Changing your tracks mid-career can be a daunting experience. However, a wide variety of professional experiences can set you up for tremendous success in the future. On this episode of Throughline Thursdays, our guest Varsha Kanwar, the Chief of Staff for Cisco CX Engineering & Product Incubation, shares her experiences and provides recommendations for changing your role mid-career. While this conversation is tailored to women's career development, it includes valuable information for everyone!

Born in India and frequently moving cities with an Air Force parent, Varsha Kanwar has been an Australian citizen for 17 years and has been residing in the U.S. since 2014. These life experiences have taught her how to be resilient, a self-starter, and have an open mindset and an agile attitude. Backed by this global citizen mentality and with over 15+ years of experience as a business leader, change agent, team builder, customer excellence champion, and global executive, Varsha has realized her passion for making a difference and creating success, both personally and professionally. 

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While the world celebrates the lives and experiences of 'born leaders', leadership is, in fact, an acquired skill-set. People in leadership positions must model themselves to adapt and react to ever-changing business environments while simultaneously creating circumstances for their teams to excel and outperform. Myopic vision and execution just won't do, leaders have to develop a 360-degree world-view to lead organizations into the future.

Travis Killion is currently the Vice President of eCommerce at Vitamin World. Over a quarter-century working with Internet technologies, Travis has held roles in business management, product management, and technology management. Having spent time performing in all the major roles, Travis can effectively communicate with all team members, stakeholders, and customers to drive execution and deliver results. From startups to large companies, Travis has created digital products and services that empower businesses across many types of domains including real estate, online/remote work, retail, e-commerce, and loyalty.

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Anyone who's never failed has never tried something new. Failure is a stepping stone to learning and success. Everyone fails along their career path in big and small ways- the difference is- most people amplify success and shun failure.

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Whether it is the language of digital transformation, or the language of diversity, driving change across large teams can be very complex. Especially in companies that have been around for a while, people across the organizational hierarchy are more or less set in their ways. Leaders must facilitate integration across diverse teams with a lot of skill and tact.

Kristin Coleman is an Executive Director for the Diversity Innovation organization at Chase, helping the firm transform to create intentional inclusion in everyday people practices and drive business outcomes. She supports key diversity initiatives globally that are designed to increase diverse representation and promote a culture of inclusion and belonging.

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Do you feel like you don't deserve the job you've landed? Like one day you'll be discovered as a fraud, and ousted in front of your colleagues, in spite of everything you've achieved? Well, rest assured, you're not alone. Approximately, 58% of workers in tech suffer from the 'imposter syndrome'- the nagging fear that we all feel from time to time that we're just not good enough.

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We all have dreams. Whether these are dreams of a successful career, or dreams of driving meaningful change in your company or dreams of making a difference through your work. Some of us are fortunate to have the passion to chase these dreams. Simply having passion is not enough. You need to have a game-plan because dreams take doing.

Our guest for this edition of Throughline Thursdays, Madhavi Bhasin, is passionate about diversity in tech and comes into the field from the outside. As an outsider who came in to make a change, she’s had to work at building the case for change, driving consensus, and getting those fence-sitters off the fence. We discuss her dreams, her passion, and, above all, her game plan.

Madhavi Bhasin is a social impact change leader for over a decade. Given her life experiences and background in international socio-economic research, she is passionate about enhancing inclusion and belonging in social and professional spaces. She is intrigued by different facets of human nature and how individuals connect and create community. She has spent the past seven years working in the non-profit sector to guide corporations in crafting programs and experiences aimed at welcoming a diverse community and nurturing belonging.

At Okta, Madhavi is responsible for crafting the company's diversity, inclusion, and belonging (DIB) strategy. Her efforts are focused on driving a diverse talent strategy and initiatives to ensure all Okta employees are empowered to bring their authentic selves to work.

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Career math can be daunting for business careers. Often hard numbers take precedence over more subtle emotions like energy and joy. Our guest for this episode of Throughline Thursdays is Denise Lombard, Director of Responsible Procurement (Risk, Ethics, Social/ Economic/ Environmental), Global Procurement Services at Cisco.

Denise currently leads Responsible Procurement, ensuring that the suppliers Cisco engages with are committed to the highest standards of social, economic, and environmental issues as well as adhere to their ethics and code of conduct. Through this role, Denise applies her passion for social responsibility and her goal of making a significant difference within Cisco and the community. Denise also co-leads the SJ Women of Cisco’s Community Outreach pillar, which is focused on increasing young women's excitement and awareness around Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math careers.

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Everyone wants a career graph that resembles an upward sloping J-curve but that's rarely the case. The road to success is littered with potholes, bottlenecks, and unprecedented turns. How can you manage to stay focused on your goals through the inevitable ups and downs of your career? What's the recipe for success and who has it?

Cecil Plummer is an award-winning President/CEO with a successful career, but it wasn’t always going to be this way. On this episode of Throughline Thursdays, Cecil traces his career journey from humble beginnings, through long years of hard work, obstacles, and surprises. Success wasn’t guaranteed, but Cecil is undaunted. His mantra? “Belief is the first line of code”.

Cecil Plummer is the President and CEO of the Western Regional Minority Supplier Development Council (WRMSDC), one of the 23 regional affiliates of the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC). He formerly worked with Robert Half for 17 years and left his position as the Director of CSS Strategic Solutions to join the Council. He received awards from the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC), the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) West, and the Commissioner of the California Department of Insurance, and most recently won the 2019 NMSDC Council of the Year Award.

To check out the full videos or snippets of our recorded webinars, visit https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3bKKnZxyFOYoq-jYQlzKzA

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"Designed by Apple in California" 

These words are etched into memory now. Design has come a long way, and designers have become critical to the success of Silicon Valley's tech juggernaut. Every company in every industry must learn to speak the language of design. 

On this episode of Throughline Thursdays, we speak with Abhijit Thosar, Product Strategy and Design Leader at VMWare, on Promoting a Culture of Design. We also talk about how design has evolved and how designers must evolve alongside.

Abhijit Thosar is the Product Strategy and Design Leader at VMWare. As a designer with a seat at the leadership table, he has to enable a culture of design thinking, customer eccentricity, and user experience.

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How do you manage yourself when everything seems to be in flux? Global economies are in a tailspin, companies are transforming, and well-worn career paths are evaporating before our eyes.

Should we try to adjust to fit into the world as it changes?

On this episode of Throughline Thursdays, we discuss Staying True to Yourself (through all the change) with Lisa Buchanan, Director of Operations and Chief of Staff at eBay.

Lisa is a highly accomplished, dedicated operations and technology leader with a broad array of business expertise in mergers and acquisitions, Agile transformations, program and project management, site operations, and IT and software development.

Lisa has worked as a Director, Mergers, and Acquisitions at PayPal where she led due diligence and integration efforts in M&A deals. She has also worked as a Vice President at Change Healthcare where she led integration efforts in small and large mergers on both sides. Currently, Lisa works as a Director of Operations and Chief of Staff at eBay.

To check out the full videos or snippets of our recorded webinars, visit https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3bKKnZxyFOYoq-jYQlzKzA

You can also visit us at https://bayonesolutions.com/ and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter