Ep 64: Holly Rollo: Turning Uncertainty Into Transformation

Diva Tech Talk Podcast

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Holly Rollo, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of RSA (www.rsa.com ),a Dell Technologies (www.dell.com) company, offering business-driven security solutions for millions of users around the world and more than 90% of Fortune 500 companies.

Holly said: “you never know what’s in store,” since she did not originally set out to be a technology leader. The daughter of a Marine who was taught the value of determination and hard work at a young age, Holly’s journey began with a passion for investigative reporting. With an undergraduate journalism degree from Santa Clara University (https://www.scu.edu): “I had two job offers: one with a paper, and the other as PR person for a semiconductor company.” She chose the PR job and has no regrets. “What is amazing about marketing is that you’re constantly chasing a story. It’s a creative job. It’s a quantitative science job. It’s a technology job since marketing has gotten more technical.” As Holly got started, she “asked the dumb questions like ‘what does this mean for customers?’ and ‘how do they buy it’….” The answers she received helped her ”understand the whole picture” and weave the right stories to strengthen and promote brands, products and services.

From National Semiconductor, (purchased by Texas Instruments (http://www.ti.com/)) Holly moved up through a variety of jobs, building a substantial career including stints at Young and Rubicam, IBM (www.ibm.com) Sanrise (www.sanrise.com) Symantec/Veritas (www.symantec.com), Sybase (www.sybase.com), SAP (www.sap.com), Cisco (www.cisco.com) , FireEye (www.fireeye.com) and Fortinet (www.fortinet.com). Her path was forged by “focusing on what I was good at; what I was interested in.“ Rather than working in status quo situations, Holly was motivated by attacking “big, hairy problems.” Some of those included repositioning companies or older brands to take advantage of new markets, effecting full company turnarounds, positioning organizations for hyper-growth, or rationalizing and organizing hodgepodge tech product portfolios. “I like jumping into the middle of chaos and making order out of it!”

According to Holly, life stages affect your career choices. For instance, starting out, she said, “the brand that you work for, ‘speaks’…” and choosing it wisely can determine your career trajectory. “After that, there are different things that are important,” she noted. One of her career changes was inspired by a desire to “work with a woman who could mentor me.” Then, “later, as I had children, flexibility was more important, Now, what I have learned is that I want to work with people who are amazing, people to have fun with, every day.”

In making mission choices, Holly thinks that what instinctively drives decisions can be different for women than men. “Sometimes, what’s important is the money. I think women are sometimes uncomfortable with that idea.” Holly also stated “there are tradeoffs.” She cited the example of choosing a startup with exciting potential, great experience and an impressive title versus working for a larger, more established company at a higher compensation level. Holly also suggested, for personal peace of mind, “there has to be a conversation, at home, about tradeoffs. You have to know what you can balance, at home, in that workload,” to make informed decisions.

To achieve balance, in addition to yoga and hiking, Holly reminds herself “it’s one day at a time, one work week at a time.” The tech industry is unpredictable so “this can also all change tomorrow. The best I can do is just focus on what’s right in front of me and take it in bite-sized chunks.” Holly is grateful to be in the security field. “There’s a bigger mission. Particularly in the current environment, you can really understand how what goes on in the digital world impacts us all. It’s about how you detect and respond, managing risk to your mission.”

Holly noted that there is “a massive issue in technology employment,” and “everyone is going to be needed. We need all kinds of talent. We need more women in engineering; we need more women in leadership; we need more women in storytelling positions.” With the advent of the “Me, Too” movement and other progressive societal influences, she thinks that “a lot of behavioral changes are going to happen” to assist in breaking down diversity barriers. “We have the power to vote with our feet, and choose not to work for a certain company, or a certain manager, leader or CEO.” The biggest issue in Holly’s mind that needs to be addressed is “the pay equity piece.” She noted that each individual manager can change that. “Every year, we go through reviews. We have the power to address the pay gap” then. Her perspective is that pay equity is solvable, “if we chip away at it, little by little. Everybody can play a role.”

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