Four former co-workers in the technology industry with very different perspectives, backgrounds, experiences and opinions! Our plan is to record our chats and see if anyone wants to listen, comment or join in. If so, awesome. If not, we will keep doing it anyway, because it is fun!  (:  Note: Opinions are our own!

We have awesome friends, colleagues and kids so expect some of them(you?) to appear as well!

 

Lori Asburry

Lori is a senior leader in the services and technology space, having held a number of leadership positions with startups and government consulting firms. She ran the support center for NASA at Marshall Space Flight Center, supported the Navy in Foreign Military Sales, and held leadership roles in a series of technology startups. She was Senior Director of Consulting at Appirio, a cloud-based global services company, where she helped grow the company from 18 to 1,500 during her 9-year tenure there and current serves in a leadership role in the Services organization at Docusign.  She has a degree in English and Computer Science from the College of William and Mary, and loves her adventures with her son Jonah and a pack of crazy pound pups. She’s a dedicated hospice volunteer and a passionate sailor.

 

Andrea Giometti 

Andrea Giometti is a General Manager at Traction on Demand, where she leads the Salesforce Practice for the Western US . Prior to Traction on Demand, Andrea spent 9 years at Appirio where she held leadership roles in sales and delivery. 

In her free time, Andrea is an avid triathlete and runner.  In recent years she has completed multiple marathons and is a two-time Ironman finisher.  Andrea lives in the north San Diego area with her husband and two sons.  She holds a BS degree from San Diego State University in Business and Information Systems.

 

Maryam Norouzi

Maryam is a Sr. Director for Professional Services at Salesforce.  In this role, she has the ultimate responsibility for overseeing and managing the Services portfolio for Salesforce’s top 100 customers and the associated $40M book of business. 

Prior to that, she was a key leader and contributor in the growth of Appirio, a cloud consulting, that grew from a 10-person startup to 1300 employees with over $200M revenue before acquisition by Wipro.  She was responsible for laying the foundation and implementation of the delivery methodology for best-in-class planning and execution of cloud based projects, that enabled Appirio’s professional services team to be lean and agile while meeting customer needs.

Maryam has more than 20 years of experience leading and executing strategic initiatives in the tech industry.  She has worked for a diverse range of organizations, including Topcoder, Xerox, Applied Biosystems and OpenText.

Passionate about STEM and Women in Technology, Maryam sits on the Advisory Board for ChickTech, a non-profit focused on engaging women and girls of all ages in the technology industry while working to create a better technology culture for all.  She has also co-chaired the Software Engineering track at the Grace Hopper conference for 2 consecutive years.

Maryam is an avid indoor cycling enthusiast and loves the outdoors.  She enjoys family hikes with her husband and two teenage daughters, Yasmine and Lily.  

She has a BS in Computer Science from the University of Maryland and an MS in Systems Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University.

Lori Williams

Lori Williams career has been focused on emerging technology product and services and has a passion for building and managing high growth global organizations. She currently is CEO of Throughline Strategies and consults with early stage and high growth companies as they prepare to scale their customer and fulfillment operations. Prior to that Lori served as Chief Delivery Officer and Interim CEO of Gigster. She met her amazing podcast partners while holding several leadership roles at Appirio including as General Manager of EMEA and Vice President of the U.S. Consulting and Operations team.

Before joining Appirio, Lori held product, services and operational roles for several other early stage technology companies. She started her career at IBM and Lotus Development, including as an early member of the Lotus Notes team.

Lori is a graduate of Baylor University with a degree in finance, international business and information systems. She loves travel, playing with new technologies and keeping up on the cool places to eat around the world (email her for recommendations!!)