“Don’t become a mushroom and don’t be in the dark.” As I was emerging as an IT leader, one of my mentors gave me this advice. To be a strong leader, you need to be well-connected and very perceptive to both business needs and the morale of your team. He highlighted the value of relationships with me.
As a part of our series about powerful women, I had the pleasure of interviewing Adobe SVP Cynthia Stoddard. As senior vice president and chief information officer of Adobe, Cynthia Stoddard oversees Adobe’s global Information Technology and Reliability Engineering teams. In her leadership role, Cynthia spearheads a global strategy for delivering services and operations that form the mission-critical backbone for the company. She has 25-plus years of business experience and IT expertise leading large global organizations including Adobe, Netapp, Safeway, and APL Limited in supply chain, retail, and technology development. Cynthia is a recipient of the CIO 100 Award in 2017 and 2018 for Adobe IT’s innovative ways to…