My name:Selina Winter
My company: Microsoft
My title: Senior business program manager, MicrosoftCertification
My location: My team is in Redmond, Washington. Iwork remotely from Atlanta, Georgia.
Best business advice I ever received: The best adviceI ever received wasn’t so much a direct statement as it was modeled behavior. Ilearned many things from observing my mentor, who I happened to find at a veryformative time in my early career. But the most important thing I learned fromher was how to “lean in.” Long before Sheryl Sandberg coined the phrase in herbest-seller, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, I was privilegedto have a strong female role model to show me how to do that. From her Ilearned to be prepared, confident, and do what we now know today as “leaningin.” Her example and her investment in me as a young professional gave me theconfidence I needed to be more assertive and more proactive in insertingmyself, my ideas, and my contributions in the workplace. To be clear, it isn’talways easy. But, looking back, I see now how the skills I learned then haveserved me well in my career and will continue to do so.
Most daring personal career move: Admittedly, mycareer has not been extremely high on the risk-taking scale. But I do have acouple of moves that felt extremely risky to me at the time. The first was whenI transitioned from marketing and communications to a business developmentposition. That move from promoting products to selling products—on the frontlines, with a quota—was a huge leap for me. But it was a great move thatbrought new challenges and helped me gain more skills, particularly inrelationship-building with channel partners and customers.
The second was when I made the move to Microsoft. Afteryears of working for small and medium-sized organizations, I wasn’t sure whatit would be like to transition to such a large company. (On a side note, I alsoleft business development and transitioned to an operational role when joiningMicrosoft, which is a pretty far stretch for someone who was a journalism majorwith a career progression from PR to marketing communications, to marketing, tobusiness development.) But it turns out that moving to Microsoft was one of thebest career moves I ever made. And I can see now how the combination of skillsI accumulated in my previous roles—in companies of all sizes and in variousindustries—help in my most recent Microsoft role, which is leading ourcertification efforts.
What I’m most proud of: Personally, I’m most proud ofthe time that my husband and I spent as foster parents and of the work wecontinue to do today to advocate for and support foster children and otherunderserved and at-risk youth. It is an honor to have the opportunity tohelp young people who are so impacted by what is happening in their familylives. While foster care isn’t right for all, I would encourage everyone tofind a way to help underserved and at-risk youth. There are many ways tohelp—from supporting a local nonprofit to being a child advocate; fromvolunteering in low-resourced schools to foster care. This is our future,and leaving the children of today in a better position is a legacy that anyonecould be proud of.
Current workplace challenge: Addressing thesignificant and growing global IT skills gap. It’s a huge problem forindividuals who need updated skills to be competitive in today’s workplace,which is increasingly requiring technology skills. It’s a huge issue forcompanies that have open positions because they can’t find candidates with therequired skills. And it’s a huge issue for the global economy.
I’m part of Microsoft Learning, a group at Microsoft thatfocuses on both training and certification for students and professionals. Mypersonal challenge is how to modernize and simplify certification to attractmore candidates. With the rapid pace of technology, our partners andcustomers need more employees with validated skills to lead their digitaltransformation.
Something people don’t know about me: This is a hardone. I’m pretty transparent with people I know. So, I’ll go way back. In thesummer before my ninth-grade year, I had the opportunity to participate in anexchange program to Japan. As a small-town girl from rural Georgia, it was myfirst international trip and a truly life-changing experience. In the lessserious department, I like cooking Southern food and sharing meals and qualitytime with friends and family. I also binge watch TV for stress relief.
