By: Stephanie Creador
Phyllis is a longtime Fidelity technologist who has experienced firsthand, how the industry and Fidelity Investments has changed as technology has evolved. Her Fidelity job title is Squad Leader, Cloud Integration Experience, although she further explains her position as a Product Owner focused in areas of relationship management, delivery excellence, and commitment to project execution. I had the pleasure of chatting with Phyllis about her career journey, her current role and what her goals are for the year ahead.
Name: Phyllis
Title: Squad Leader, Cloud Integration Experience
Tell us a little bit about your career journey? What led you to Fidelity?
I was looking for a change while working in a Software Engineering role at another company and the opportunity came up to join Fidelity. Based on location and reputation I thought it would be a good career move to get into a great company. The role I first took here was as a Senior Quality Assurance Engineer and straight away, began working in internal enterprise tools like Project and Portfolio Management Center (PPMC), Jenkins, Bitbucket JIRA and Confluence. A couple years ago when Fidelity’s cloud journey really started to gather pace our group was merged with Enterprise Cloud Computing and I started to get more exposure to all things cloud. Now, I’m a leader in cloud, I love my job even more.
What is cloud?
Cloud is delivery of computing services over the internet. It’s virtual, so there’s no physical Fidelity location. Computing services such as servers, software, networking, storage, analytics are all delivered over the internet enabling scale, flexible resources and resilience if done correctly.
Can you tell me what you do in your current role?
As a Leader in the Cloud Integration Experience area, I am challenged with unifying the user experience for Fidelity’s two cloud service providers, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure to ensure associates using these tools can get their jobs done. It combines elements of product management, product ownership and project management. I have a team of associates focused on specific deliverables not always within their core expertise so there is a lot of learning and discovering new technologies. Together we work as a unit to deliver on our commitments and meet our deadlines.
What do you enjoy most about your role?
I work with such diverse teams made up of folks from different countries and nationalities who all have different skills and knowledge. Fidelity is very much a relationship centric company with a lot of people who have long tenure and career mobility so chances are if you work with a person at one stage, you will likely cross their path again at some point in the future. Having the ability to share knowledge or help each other out, learn from one another – those are the things I enjoy the most. Fidelity attracts great people who recognize the opportunities that are here.
What are some of the biggest challenges you have faced?
What’s been most challenging for me in my current role is navigating the line between team leader, working with the team to ensure strong partnerships, and delivery on our agreed commitments, particularly because I am not a people manager. I have reached out to individuals for advice, have taken a couple training sessions and participated in a women’s leadership course to understand how to handle those conversations appropriately. While I am very delivery focused, empathy is required as I depend on my team to deliver on our commitments . If they are having personal or work issues I need to be cognizant of that. Things/life happen all the time, and we need to be able to manage those bumps in the road together.
What are some initiatives you have taken to continue to grow as technology has evolved?
At the very start of my cloud journey, I got my Amazon Web Services (AWS) Certified Cloud Practitioner Certification to enable me to be able to have conversations and have a better understanding of the technology. From there, I rely heavily on what my team refers to as “demo culture” which is basically teaching each other or showing each other what each member of the team is working on. If a project team is made up of 10 people, not everybody is working on the same thing, therefore it helps to spread knowledge and keep everyone informed in areas they may not work close to. We discuss best practice, solution options, engage experts as needed, I am learning every single day.
What is a professional goal you have for the year?
I want to become Scrum@Scale certified in 2022, it aligns to our operational model and will benefit my day-to-day work. I also want to speak at an external conference, that will take some preparation – not just a topic but having enough self-belief. There are lots of internal resources available to help prepare folks for those engagements so I will be leaning heavily on those.
