A Year in the (My) Life at IGEL

The Gratification of a “Servant Heart” Environment

As Sr. Director of Product Marketing at IGEL, I recently passed my 1-year work anniversary. For the company, it has been a great year of tremendous growth as we continue to take market share in end user computing from some of the biggest IT companies on the planet. For me personally, it’s been a year of high activity, continued learning, and great personal fulfilment.

Last year I met Jed Ayres, CMO and CEO of IGEL North America, for lunch in San Francisco with Enit Nichani, who is the VP of Marketing for IGEL North America. What started as merely an exploratory discussion turned into a serious consideration of working for IGEL. Within minutes I was highly impressed with Jed and I already knew that Enit was top-notch after working with her for years at Wyse and then Dell after it had acquired Wyse.

What struck me about Jed, and still does, is that not unlike many Bay Area/Silicon Valley tech CEOs, he’s very driven to succeed while at the same time surprisingly normal (for lack of a better word).  An inspirational leader, nobody works harder or cares more for the company, and he stresses mutual respect and teamwork to all of us. We even have a name for it within IGEL – “servant heart” – which is to be willing to disadvantage yourself to benefit others, be they your teammates at work, our partners, and of course our customers. This approach creates a natural spirit of cooperation and self-sacrifice for the greater cause that has become contagious within the company. For me personally, it’s been extremely gratifying

Multiple decades ago, I was an avid basketball player. Being only 5’9” tall I naturally played the point guard position. I remember getting much greater satisfaction from making a great pass to set up a teammate for any easy shot and score than scoring myself. Working at IGEL in product marketing, where my team and I function as a resource to help sales succeed, has been the closest thing to that in terms of creating the same sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. In fact, doing whatever my team and I can to help others succeed, and in this case at IGEL primarily to help sales crush their numbers, is what I love the most about my job.

As IGEL continues to capture greater market share within end user computing, and as we prove our products to be ideal for simple, secure access to cloud workspaces for enterprises and the likes of AWS and Windows Virtual Desktops via Microsoft Azure, I’m looking forward to the next year being even busier and more challenging as my team and I juggle an ever-growing task list. With all that, I know that for my team and me, I’ll continue to derive great satisfaction from working at a place where future great accomplishments will be shared and enjoyed as a team, but always with a dose of humility. And for that, one word summarizes how I feel about landing here at IGEL:

GRATEFUL.