>> My career has taken some strange
twists and turns along the way.
It's all been great.
I have an accounting degree from Penn State.
Along the way I got an MBA
from another university.
And what I did was I used the accounting
degree to get experience in business.
But within a few years of working
with a public accounting firm,
I moved in to working for a software company.
And I saw it as a great opportunity
to be on a new cutting edge technology
and to work at learning about the business.
And it wasn't so much about
being a better accountant,
it was about learning about
the software industry.
You know, I'd go eat lunch
with the software developers
and go on sales calls with the sales people.
And I worked very hard at learning the business.
And I used to joke about
reading the trade magazines,
and all I understood was the
prepositions and the conjunctions.
But over time, I started figuring
out the nouns and the verbs too.
And I think that's what you've got to do to
succeed is challenge yourself to go outside
of your area of expertise and
keep learning about others.
And now I meet people who think I'm a career
technologist even though I don't have a
technical degree.
But I've learned a lot.
And I've learned a lot about what customers
expect in technology and how to work
with them, and even how to develop it.
And it's because I kept reinventing myself.