You don't have to fit into a mold that someone else has defined.
Peggy Johnson
I just feel like you should be able to have a respectful work environment, because if you do, you'll be your best self.
Wireless is the largest information, communication, and technology platform in history, and mobile broadband is transforming how we can deliver educational materials and experiences to all students. The technology now exists to support learning on a massive scale and advance the 21st century skills needed to compete in the global economy.
Wireless technology is creating entrepreneurship on a small scale that allows a single woman to set up a business in a small village or a single farmer or fisherman to access and disseminate market information in order to get the best price for their products.
Once I was able to be my more authentic self, I felt like that's when my career really took off. I was just my own voice.
In Indonesia, Qualcomm, in a joint project with Grameen Foundation, has provided a range of mobile phone-based services to individuals. This project facilitates the creation of businesses for those living at the bottom of the economic pyramid and, at the same time, extends telecommunication access to people who cannot afford a mobile phone.
The opportunity to build new and surprising partnerships to help Microsoft succeed in a mobile-first, cloud-first world is truly exciting, and I look forward to leading these efforts.
We have such a huge demand for engineers in this country, both male and female. We need to find a way to do a better sales job on these young girls so we can get them interested in a field that is very rewarding.
Microsoft is a much bigger company than Qualcomm - a much bigger company - and there were a few days where I thought, 'I don't know if I can do this. It's huge.' My job was to come into the company and grow new businesses, and I thought, 'I'm not sure,' but it's all worked out pretty well.
Do one thing well, and then build from there.
Apparently, my grandfather left from Cork to America without saying goodbye to his mother! The family in Longford is still not happy about that.
It's not just about checking the box on corporate social responsibility. It's about hitting our bottom line.
I would try to be super-assertive in meetings and, you know, pound my hand off the table, and it never ended well. People would say, 'What are you beating the table for?' It's not natural for me.
We all have to think about the emerging markets.
I grew up in a big, blended Irish Catholic family just outside of Los Angeles.
Our smartphones can offer innovative opportunities for improving how we react to our environment, and I believe it is increasingly becoming an asset - not a hindrance - to maintaining a healthier relationship with our work, our friends, and the world around us.
Cyanogen has done an interesting job with their version of Android - the Cyanogenmod. And they're on 50-million-plus devices. And that's just another ecosystem that we wanted to tap into and to bring our Office apps to.
I'm an electrical engineer, and when I first started out, there was nobody who looked like me out there. I worked at Qualcomm, and I remember coming into meeting rooms, and I could never get the floor. I could never get my opinion across.
We are constantly scanning for opportunities.
Business development is a part of M&A - we identify signals in the market, whether its trends or disruptive technology, and bring them back and address the opportunities. I have three levers I can pull - partnerships, acquisitions, or investments.
The 14th of 15 kids, I was the second youngest - not a coveted spot on the family totem pole.
If an acquisition can speed a process or fill a gap, we'll jump right to that. It's about timing, need... it's not necessarily an algorithm.
It's a balance - sometimes you have to concentrate on your home life, and sometimes you have to concentrate on your work life.
As a college freshman with an on-campus job, I was delivering paperwork to the engineering department one day. There, I encountered two department assistants whose faces lit up with the hope that I was a prospective student. I hadn't come there to enroll, but their reactions piqued my interest.
Very early in my career, I thought I had to conform to one style of leadership - lead by being the loudest one in the room, with the sharpest elbows.
If some day you're struggling with math, and you think, 'I don't think I can do this,' you can - you actually can. Everybody has their hard days - I definitely had mine - and you get through them, and you learn from that stumble, and then you're onto the next problem.
We look for partners who are solving a problem for us. If they've already solved it, we'd much rather try to partner with them than try to rebuild it.
When a culture is broken, the cracks show - morale is weakened, but so is profit and performance. That's why culture has to be at the core of any business transformation.
Over the course of my career as an engineer-turned-tech evangelist, I've had the privilege of travelling the world and seeing the extraordinary impact of mobile on people and communities across a broad range of cultures and socio-economic strata. In many ways, mobile is a democratizing force. It empowers us. It inspires us. It extends our reach.
When text messaging first came out, you could only text within your network, whatever operator you had. It seems silly now, but once those walls came down, all sorts of applications and services were built on top of that. It ended up being good for everybody.
We fully recognized that our customers have a variety of devices. They're carrying all sorts of things. And we want to bring our world-class apps to those devices.
Deals are always a bit lumpy. We look at, 'Is it solving a problem for us?' And if it does, we move to acquisition.
To young professionals - and particularly women - looking to advance, it is imperative to keep your life in balance.
I spent almost 25 years at Qualcomm before joining Microsoft, so in a sense, I grew up at one company. During that time, I made a very big shift from the engineering side to the business side.
I attended a high school with more than 4,000 students and met with a guidance counselor only once during my four-year stint. Despite my clear strengths in science and math, my counselor's advice was to pursue a degree in business. A career in engineering was never encouraged nor, in fact, ever mentioned.
We try not to look at everything through a competitive lens.
Qualcomm has seen firsthand the transformative power of mobile technology as part of many projects created through its Wireless Reach initiative - programs around the world that help educators, health care workers, and entrepreneurs take advantage of mobile technology.
I can still hear my mom's voice echoing through the house, reminding me and my siblings to 'Make your beds!' It seems like such a small thing, but when you're one of 15 brothers and sisters like me, those small reminders about the importance of discipline and order are critical.
I think there really needs to be a culture change because young girls are very interested in math and science, but somewhere along the way, they veer off of that.
We want to ensure that as a user is moving through their world, their data is following them in an appropriate manner.
It's up to you to define your own brand of leadership and your own version of success.
I had to find my own terms for success, and it wasn't anything like what I was told to do.
Great things happen when you converge services and devices.
'Rather than fighting over a piece of the pie, can we grow the pie?' is really our model.
I spend a lot of time in the Valley. I'm probably down there every other week or so.
Acompli is just a great example of a fabulous app.
I worked on anti-submarine warfare for surface ships.
My parents had two rules: You had to go to college, and you had to pay for it yourself. So we all did.
At many companies, business development is treated as a sales tool for incremental growth, but I believe that business development can bend our growth curve in a big way. It should accelerate our ability to grow, helping us quickly close gaps or leap ahead of competitors.
I think our Acompli acquisition was an interesting one, which started with a partnership and looking at their mobile e-mail app on iOS and Android. And what I would like to highlight with that one is the speed that we actually turned that around and brought it out the door.
