Sabrina Lin ─ fueling growth and success in complex and nuanced Asian markets.
December 15, 2020 • 3 Minute Read
Sabrina Lin
Senior Advisor to the President
The Hong Kong University of
Science and Technology
Are you looking for a technology leader that knows how to fuel U.S. business growth and success in complex and nuanced Asian markets, navigate and work with global stakeholders while acting as a bridge between global, APAC regional and local teams, and maintain close and authentic relationships with national Chinese luminaries to capture the customer voice, understand customer trends, build the companies brand presence? We know the person—Sabrina Lin.
Sabrina has spent most of her career driving success for IT companies globally and in the Chinese speaking markets. A Hong Kong native, she ventured across the Pacific Ocean as a student to obtain three degrees at Stanford University, including a PhD, before joining Hewlett-Packard and then Cisco Systems. As Cisco’s former Vice President of multinational and commercial sales in China, and Vice President of Marketing in Asia Pacific and Japan, Sabrina knows how to scale local and global partnerships, and fine tune messages to accelerate customer and partner success. Today, she is working to inspire the next generation of technology leaders through her role as the Senior Advisor to the President of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, a top 50 global university. Her current responsibilities include IT strategy, STEM diversity, and select courses and initiatives on technology entrepreneurship.
Please meet this IT Wondrous Woman™, Sabrina Lin!
Our 10 Questions for this IT Wondrous Woman.
Fun Facts
1. What’s the one thing about you that your business colleagues don’t know about you?
I used to play rhythm guitar in a girl band when I was a teenager in Hong Kong.
2. Before the pandemic, how many air miles/KMs did you flying annually?
120K international miles.
3. What is the most adventurous food you have eaten and what city/location did you eat it?
Fried tarantula in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Your Career
4. What are the top two experiences, achievements or failures that shaped your journey as a successful leader?
Moving from analytics-heavy roles in R&D and operations to heading Cisco’s Asia Pacific Marketing. I learned about nuanced approaches to execution while applying analytics to maximize marketing return on investment.
After my first terrible experience of delivering difficult job cut news to employees, I doubled down on planning for uncertainty, investing in nurturing talent, and prioritizing employee development, so that team members could be more ready and resilient no matter what happened to their immediate job.
5. Did you have a mentor in the early part of your career and, if so, what is the biggest lesson you learned from your mentor or influencer?
I’ve been fortunate to have many mentors throughout my career. My first mentor taught me to “pause and dig deeper”. This meant I needed to complement my tendency to “move fast and break things”. By inserting a “pause”, even for an hour or a day, to “dig deeper”, I was able to assess my conclusions with opposing lenses.
Walking In Your Shoes
6. What is one piece of business or career advice you would give to your younger self?
Do a better job of balancing action and deliberation, especially during times of high pressure.
7. As a leader, how do you remain a resource for people early in their careers?
I allocate time to new hires and early-in-career hires. For example, I allocate 4 hours a week with 20 minute 1:1s across my organization. In an organization of 200 people, this means that I can meet every new hire in their first week, plus more.
Today’s Business Environment
8. What is the most interesting project you have worked on in the last few years?
Transforming Cisco’s multinational and commercial sales territories in China to enable significant growth and productivity, better customer satisfaction, and reps’ sense of quota fairness.
9. What skills are you currently developing or refining (in yourself) that will make you a more successful leader in the digital economy?
Being more skilled at omni channel and multi generation communications across stakeholders and audiences. I’m learning how to be short and pithy, and to use images and videos more effectively.
10. What is your greatest business challenge today?
Transforming legacy IT systems and processes at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s (HKUST) existing campus in Hong Kong while developing a next generation version from the ground up in parallel at HKUST’s new campus in Guangzhou, China.
