She Names the Three People Who Changed Her Career and Exactly What Each One Gave Her. Director and Venture Partner Nancy on Building Your Personal Board of Directors

She credits three people with transforming her career trajectory at AWS and beyond. Tatiana got her into AWS. Wayne sponsored her advancement within it. Dan helped her break into venture capital as a partner at Felicis Ventures. She did not stumble into these relationships. She built them intentionally, maintained them with discipline, and gave back at every stage — even when what she could give seemed small compared to what she was receiving.

Nancy was Director and General Manager at AWS Data Protection when this episode was recorded. She has since been promoted to CTO. She is also the founder of Advancing Women in Tech (AWIT), a venture partner at Felicis Ventures, and served on the board of UPenn's School of Engineering Online. She gave the commencement speech at the University of Pennsylvania. The central idea of that speech: build your personal board of directors.

In this episode, she breaks down the full framework.

You'll learn:

• Why she calls her personal board of directors the most important career strategy she has used, and what it gave her that mentors, managers, and luck could not.
• The three specific people on her board, what each one did for her, and how those relationships were built over time rather than asked for upfront.
• The right way to ask for raw, unfiltered feedback from someone who outranks you significantly — including why the first or second meeting is almost never the right time, and what you need to establish first.
• Why follow-through is a bigger differentiator than IQ, communication skills, or credentials. "They need to want it more than you want it for them" — the advice from her own board member that she now uses with every mentee she works with.
• How compound interest applies to professional relationships: why small, consistent gestures build more than a single impressive one, and what she does quarterly to keep her board relationships healthy without it feeling transactional.
• She was preparing to meet a Fortune 500 CEO to ask him to join her board. His dog had just had surgery. She planned to bring dog treats. The reminder: every successful person is still just a human being, and treating them that way is both the right approach and the most effective one.
• The Lululemon wardrobe mistake: her first Silicon Valley job, she bought a whole new wardrobe to fit in with the casual culture. Hated it. Didn't feel herself. What she learned about knowing who you are and using that as a career filter rather than a liability.
• Why at her leadership level she says no far more often than yes, why she uses Amazon's "have backbone, disagree and commit" principle to push back when the room disagrees with her, and what she tells her mentees about having the courage to hold the unpopular opinion.

About Nancy: At the time of this recording, Nancy was Director and General Manager, AWS Data Protection at Amazon Web Services. She has since been promoted to CTO. She is also the founder of Advancing Women in Tech (AWIT), a venture partner at Felicis Ventures, and has served on the board of directors of the UPenn School of Engineering Online. AWIT's Coursera curriculum has reached tens of thousands of learners globally.

Advancing Women in Tech: https://www.advancingwomenintech.org/