you, I traveled quite a bit. A friend of mine wrote a book called You Are NOT Ruining Your Kids. I worried about that when they were little. Fast forward, if I don’t talk to them every day, I wonder what’s going on.

When they move out of the house. It goes back to your point earlier in the conversation. When they are little and they are occupying a lot of your time, when somebody’s saying, “They are not going to be in the house forever. What do you want to do when they are gone?” You all of a sudden find out you have a lot of extra free time on your hands that you didn’t have when they were living at home and you were driving them around and going to their school events, sports events, and things like that.

There’s no question that you do, and that provides a lot of options. To me, that’s a piece of, “Do you want to do something bigger? Do you want to be a COO someday?” You remember what it’s like to have little people. It’s hard to imagine. You are 30 years old and you barely know how to do your job. You have demands at home, whether it’s aging parents or whatever it might be. It feels like that’s forever, and yet it won’t be forever. Maybe pick your head up and give yourself time to think, “Ten years from now, I might want to do that. How do I get those experiences so that I have that option?”

You’ve mentioned some stay-versus-go moments in your career. We all have them. What advice do you give to people on how to think about whether to stay or whether to go?

It’s important if you are doing well and you are in good standing with your company. I would be as forthright as you can be with your boss and your boss’s boss. I tried hard never to surprise anyone if I was thinking about leaving the company because oftentimes, they will find a way to get you excited again and give you more opportunities.

I ended up running sales for WebEx back when that was a super cool thing because there were only two Software as a Service companies, Salesforce and WebEx, back then. That was not a promotion. That was a lateral that I was given. At the time, I was in a big job but I was bored. Communication and being open and honest are good with people that you have good trust with.  A lot of times, they will keep you with that company and allow you to grow.

When it was time to move on, I would always start to feel a smoldering discontentment that I was not excited anymore. Maybe I was not excited about my manager or he or she was not excited about me and I couldn’t find a path to move to get out of that relationship, or perhaps I wasn’t excited about the mission. I believe that you should be excited not just about the job that you are in but about what your company does. We spend so much time working. How can you not make sure you are spending your time with a company you believe in?

The Value Of Lateral Career Moves

You talk about lateral moves. How did you think about when a lateral move might make sense?

I took a number of lateral moves. Most executives do if it gets you closer to an end goal. I talk about being AT&T. It was great to grow up with that company because most of the leaders were in their 40s or 50s. They were senior, first-line managers that you could learn from. I decided at 26 I wanted to be a manager more than life itself. They didn’t know what to do with me because I was 26 years old. The GM said, “Do you want to go manage accounts receivable?” I said, “What’s that?” They were like, “You got to get money from people.” I said, “That’s like sales. I could do that job.”

Aspiring Women Leaders: To build a strong career, you have to take some lateral moves. Learning new skills will get you further in the long run.

I took a 50% pay cut to get into management. I was managing some union employees. There were about twenty of them who had been with the company longer than I’d been alive. I learned more in that job than in any other job because I had to figure out how to bring people together. I didn’t know how to do the job. I didn’t want to turn into a collections expert and figure out how to solve this average day’s outstanding problem. We were the worst in the country. We turned it around in a year and my team put me up for this big award. It was amazing.

When you figure out what that big goal is that you want, how you get from here to there is most often not if you are an engineer or a senior manager to a VP. Usually, people will take lateral roles because otherwise, you end up being a mile high and an inch deep. You don’t understand how the company runs. You know how your one piece of the company runs. I took a market analyst job. I joined a company called Juniper Networks.

Another high flyer for a while.

They were doing quite well. The head of sales wanted me to come be his VP of strategy. I was already a VP and I was upset about it. He did say one thing that was funny. He said, “Don’t confuse titles with money.” I looked at him and said, “Okay.” I went over there, and nine months later, he promoted me. I was a senior vice president, which was what I wanted. It feels risky to take laterals, but if you are learning something, it’s worth it.

That focus on, “Am I going to learn something in this role?” can certainly be a tiebreaker for thinking about whether you want to take a lateral move because there are times when there isn’t something at the next level. You can keep doing what you’ve been doing for the last few years and wait it out. You can leave, which is an option we talked about, or you can shift into a new role which will give you probably a little bit of fresh energy and a new perspective. You are learning something, and sometimes, it’s the bridge to the next level. A lot of people are like, “Why would I take a lateral move?” They are missing opportunities for themselves when they think like that.

I have even gone backwards. I agree completely with what you said. I was managing it at 30 years old or 32. At AT&T, I was managing a couple hundred people. I was managing managers. I joined Cisco, which was a hot company, and I said, “I’m willing to take a step back into a management role.” The director I was talking to said, “With all due respect, you don’t know anything about networking, so I will hire you as a rep.”

I was unhappy with that for about 24 hours, and then I thought, “They are growing. What’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? I can go back to my last role in a minute,” and so I did. I went in as a rep. A year later, I was promoted to manager, and then a year later, I was promoted to operations director. Everyone said, “How did you do that in two years?” I said, “I didn’t. I did it in twelve.” All that experience I had in leading leaders was easy. I had to learn this new category in the market.

Let’s talk a little bit about leadership. What is most central to your view of leadership?

Great leaders lead from the front, first and foremost. I believe in servant leadership. Some people don’t like that because they have said, “It means we are here to serve, we have to be nice all the time, and we don’t demand results.” I think that’s funny because how in the world can you be a great leader that doesn’t get results? Great leaders are there to help the front line and to make sure they understand what is causing problems inside the company.

There was a great show called Undercover Boss. CEOs of big companies were dressing up in disguise. They wore mustaches, glasses, and hoods, and then they were going out on the front line. A CEO of a big airline was out schlepping suitcases onto the plane, asking people, “Why do we do it this way?” The employees were going, “Our management has no idea how tough this is. The customers are mad about this.” I believe that is servant leadership. Understand what it will take the people closest to the customer to make it easier for those folks to do their job. When you do that, you win hearts and minds.

Servant leadership is a big piece of it, but you also have to be good at setting a North Star that is exciting. Set lofty goals. You have to have some pretty courageous plans that reward the shareholders. You have to be a great communicator. That’s critical to communicate the plan and inspire people to get behind you to want to drive that change. Collaboration across the company. Great leaders don’t care about only their function. They care about what it will take to make the whole company successful.

I don’t know that you always get that, but you need that.

That’s true. The great leaders do that. The great CMOs, Chief Marketing Officers, aren’t just thinking about marketing. They are thinking, “What can I do to make the company successful?” You have to execute. You have to do your job and you have to do it well and get results.

Tough Enough: Navigating Leadership As A Woman In Business

You talk about delivering results in one chapter of your book called Tough Enough. Talk about the norms around being tough. The reality is strong men get more latitude even when they probably cross lines and women get called unkind things. How did you manage that? How did you choose the tone that you wanted people to take away about you as a leader?

Unconscious bias is real. I love the story in Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In where she talks about a real study done at one of the big universities. Men and women students participated. They read a story, a case study, on a venture capitalist. The only thing that was different in the A and B study was the name. There were two Hs. Howard and Heidi were named as these entrepreneurs.

What the students said was shocking. The men and women in the study of Howard said, “He’s amazing. What a life he’s had. I’d want to work with that guy.” With the woman, they said, “She was successful, but I don’t know. I don’t think I could work with that person. She seems brutal. She’s tough.” That was from a name change.

That’s true. I joined a company and one of the employees that was going to report to me was on maternity leave. She later told me that she said to her husband, “The new head of sales is a woman. I don’t think I can work for a woman.” I laughed. I’m like, “We are supposed to be helping each other.” We got along famously.

This idea of too tough or not tough enough is real. For too tough, the extreme is Meryl Streep in Devil Wears Prada. Not tough enough, and I get asked this by women all the time, is, “I’m in a room full of twenty guys and nobody will listen to me,” which breaks my heart. “How do I get my voice heard?” is a common question.

A peer of mine who ran engineering said, “The thing about you is you are an iron fist in a velvet glove.” I thought that was one of the nicest compliments I have ever gotten. I expected my team to do our job. I have to do my job. Everybody has to do their job and deliver in big ways for a company, but we don’t have to be mean. We can always be respectful.

Even in giving hard feedback, we should be kind. Giving hard feedback is important for people. Scott was the CEO of Walmart, a phenomenal leader. One of his top ten roles of leadership, and I’m paraphrasing, was that more careers get damaged because their boss is afraid to give them real feedback. We have to give honest feedback and be constructive but we should always be kind when we do it.

Kim Scott called it Radical Candor, and then she said, “Maybe it should have been Compassionate Candor.”

I love that book. That’s a great book.

Talk a little bit about hiring. What did you look for in the people that you hired? What were your red flags?

Back to Undercover Boss, whenever I joined a new organization, I would spend time understanding what great looked like for the people who worked for me one, two, or three levels down. The only way I know how to do that is to meet great people. The reason I would do that was twofold. One, I want to make sure those people never left and that we had a good relationship. I put them in my witness protection program where I would meet the top 10% and say, “You are amazing. I’m going to try and be right more than I’m wrong, but we are going to mess stuff up. Your job is to call me and say, “That was bad. Can we talk about that?” That’s important.

The other reason to meet the top 10% is to see what attributes they have that make them so great at the job. From there, I would build that into an interview process for not just me, but anybody that was interviewing inside of my org. I’m working very closely with recruiting as well to make sure they are clear on what those attributes look like.

It’s not rocket science. You’ve been doing this your whole career, too. I do think it’s important. I want to focus on experiential questions. If you are changing jobs 3 times in 3 years, you are probably not going to stay here either. It’s real life. Job hopping is something that I’m not a fan of. You said Military. I love hiring people from the Military because the leadership training is unbelievable. It’s world-class. D1 athletes. If you played a sport and you played it well, then I will take you on my team all day long.

Not the D2 or D3 people?

Any sport as long as you were winning or as long as you worked hard at it. I’m looking for people who have proven over and over again that they cannot get knocked down because life can be hard. They pick themselves up and go at it again to find a way to have a good time.

You’ve shifted fully into doing board work, including on some public boards. What does it take to get your first board role?

Navigating Boardrooms And Identifying Great Directors

I always ask people to put themselves in the role of the CEO of the company they want to join. You need to have real clarity on what you will bring to that board and what experience have you achieved throughout your career that will help that CEO and that company to be more successful. That’s what the CEO and the board are doing when they recruit a new board member. If they bring me on board, it’s because they want someone to help them accelerate revenue and work with the management team on how they can continue to refine their go-to-market strategy.

It’s mandatory for a public company to have an audit committee to audit the financials. A CFO, usually but not always, will chair the audit committee. A lot of times, a sitting CEO so that the CEO has someone that he can confide in a safe environment. Put yourself in the role of what is your elevator pitch, if you would. How will you help that company to succeed? You are also there for governance, strategy, and planning, but you’ve got to have skills and experiences that make you uniquely qualified to help that company get to the next level.

I know you have some advice on this. It’s a bit of a leading question. How important is it that you are choosy in terms of the right board situation for you? Other than the skills and experience match and being able to see how you can add value, what else matters?

I do advise folks quite a bit. They will say, “I want a new job. I don’t like the job that I’m in.” If they are more senior, it is “How do I get my first board seat?” I always correct them by saying, “You don’t want a new job. You want a great new job in an awesome company that you are going to have fun in. You need to know what your criteria are.” A board seat is no different. You do not want a board seat. You want a great board seat where you are going to be able to add a ton of value over the next several years.

Aspiring Women Leaders: If you’re considering a board seat, don’t just take any opportunity—take a great one where you can truly add value.

A board is not an operating role. In two years, if you are unhappy, you can change. You are probably not going to drop off a board in two years if you want to do board work again. Joining a board is a long-term commitment. Usually, the term of three years is pretty typical. Most often, the board members will stay on for a 2nd term, sometimes a 3rd term because it’s a lot of work for the CEO and the management team to get you onboarded and make you productive. You need to be thoughtful. Are you going to enjoy working with these people and this company for 3 or 6 years or longer? It’s a long-term commitment.

What does it take to be a successful director? You’ve been on a bunch of boards. I know you went through Stanford’s training program for directors. What’s your view? What makes a great director?

A component of doing board work is governance and making sure that the company is doing all the things they are supposed to be doing, that they are running well, and that they are set up to give a high return for shareholders. I look for a bit more than that. When you look at a board seat, you go through an interview process like you had for an operating role.

The board is always intentional. Considering all the cyber problems, a lot of boards are bringing on a chief security officer. As a candidate, you are trying to find out as much as you possibly can about what’s going on inside that company as you would as an operator. I want to know, “Can I help them?” If I join a board, I’m trying to learn enough to think, “For the next 3 to 6 years, can I help them build a roadmap with my experiences to take their skills to the next level and add value?” If I can’t add value, then I have no business joining that board.

How important is board work? I know that you are involved with some nonprofits as well. How central for you is legacy? You mentioned it in passing earlier. I’m curious about how prominent it is in your thinking at this point in your career.

It’s important to me. I semi-retired in 2021. I did my board work but I still had quite a bit of time, so I was playing a lot of pickleball.

I knew you were going to say pickleball.

I’m not very good at it. All the tennis players are pickleball people. I’m not a tennis player. I have been trying to golf for 25 years and it’s not working out very well. I felt like I was missing something. I went through a program called Halftime. I spent a lot of time soul-searching on what it is that I want to spend my time on in my next chapter.

A guy named Bob Buford wrote a book called Halftime, meaning if you are lucky enough to retire at a reasonably young age, what do you want your second half to be? I have spent a lot of time on that. I enjoy doing the board work. I’m not stopping that. Writing a book was a big piece of giving back because I have had some great mentors. I wanted to pay it forward and help as many women as I could, and men. There will be a lot of men who pick up a few tips from this book as well. That was a big piece of giving back.

I do some charity work. I’m on the board of advisors for a nonprofit called Forward, which is a Christian nonprofit helping women reach their God-given potential. I am obsessed with a nonprofit called Bridge2Rwanda, which is focused on helping people reach their potential by crossing the digital divide. I am very focused on education and job creation. They have a second arm, which is conservationist farming. That is focused on helping the farmer. 86% to 87% of the farmers are women trying to feed their families.

Through Bridge2Rwanda farming techniques, they teach the farmers how to get 2 to 4 times the amount of output, which not only allows them to feed their family for a year, but it allows them to have surplus and sell. When you are talking about solving world hunger, it’s pretty exciting and humbling to wake up in the morning.

It’s important to the continued progression of the world.

You only get one go-around, so we might as well help make a difference and help as many as we can if we are fortunate enough to be able to do that.

Why More Women Need To Step Into Leadership Roles

Any last advice you want to leave our audience with?

If there’s a theme you are picking up on, I believe I have seen it over and over again. It is the power of human potential. Henry Ford said, “If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” I have seen that movie. I would encourage anyone that’s even curious about whether you could be at the top of your game and whatever it is that you are focused on to go for it, and then gather the right people around you to help you do it.

You quoted this in the book, if I remember right. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Maybe I’m remembering that from someplace else, but it’s a proverb that sticks. It’s been a great conversation. I appreciate your time and the opportunity to get to know you a bit.

I have loved every minute. Thanks for all you are doing for all of your followers. It’s amazing.

Thank you. Have a good day.

—

It was great having Tracey on the show to discuss her career journey, her new book, Hers for the Taking, a little bit about her thoughts on leadership, and some of the board work that she’s doing. As a reminder, this episode was brought to you by PathWise.io. If you are ready to take control of your career, join the Pathwise community. Basic membership is free. You can also sign up on our website for the PathWise Newsletter. Follow us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Thanks. Have a great day.

Important Links

• Tracey Newell on LinkedIn
• Hers for the Taking: Your Path to the C-Suite & Beyond
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
• You Are NOT Ruining Your Kids
• Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
• Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity
• Halftime: Moving from Success to Significance
• PathWise on LinkedIn
• PathWise on Facebook
• PathWise on YouTube
• PathWise on Instagram
• PathWise on TikTok

About Tracey Newell

Tracey Newell is a multi-time board member and tech sector veteran. Her most recent operating role was as president of Informatica, where she was responsible for sales, marketing, revenue operations, and customer success.

Prior to joining Informatica, Tracey was EVP of global field operations at Proofpoint, where she led sales through a five-year period of hypergrowth from $100 million to $700 million. Recognized as a Top 100 Sales Leader by the Modern Sale, Tracey led Proofpoint’s go-to- market team to become a top-five leader in the cybersecurity market. Before Proofpoint, Tracey was EVP of global sales at Polycom. She has also held sales leadership positions at Juniper Networks, Webex, and Cisco Systems. During her tenure at Cisco, Tracey was recognized by the organization Women Worth Watching.

From a philanthropic standpoint, Tracey is engaged with nonprofit Bridge2Rwanda (B2R), focused on building the next generation of African leaders; B2R Farms, which is focused on conservationist farming; and 4word, a Christian nonprofit focused on helping women to reach their God-given potential.

Tracey graduated with honors from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and completed Stanford’s twenty-sixth Annual Directors’ College in June 2021.