EXECUTIVE INSIGHT
Rising in prominence when the COVID-19 pandemic brought virtual networking into the mainstream , communications technology company Zoom became a household name seemingly overnight .
Today the company offers a wide range of communications services to businesses and individuals , including robust omnichannel and advanced AI solutions .
In her role as EMEA Head of Solutions Engineering at Zoom , Helen Hawthorn heads up a team of frontline software engineers working alongside Zoom ’ s sales teams and specialists across the region .
Starting her career as a graduate with BT , where her journey into collaboration began , Hawthorn had her first taste of management at ICT and telecommunications company Telindus .
“ That was an interesting one ,” she recounts . “ I got told I was going to be a manager , and I didn ' t really want to do that . And frankly , it was the worst year of my life , that first year of management . I had eight guys working for me that were all the same age as my dad .
“ I did that for a year , and that taught me everything not to do as a manager . It was probably an easy place to fail because the expectation was I was going to fail anyway , so it was actually quite nice to make those mistakes in that environment . However , it is also where I realised that I was pretty good at seeing the end-to-end . I love the technology , but actually , the end-to-end piece eally interested me .”
“ Right now , AI is out there because we ’ ve becoming far more intelligent in the way that we ' re using it ”
Hawthorn would then join technology solutions provider Insight , which was a more positive experience . “ I got to build out my own team , bring people in and go through that whole coaching piece , which I really enjoyed . I got more involved in the end-to-end piece in terms of operations , sales , marketing and again realised I loved the technology . How it fits into the whole flow is quite exciting .
“ The reason I like collaboration so much is because it ’ s focused on the end user . You can sit down and go through it wherever you find problems , you can ' t really do that with security and networking , but in collaboration you really can . So I did a lot of that there as well .”
After another move , Hawthorn would end up at Polycom , now HP Poly , in her first time as a vendor . “ That was really good fun . I was trying to get them away from being focused on the technology side to understanding how customers use that technology : what it means to
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