Avanish and Erica have a robust discussion around: 

• Erica’s 23-year journey at Deloitte 1:00
• Why  it’s not about the role you have, but about what you do with the role and opportunities you’re given (7:40) 
• Erica’s advice for growth companies thinking about building partnerships with organizations such as Deloitte or Accenture (10:25) 
• Unpacking what “partner empathy” looks like in practice (12:45) 
• How it is different to go to market with what we now call an ecosystem rather than what used to be more traditional partner programs (15:50) 
• The biggest roadblocks Erica has encountered and show she steered around them (23:30)
• How organizations looking to enact change and has some of a similar history of direct sales and direct delivery can embark on this journey and start changing mindsets. (28:48)
• Why storytelling is the ultimate superpower (30:34)

Guest: Erica Volini 

Erica Volini is the Senior Vice President responsible for Global Partnerships at ServiceNow. In that role, she has the privilege of managing the over 2,000 partners that are part of the ServiceNow global ecosystem. Before joining ServiceNow in 2021, she spent over two decades at Deloitte Consulting leading the Human Capital business and as the Chief Commercial Officer for Deloitte’s overall relationship with ServiceNow. She has written and talked extensively around the Future of Work and is a recognized expert in that space. She got her BS ILR from Cornell University and while she’s a true-blue New Yorker, she currently resides in Scottsdale, AZ with her husband and son with a new baby on the way in just a few short weeks.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow.  From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase.  Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale.  Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years.  Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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