In this blog series, women at Datto will post stories from their interviews of each other. This week, we hear from Dianna Pappas, Project Manager, who gives us an in-depth perspective on her colleague, Kit Thorpe, VP of Internal Audit.
When you were young, did you ever imagine you would grow up to do the things you’re currently doing? When I was young, I wanted to dance for the American Ballet Theatre. Needless to say, my role as a project manager doesn’t exactly lend itself to doing a pirouette into conference rooms. When Kit Thorpe, our VP of Internal Audit was young, she wanted to be a gymnast because she admired the simultaneous strength and grace they exhibit. These traits that she respected as a child stayed with her as she worked hard through college, work and life to get to where she is today.
If you’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Kit, one of the first things you’ll learn about her, aside from her love of tennis and chocolate candies, is that she is a huge fan of process. She shared that one of her first jobs was at a fast-food restaurant and what she loved the most was the processes in place. “If something was broken, even the fryer, there was a clear process and procedure so anyone could fix it.” This resonates well for her current role, as one of Kit’s projects is working on the Inventory Management system for our Monroe office with the Build team, defining and documenting different processes so they can do their work more efficiently.
Working at PricewaterhouseCoopers and GE before coming to Datto, Kit has gathered some great advice for women in the workplace. Recognizing there are still challenges ahead for the generation of women behind her and how important it is for women to support other women, Kit offered this impactful piece of advice, “It is important for women to speak when they have something to say and to use their voice to influence others.”
The example Kit gave of this was a story she had read about President Obama’s female staffers. There were fewer of them than there were of the men and they found their voices were not being heard. Their remedy? Using a tactic called “amplification” which was when one woman mentioned a point, another woman would echo that point in support and give credit to the original person who said it. By doing this they made that first voice a louder voice and the women as a whole began to get called on more by President Obama.
Madeleine Albright once said, “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women” and I think the more we as women do for each other and continue to support each other in our careers, the farther away we’re getting from that handbasket.
The Women in Technology blog series is coordinated by Customer Experience Innovations project coordinator, Rachel Powers.