“A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half our homes.”
Sheryl Sandberg’s view on gender equality as described in her book Lean in: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, has made an impact as a life-changing force behind many successful women business personae. Alexandra Lung dearly mentions it as a quote that inspires her a lot. The Senior Product Manager at Pivotal Labs, Alexandra has been listed in the top 50 Women in Product in Europe 2018 by the Product Management Festival.
Alexandra rightly says, “In order to make progress for women empowerment we should first realize just how much remains to be done. And we must first understand the scope and scale of the issue.”
Hailing from a technical background, Alexandra’s journey was never a cakewalk. Being a young woman, she had to fight against a part of the society and most of the time against herself as well, as she puts it.
“We were taught to be good girls, to be humble, to not screw up, to do what we are told to….No wonder we still have too few women speakers at talks on stage and too few women in positions of power, she continues. “But this is starting to change. We know that we have what it takes and we go for it. Sharing women success stories also helps us all realize that is possible. Calling out and not accepting women discrimination of any sort is another.”
An International Voice
Delightfully enough, Alexandra has been speaking at a lot of international conferences, debates and meetups. These events are a great opportunity to meet amazing professionals all around the world and share inspiring stories. She’s been also part of debates that inspire women to take a step towards Product Management and she has given talks for Women in Tech and Women in Product communities. According to Alexandra, these platforms are some of the most amazing initiatives that bring together talented women to share experiences and support each other.
The Eternal Mantra of Self Growth- Learning and Unlearning
Alexandra mentions her personality and the way she grew up as the major contributors for her success as a leader. She was only 15 when she decided to join an NGO and organize a photo exhibition for children in need. She did everything from finding the funding to curation, logistics and communication. The next year, she joined a second NGO and engaged in a bigger project, took over the Marketing part of the NGO and organized a small team. Little did she know about Marketing or project and team management at that time. However, she learned and unlearned big time which fed her trust in her own capacity to take challenges, follow up on them and learn.
Pivotal practices a strong culture of feedback and they learn early how to both give and receive feedback in a kind, specific and actionable way which is also an another way of learning and unlearning.
“My best advice for learning and growing is to be open to feedback and to trying new things. There is always a better way to do things, even if you are already an ‘expert’.” Alexandra reflects.
Pivotal Labs- An Ambitious Platform for Cloud
With world-wide presence, Pivotal helps the Fortune 500 transform into software companies, by providing a cloud-native platform that unleashes developer productivity as well as unlocks operational efficiency needed to build and run great software.
The cloud-native platform, Pivotal Cloud Foundry (“PCF”), accelerates and streamlines software development by reducing the complexity of building, deploying and operating new cloud-native applications and modernizing legacy applications by speeding up the process.
The company believes that fast organizations, and not necessarily large organizations, will succeed in the cloud era. Enterprises must turn their mass into momentum. It defines its role as to help them pick up speed. PCF customers can further accelerate their transition to a software company through our strategic services, Pivotal Labs (“Labs”).
Tech Insights from the Tech Savvy Leader
Alexandra is passionately in love with tech and software since she was a teenager. Working on new products and technologies keeps her in the flow. In her opinion, we need to mix the technology with new methodologies and ethics in order to bring meaningful advancement in the industry. By the term ‘methodologies’, she indicates specifically an user centered approach where teams are focused on providing value for the users and not only for the business and are mindful about the ethics of what they are building.
