Sandy Salty ─ transformational IT partner leader delivering business outcomes and customer success.
October 28, 2020 • 2 Minute Read
Sandy Salty
Chief Marketing Officer
Trace3
If you are looking for a leader that loves to learn about new technologies, curious, collaborative, trustworthy, knows how to manage top-down and bottom-up expectations, while focusing on strategic actions to drive company readiness and performance, we know the person─Sandy Salty!
Sandy is the Chief Marketing Officer of Trace3, a transformation IT partner that delivers business outcomes and customer success. Meet this IT Wondrous Woman™, Sandy Salty!
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 am a total hippie at heart— a nature lover and prefer being in the outdoors or on a beach cruiser with messy hair and flip flops than dressed up and at a party or a boardroom. I also spend more time on Yelp and OpenTable trying to find new restaurants than I do on social media!
2. Before the pandemic, how many air miles/KMs did you flying annually? It ebbs and flows… There are months when I’m on a plane every other week and other months when travel is minimal.
3. What is the most adventurous food you have eaten and what city/location did you eat it? Abalone in Japan, and also duck and rabbit. I also got tricked into eating blood sausage in Ireland.
Your Career
4. What are the top two experiences, achievements or failures that shaped your journey as a successful leader?
Well, let me preface by saying that success is never attained; it’s earned every day. The clock resets every morning. For me, there have been other areas of measurable professional and personal improvement over the years. One in particular is I’ve sharpened my public speaking skills, which are far from perfect.
Many years ago, a professional public-speaking coach told me two things that stuck with me:
The day that you stop agonizing and trying to perfect the details…the day you stop being just a little bit nervous, is the day you will start sucking at being in front of a crowd.
To be a great speaker, you always have to have respect for the audience, meaning you’ve got to put in the mental effort and work.
I still agonize over perfecting the message and the delivery, but I am more comfortable being in front of a large audience and people in general.
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 could write a book on the lessons I learned from my mentor. Five of these lessons are:
Let your team and colleagues see you in your entirety as a person. The best leaders do this. Truly great leaders realize that people don’t work for them; that they work with them.
There are no rules in business, provided you operate within the bounds of ethics. The victors in the professional world are those who don’t follow a standard playbook. It’s those who make hard, if not moonshot-esque asks that are the victors.
You have to make big asks on behalf of your business and you have to yearn to get your unfair share of fill-in-the-blank opportunities.
You have to know how to have honest and uncomfortable conversations and walk away with a better relationship for it.
Lastly, I learned that you can be a surface leader (i.e. someone who talks a lot, a figurehead, or defers hard decisions) or you can try to be a meaningful leader.
Walking In Your Shoes
6. What is one piece of business or career advice you would give to your younger self?
I would tell her that immediately after hitting a “breaking point” is when she will have her renaissance, the most rewarding phases of her career. It is truly never about the “arrival”, it’s about the contrast of where you’ve been and where you got to.
7. As a leader, how do you remain a resource for people early in their careers?
When I need a fresh lens, I will consult my less seasoned team members and they can be a source of genius and innovation. I actually find that people early in their careers or new to the IT industry often produce some of the best ideas, because they are not inhibited or conditioned by their experience.
Today’s Business Environment
8. What is the most interesting project you have worked on in the last few years?
Most recently I launched a company-wide skillset development program that is truly people-focused. It’s a program to enable every employee in the company to partake in training in our industry’s growth markets, such as cloud and security, as well as financially rewarding them to do it—talk about a double win! By the end of this journey, we’ll literally have folks in accounting who can give you a compelling security overview!
9. What skills are you currently developing or refining (in yourself) that will make you a more successful leader in the digital economy?
AI and new types of automation that can have a positive impact on digital marketing.
10. What is your greatest business challenge today?
I think it’s natural to be concerned about a nebulous climate with the epidemic occurring, and so it’s important to be measured and disciplined as a business. The reality is that we are in such an incredible position as a company, we are truly in an offensive position.
