The finalists for WashingtonExec’s Pinnacle Awards were announced Oct. 13, and we’ll be highlighting some of them until the event takes place virtually Dec. 8.
What has made you successful in your current role?
At Amazon, our culture is driven by 16 Leadership Principles (or LPs) that we use to frame nearly everything that we do, from launching new products, to recruiting and promoting talent, to exploring new areas for growth. I can relate to all the LPs, including Earns Trust, Insist on the Highest Standards, Customer Obsession, Hire & Develop the Best, and Deliver Results.
But the LP that perhaps most describes my personal wiring since childhood is Learn and Be Curious. I am intensely inquisitive, and this propensity for curiosity has fueled my growth and learning, whether diving into a new industry, meeting a new person or joining a new company.
Austrian poet Ranier Maria Rilke once advised his protégé to “love the questions themselves.” It is in the questions that a whole universe of learning comes to light that you might never have experienced had you not taken a moment to ask and to learn.
What are you most proud of having been a part of in your current organization?
One of the best gifts of my time at AWS has been the opportunity to build and support a remarkably committed team of diverse and innovative technology leaders, whose mission is to enable our “health care heroes” in the midst of this once-in-a-century global pandemic. It has been particularly fulfilling to create and exponentially grow a business and team entirely dedicated to those at the front lines of care at this moment.
It has also been inspiring to participate in the good that is possible when one of the world’s most innovative companies serves as a trusted technology partner to those who are reinventing and transforming themselves while bringing healing and health to all of us.
What are your primary focuses going forward, and why are those so important to the future of the nation?
Heading into 2022, I am focused on enabling health care customers to leverage pandemic learnings to transform their business and care models for the future. I expect that customers will expand their use of the cloud to personalize patient care, advance precision medicine, bring new therapeutics to market faster and engage health care consumers when, where and how is best for them.
I believe that we are at critical inflection point when we must extend the high pace of health care innovation during the pandemic — enabled, in part, by the cloud — to fuel the health care industry’s self-transformation and enable more accessible, affordable and personalized care.
What’s your best career advice for those who want to follow in your footsteps?
You have a path that is your own, and no one can take that away — only you can fail to walk in it. Do not be limited by what you can see in others’ paths. Within you is a calling that is your own. Discover it. Embrace it. Relish in it. Then, when you are in a place of influence, use that influence to advance, support and lift up others.
And — most important — always have the wisdom and courage to choose the enduring over the temporal. Framing your life and prioritizing what is enduring over what is temporal will afford you joy and fulfillment in your relationships, your work, your life, and yourself.