hello everyone thank you for tuning in again I am Kaye bitman the content director at shean code and today we’re
discussing what it’s really like to be a female CTO and I’ve got the fabulous Sue
nalapa CTO of trusted Health with me today to talk about her journey to becoming a CTO what it’s like to lead a
large team of mostly Mal engineers and much much more so welcome Sue thank you so much for joining us yeah thanks for
having me here excited to talk to you thank you for taking the time out to to chat with me today can we um set the
scene a little before we get started can we start with a little bit about yourself and and how you got into the industry
Place yeah um you know I’m Sue as you mentioned uh I currently lead all of
Technology at trusted but as I was growing up I was fortunate enough to see Tech just starting to Boom around me I
was in sixth grade I think then my school got its first computer and I would spend hours in front of that
computer and that would be my favorite class like I I wouldn’t mind skipping other classes to just be in front of the
computer but all you could do back then was just type in some DOS commands and play some games and that’s all that got
me excited I would love playing games um and that’s where my love for Tech really
began and I eventually ended up getting a degree in computer science back in India I got a chance right after my
degree to do an internship at Noel and that was a great learning experience I
didn’t know anything I made a ton of mistakes it was I was just fresh out of college I still in like my final year
but that was an amazing experience and I was like okay this is what uh actually
working in tech means I I would love to do this um so that uh inspired me to
continue to dive deeper in computer science and then I came to the United States to do my graduate school also in
computer science that time a I was just booming quite a bit as well and I was
very excited about the field of machine learning and natural language Pro uh
processing which is a which has gone to a completely new new level uh right now
I think everybody’s been talking about chat GPT and the revolution but when I
was doing my graduate school it was we would get excited about just costing simple text and making sense of it and
like putting words together and you know the computer generating phrases that makes sense so um that uh all was how I
got back got into the industry and I never look back yeah it sounds like you had a really positive experience even
right from school which you don’t always hear you tend to hear you know the computer science classes for instance
were really boring or the teacher didn’t know actually what they were doing or your experience sounded like you had
good classes good teachers and that kind of set you off on a path into Tech yeah
uh it was like good classes good teachers I think there was also you know um a lot of friends I went to all girls
school so like you know that I didn’t I I was never in a situation where I
didn’t have enough women surrounding me who were also interested in that and so it was that felt like normal uh but when
I came here for my graduate school that’s when it was like I was probably like when I took my machine learning
class I was probably the fifth uh the only like one of five female uh you
know three people who are doing Tech and so that was like aing reality of oh it’s
very different from where I came and how I thought about tech and how it’s perceived here um so that was very
interesting and as I got into the industry as I started working in the United States uh that became more and
more evident that we we are just so less um in terms of just representation uh
within Tech itself and there’s a lot that we can do yes definitely yes and so
what appealed to you about working at trusted and you know have you chosen your roles um how have you chosen your
roles in general is there there anything about companies when you see them and you think y that’s that’s definitely a
role for me yeah I have never worked in the healthcare industry until now and
when our CEO Lenny he reached out to discuss the role at trusted a couple things really got me excited I think one
we had just come out of Co and you know seeing how tough it was like people were
losing loud ones I lost a very dear friend myself and so the mission I trusted to help people everywhere get
care was something that was truly inspiring it was it touched me on a personal level and I really wanted to
make a difference in the industry that has been very less Innovation as it comes to Tech um I have worked at
startups before Trust I was at apartment list uh which was a rental marketplace
where we connect renters with properties before that I was uh in an online dating space so I’ve mostly worked in consumer
tech companies and I’ve also worked at some large companies and what’s most important for me as I have chosen roles
boil down to three things I think number one is the mission the mission of the company and the customer base the
company chooses to help uh I trusted we choose to help our nurses find jobs and
I think that is super important for me because nurses are at like that Forefront of providing care and it’s and
you can never have enough of them um so that was very uh important and the people in the organization as I spend
majority of my day at work with people forming relationships and uh you know building connections and solving
problems so that was super important as well as I started talking to the people um it became more evident that yes this
is the people that I want to go back it and then lastly are there enough interesting problems and tough problems
to solve because at the end of the day my role is irrelevant if there aren’t enough problems to solve um so I think
that’s what brought me to trusted as well as some of the previous companies that all valid reasons to to work for a
good company I love the fact as well that you mentioned company Mission um and it’s so important because I think
you sometimes we get bogged down don’t we in our daytoday and we don’t quite realize if you’re a company that is
doing something that has a bigger mission to it and you’re actually bringing about impact that can really
drive you to think you know to to keep going um not just professionally but you know to drive you every day to think
we’re actually you know um working in a bigger picture here and did you did you
know that though before you came into Tech did you think that you were G to have such an impact or that there were
opportunities like that or did you just think Tech was just going to be headphones on coding and that’s it yeah
I mean I think I really thought Tech was going to be headphones on and coding um initially when I initially when I
finished my graduate school it was like I just want a job because you know I I love working in this country and I don’t
want to get out and so I want to find a job so I found like the first software engineering job that I could find I was
fortunate enough to begin my career in Consulting so I got a chance to work on
different types of problems and get challenged in every aspect of Tex stack
that you can think of front end and back end and so on so that actually set a strong Foundation but as I contined to
like evolve and grow I kind of realized that you know I want to do more I want
to inspire people I want to kind of bring them along the journey as well and I wanted to get into management and I
that at that time I didn’t know what management and Leadership actually meant and one of the people that I always was
super inspired by uh at that time was like the Pepsi co-founder uh and
CEO it’s Indi um so I was truly inspired uh as I was uh you know getting into
Tech and I was really working at Tech my husband used to consult at PepsiCo and then he was telling me a lot about Indra
Nui and I was like this is what I want to be and who I want to be like um so uh
but and that was very far from just you know putting on your headphones and coding because you have to deal with toot and you have to really like solve
uh difficult problems through people because sometimes it’s very easy for you to jump in and fix a problem but to get
people to Rally behind a goal Inspire them to like really want to work with you to solve that problem is something
that I had to make a ton of mistakes along the way and learn yes yes and it’s
okay to make mistakes so we we plug that a lot on uh on this podcast that you you
learn from your mistakes as you saying that that’s okay and when you’re in the right environment around the right
people as you said finding you know the your tribe and your team that you fit in with and where you feel this is my place
makes such a difference when when picking um where you’re going to work and where you actually flourish um you
obviously have had fantastic career Journey so far how do you think industry has changed since you
started yeah um I think that’s a good question there are some areas where the
industry has changed a lot but also some areas where it has stayed the same the most profound of them that I have seen
having had a huge impact in the last 20 years or so is the invention of mobile phones and the evolution of that the
applications that started coming around a mobile phone I’m currently visiting my hometown Bangalore in India where I grew
up and a lot has changed since what I remember 20 30 years ago every vendor on
the street uses a mobile phone and all payments happen through the phone and scanning a QR code like you literally
don’t need a wallet anymore and that’s like a huge C change of tech that has
really emerged in the last 20 or so years and if you look at some of the stats of mobile phone users in the
United States alone back in 2009 there were about 60 or 100 million people
using mobile phones and now I think there’s over 300 million or so and
that’s like 400% growth which is huge and I think with that type of incredible
growth it it also brings a huge mindset change in how the new generation perceives technology becomes so
accessible I have an eight-year-old daughter and recently my husband and I were asking her do you know what a radio
is because I don’t think she’s ever seen one and so she was like yeah I know what it is it’s it’s YouTube without pictures
so you know for her YouTube is like the the internet is the news standard and
the News Baseline and that’s how they see Tech and for them it’s just a way of
life um so that’s how I’ve seen the evolution over the last several IND years I also when it comes to software
engineering itself I saw a bunch of changes like the API Revolution where
you know you kind of put everything behind an API um and so you know like so
that anybody any Merchant can use frean gateways from top companies like anybody can
use any services that a company can provide devops culture became a very prominent thing um it wasn’t uh when I
was still uh going growing up and going through my career Journey cloud has seen
a sea change of thinking everything’s on the cloud scripting has taken all forms
of languages as well um you know with GitHub co-pilot Etc like code generation
has also been augmented with AI um so there has been a lot of change but also
some things have come back in circle as well yes it’s so interesting um a couple
of the things that you’ve mentioned of of when you were studying even at the start you mentioned Ai and how when you
were studying it wasn’t really heard of and and now it is and it’s just such a fast-paced industry you know fun
industry to be a part of that hear it so often when you’re studying you’re not
really studying for the jobs of today they’re going to be completely different
when when you actually get in the world of work um which is the joy obviously of tech that it moves so fast can also be
quite challenging as well obviously for people to keep up can’t it continuous learning um it’s quite a mindset isn’t
it to to want to keep up with new things yeah it definitely is and especially in
tech technology changes every day every day there is a new tech and you have to keep up and especially in my role like
you sometimes have to you can just Embrace and get on the next fastest train like or the next new tech because
you you need to figure out like is there enough Community Support is that going to be supported for a long time because
there are there have been so many technologies that have become extinct as well so you have to be careful what you
pick and choose but you also have to keep up and at least understand what’s going on yes otherwise you become
irrelevant very fast yes and and also finding the time because your day must
be incredibly busy so finding day finding time for um uh learning
development as well is going to be tight but could you tell us a bit about what is the average day like for you as a
CTO yeah I mean I think that’s the thing about startups there are no average days
at all uh especially not in this role I’ve always believed in the mo Moto of
managing chaos with a calm mind and usually there is always a chaos or
always a fire on a daily basis that I need to put out but having said that my responsibilities span
across delivering key outcomes for the business business at any given time I’m thinking about our customers like you
know what technology do we need to build to enable the business ultimately to achieve the growth and achieve the
outcomes uh to make the company profitable to make our customers uh be
retained for a long term so I think that becomes a key part of my focus driving
strategic alignment there is a lot of discussions that I need to make sure that my cross functional partners and I
are aligned on so there is always communication um there is you know road
map Tech like I have to sometimes like really think about what my team is going to be doing in the next week in the next
month in the next three months and six months and so on so I think that is a big thing that I try to focus on and
sometimes it’s also like just immediate fire it’s like hey we broke something and we need to fix it like in the next
one hour or um it’s around like you know even things like processes uh when I
joined trusted one of the first things that I did was what does it take for me to build a career rubric for my software
engineers and built out a rub like what does it take for an engineer to grow from you know one level to the next to
the next and how many levels do do we need to have and what are the expectations of that and how do you
achieve growth and um so you know like those are some of the things that I focus on anywhere from people process
and Tech and product I mean that’s a lot people people process and
product I mean you said you always wanted to be in management and did you know that that was going to be part of
your day spinning all of those plates when when you started to move into management because it I mean back to our
original discussion you would think I take a computer science degree the only part of my um job is you know very
technical and that’s it your day is very varied you have to have people skills
and lots of different soft skills not just the technical skills did did you know it was going to be like that sounds
like you enjoy it at least uh I mean at least I’ve gotten used to it when I got into management it
was like I actually didn’t even know how to have a one-on-one with someone and I literally like you know my director
would have a one-on-one with me and then I would actually literally word for word go take a template note down exactly
what questions he asked and then I would go do it with my team but so there were aspects of man that came naturally as I
started being in that role for a while um and you know then but I didn’t know
any of this I didn’t know what strategy was I didn’t know like you know how a company thinks about where where the
investment should go like what do I invest in how big should the team be how do I make sure that the company
continues to sustain through Rapid growth and things like that but those were all like as I went through
different companies and different Journeys uh I I used used to talk to a lot of people um especially when I when
I was at Blackhawk it was when I joined the company we were about 2 300 people and then the company went public we grew
we acquired a ton of different businesses and like I think when I left it was like 200 or 3,000 employees and
so I got a chance to see the evolution and also got a chance to talk to so many different departments that i’ never
worked with security marketing um sales uh you know business development
customer success and things like that so you kind of pick up on okay this is how they figure out and this is how each of
the keys fit into the lodger puzzle and before you knew it I I was uh you know
at the center of Billy Tech that supports every part of the organization as well so yeah and and having that
variety as well I’m suppose you had access to lots of different teams so you can see different leadership styles and
eventually find your own as well I hear from a lot of ladies um on this podcast who say when I first
became a leader I was trying to emulate somebody else and it was quite difficult at first to find my own style um but I
wanted to ask you a little bit about that um because we know the industry is Mal dominated you lead um a team mostly
of male Engineers um did you find that you’ve had to change your leadership style for that or did you just you know
find your style and and and that works for you yeah I think I that’s very
interesting question I’ve never been asked that before uh women definitely have slowly begun to get involved more
and more in the tech industry and which has traditionally been considered like as the domain of men but despite an
increasing number of women we still struggle like I think not just with representation intact but also rise to
the leadership position having said that I have focused on some ground
rules and that has formed or shaped into how my leadership style is like one of
the biggest things that’s important for me is leading with empathy uh I and empathy for customers empathy for our
product empathy for people um and I think that is very important for me I my natural leadership style is empowering
people uh giving them like a not star inspiring them getting them excited and then just leaving them alone to go
figure things out so that um is how I naturally lead but sometimes like you
know depending on the composition of my team like what I realize is like you know in order to build strong
connections and getting to know the people and really like listening and
communicating and making sure that you’re developing them in the right way you have to like pass these ground rules
that you have to Al also to your team and that comes with like an amount of
Education that you need to provide to your team on several occasions I have seen my team sometimes have bias use
towards each other and and like me as a leader are having to recognize that giving them feedback and correcting that
getting them to see that like you know we need to have a very Equitable team place or like how you how can you
recognize uplifting your own teammates and how can you like you know um you
know we used to have this weekly uh wrap-up session uh when I was a manager and you know we would kind of appreciate
each other as part of that session and I would have everybody go in circles and appreciate one of their co-workers and
you know that kind of really like changes how people start to like you know perceive whether it’s women men but
people on the team and like have respect for each other and that helps create a very inclusive environment so everyone
can feel like a part of the team but if you don’t have the right people or if you don’t set the right expectations
like sometimes people don’t really lean in and then you have to ask yourself as a leader do you have the right people
and also be willing to make those tough decisions which I’ve unfortunately had to make sometimes um really had those
kind of people yes yes I think though um I love that by setting the ground rules
and so your team knows from the start as soon as they get into your team they know what’s expected and and they know
what it’s going to be like because you touched upon it a little bit there but I wanted to ask you about what skills do you think you need as a leader and I
love the fact that you just pointed out empathy is just so important and we had a whole podcast episode on this and um I
I completely agree I think it is so important um and definitely one of the skills that you do need as a leader I
think it’s overlooked as well a lot isn’t it yeah it is I think it’s very much overlooked uh and people like
generally don’t know how to even approach their teammates a lot of people
even get into leadership or management because they think this is like they get a lot of power being in this position
but it’s almost the opposite like I follow servant leadership it’s it’s like there is no power like you have to be
willing to just roll up your sleeves get get in into the weeks with the team where needed but also really like
helping them succeed like you’re the blind spot mirror for them so that like you know you just help them um but you
kind of stay back and really let them do their own stuff so I think it empathy is
a huge part of it and if you don’t have empathy you really can’t Le it yes do you think there are any other key skills
that every leader should have you know regardless of their male or female or run a m dominated team I think I think
the one that keeps coming up and you can never have enough office communication at all levels like every company that
I’ve been in it’s like you know you have a 360 degree uh Team you work with your
stakeholders you work with your engineers on your team you work with product um you work with customer
success sometimes you have to get on a call with customers so communication is key otherwise a lot of misunderstandings
happen because of lack of communication and especially if you’re the leader that every everything that you say will be
like you know taken at uh you know a very magnifying lens uh kind of way so
people like you have to be very careful in terms of really setting the right tone and the right voice and right
communication so I would say that’s another thing that I really look at um and then really Clarity providing a lot
of clarity to your team yes yes I I love that um I wanted to ask you I mean we
spoke there a little bit about leadership skills it’s not just um we know there’s an issue about getting females into leadership um but as a
whole why do you think there are still so few females in the technology sector as as a
whole yeah I think there are really two parts to this why are there so few
females in Tech and why are there so few women leaders in general U and they’re
interrelated um the tech sector is still predominantly male but when I was a
graduate um you know when I was in still in school like there were like very few
um you know females like in my graduate school really trying to pursue like very
um deep Tech and I think although that situation has been improving men still
outnumber women in general when there is the job then there is the job market
like women in Tech often won’t apply for a job if they don’t feel they’re 100% qualified and we know this as an issue
and have unless they think that they have the right experience that matches every criteria we just hold ourselves
back and then don’t apply so I think that’s another reason why there are so
few females in general in um Tech as human beings we all like you know uh
take inspiration from someone like we need to have a role model but because of these issues where there are very few
women getting into Tech uh or there are very few people getting into leaders ship so there aren’t enough role models
for the Youth to follow in their fo steps and then when there aren’t enough people around you then you tend to just
stay away from the industry um in general it’s such a sh you saying about
applying for roles you hear it so often that ladies will not apply if they don’t take all those boxes and I think as well
that also um companies need to do more on that side as well that if you do apply for a role and you don’t take all
of the boxes as soon as you hit you know if you do get an interview they should you know encourage you that that’s okay
they should just reassure you it’s okay we know you don’t tip all the boxes but we’re going to do what we can do um to
train you up in any other areas that we need and I think the more that women hear that that it’s okay to apply anyway
and that a company is going to do what they can do to to fill in the areas that you’re not good at the more I think
they’ll just be encouraged think you know what I’m just going to give it a go I’m just going to put in that application and see and then us as
leaders when we are hiring for people on the other side like I think the companies need to make a conscious effort do we have the right people in
the panel who are interviewing people because I went through this where I have seen in my company where like you know
we people interview but there’s a lot of unconscious bias within that interview panel and a lot of times I’ve had people
like outright saying no to someone because like they didn’t match up with like one specific skill set or they were
they were in from one pedigree of like school or something like that which is not exactly what we we are looking for
so sometimes as a leader we have to coach and like avoid those stereotypes um as well so that we can get more
people just flowing into those into the funnel so we can hire them train them
and then then there is also how do we make sure that they’re continuing to grow within their company what opportunities can we provide how can we
not create barriers um you know when women take maternity death break or when
women need a little bit of flexibility and things like that yes yes just to keep people coming in and then and then
hearing their stories some companies are getting it right though I’m trusted Health your senior leadership team is
now two-thirds women um what can other organizations be doing to increase the
number of women in leadership roles do you think you’s got it right yeah I
think U there’s only one word I can think of access like access is everything access to Opportunities and
growth access to mentors access to like you know like creating an uplifting
campaign where you can uplift people within the company and then access to equal pay which is also super important
uh especially like we keep seeing that there is a huge pay Gap uh for uh women in general
and how can we place that Gap so you know I think these are the most critical thing that you need to get right and
also monitoring the talent Pipeline and figuring out like you know if there is a leaky bucket problem like is there an
equal balance of women men and women joining the organization in the junior
roles in the first place but at what point does the number change like or when number of women start to decline if
you don’t know why people fail to climb the career ladder at your organization you can make any changes so the question
that I would have is are women really being put off uh you know for a promotion because uh the jobs are mostly
occupied by men and they they might not assess women in the same criteria like how men are assessed sometimes so I
think there’s a ton of things that goes into this but I think what companies can be doing as I said is like providing
access like creating those opportunities like really looking internally and figuring out do you have the right
people the right mix in every level within the organization and if not like really trying to correct that and it has
to come from top down uh the company leaders like have to be bought in so that the whole organiz ation can kind of
really um get in that same Zone yes you just Ed a great word there Monitor and
monitoring I think a lot of companies forget to do that you know what we’ll just we’ll just
get people in and we won’t actually monitor how they feel while those women aren’t moving up to different levels or
they might come in um at more Junior levels and then exit um before they you
know are are opened up to an opportunity like middle management or or um even further above that um and I think a lot
of companies do forget to just monitor that basically exactly and I
think you know companies like can work with organizations like yours um you know or even when I was hiring for a
director role like I really went through a deep LinkedIn search I was sourcing myself because I wanted to have a really
mix and 60% of the of my pipeline was women so there are women in our industry
we just need to find them and provide access to this opportunity so that you know uh we can like really like find a
place for more and more women to grow into definitely and and you’ve had your
fair share of adversity how did you overcome these and and what lessons do
you think you learned along the way yeah adversities can come in various forms some of the ones that I faced were
like you know growing company struggling and ultimately leading to the extinction of the company itself and how do you
handle when like your company goes through bankruptcy or when a company just got Acquired and you’re going to
lose a job um and the mindset changed that comes along with it or you know I was also stereotyped like you know into
thinking that I can handle a baby and the leadership role so I was been promoted when I just came back from a
maternity leave or um you know uh lack of acknowledgement of contributions and
things like that in general uh for me like the way I’ve approached any type of adversity is like I I have a goal I I
have a path in mind where I want to go and the road isn’t always clear often
leading to me questioning myself if I can really do this but ultimately what I’ve realized is I have to take it one
day at a time and just be better progressively each day and learn from
your mistakes and you know I keep a note like okay what went well today and what did not go well today and then if like
more things went well then it did not like that’s enough of a positive affirmation or it’s a small validation
that I’m headed in the right direction um and then uh that’s a proof point for me to know that I’m headed in the right
um Direction so I I can face this adversity I can come out of it often times we refrain from decision making
due to the fear of failure and sometimes it’s a constant reminder that it’s okay to fail and it’s okay to like recognize
that and then figure out okay how do I come out of this failure I like that you keep notes so I love that is I’ve heard
that advice on here before and I don’t think enough people understand that it would be so valuable not to journal but
even to keep notes that you know things that that have gone well and things that haven’t gone well and and you know even
by the time that you want to go for your next job opportunity you’ve you’ve got all of those memories of those projects
that you worked on and things that didn’t go well and things that went well or challenges you overcome as a team
because you’ve made a note of everything and I’m assuming mentally as well that just helps every day think this is why
this happened and this is how we overcome it yeah I think sometimes when you take notes it just gets so ingrained
into your mind that like it becomes part of your subconscious of how you think how you make decisions because now like
you have it you already know you faced this and you can do it again so it’s a
very positive reaffirmation um and that helps me and I try to at least do it on
a daily basis as much as I can just to kind of do a reflection of how my day
went and how can I do better each day yeah yeah well that is lovely advice I
have a final question for you about advice um what advice do you have for our listeners um who want to get into
leadership roles I think one believing in yourself asking for what you deserve more and
more women need to ask from for promotions need to ask for like stepping into leadership roles I think a lot of
times we just don’t ask and if you don’t ask you don’t get um I I’ve had teams where I’ve had both men and women often
times men come to me saying I want a race I want a promotion I want this is this is what I want in my career uh and
often times women like only ask about give me a tough problem to solve or like you know like what’s the next big
challenge that I can tackle never about themselves so uh you know I really want
um people to believe in themselves and also like find and build a strong Network and find a role model because I
think it’s super critical like you know I’ve had people just reach out to me randomly on LinkedIn and I’ve connected
with them ho on 30 minute 12 and you’ll be surprised I think a lot of times people feel like I can’t disturb or I
can’t reach out to this person but the the worst thing that can happen is they won’t just respond but if they do
respond you you get such a valuable time and you can really pick their brain so uh don’t be afraid to build a strong
Network and then lastly don’t be afraid to fail um you know leadership is about humility and you know owning up to your
mistakes and making that that commitment to learn and grow is super important
yes and and as one last thought there do do is there anything that you wish somebody had told you before you become
a CTO I think I wish someone had told me
that you know uh make more decisions it’s okay to make some wrong ones and
some right ones as long as you like are not like you know just stuck making decisions just just keep making them and
then eventually you’ll make more right ones than wrong ones um but I had to learn that the hard way that I wish
someone had told you that yeah that’s great advice yeah just keep moving forward keep making decisions uh yeah
yeah I love that advice so we’re already out of time um I continue to talk to you
on this subject where has flown by so thank you so much it has been a pleasure to have you on chatting with me today
thank you yeah it’s been a great conversation thank you so much um this has been lovely thank you for everybody
listening as always thank you so much for joining us and we hope to see you again next time