Today I interview Yvonne Markgraf Stoehr, a creative Director of Product with deep experience in film making and film production.  She demonstrates how you can extract the strengths of your creative and “nonstandard” background to make you a strong and uniquely skilled executive in technology.  

Yvonne’s design sense includes understanding how to connect the dots and being genuinely curious about different people and their talents.  This skill led her to identify a little-known band called Nirvana in the early 1990s for one of her first film projects and also led her to an Emmy-award winning project.  Later Yvonne used the same creative and personal skills to navigate complex products and large teams in different tech companies like Microsoft.  

In the interview we explore the early vulnerable side of Kurt Cobain that Yvonne saw before Nirvana got famous and we talk about the importance of fueling one’s creativity.  Yvonne stays close to her roots through rock and roll portrait photography and playing the drums in her family band.  Unsurprisingly, Yvonne’s Board of Directors small group of four female tech executives in our Executive Development Program bears the name “Nirvana”. 

Connect with Yvonne on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yvonnelevaymarkgraf/
Check out the first film recorded interview of Nirvana which Yvonne produced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__8UDylv7WU