How Knowing Oneself Fosters Meaningful Change for Information Technology

What inspires you to pursue what you’ve always dreamed of professionally? Connect with VMware Security Specialist, Julie Starr, and hear how knowing her career goals and finding a workplace community that embraces her strengths empowers her to make an impact on Information Technology.

Name: Julie Starr

Role: Security Specialist

VMware Office Location: Home office – West Virginia

Fill in the blank: Dare to transform now.

Achieving Career Goals in Information Technology

When I was 18, I knew that I wanted to pick a major where I could have my own career and support myself. I first chose civil engineering. After a co-op quarter working for a state D.O.T. supervising road construction, I knew that I wanted a more cutting-edge engineering major, and switched to computer engineering when I was 19. I landed a co-op job with the information technology group at my college campus and have been in IT ever since.

A Day in the Life at VMware

I’m either on the road on in the office. When on the road, I meet with customers, from executives to front-line engineers to convey the value of VMware products and help determine the best use of Networking & Security Business Unit (NSBU) products for their organizations. When in the office, I split my time between lab work to verify customer use cases and questions; support sales teams on WebEx and conference calls; and produce collateral to help scale our sales teams – all with a focus on security. As an overlay (security specialist) to an overlay (NSBU field sales teams), I bridge the gap between field sales and our product management and technical product management teams in the corporate office.

Every morning, I look forward to working with my teammates. Even though I’m in sales, I can’t do it all alone. I’ve worked at a number of successful companies based in Silicon Valley, and by far – I’ve found VMware has the most open culture to embrace my potential. We’re not all the same. We all bring different skillsets and experience to the table. While no company is perfect, I’ve found VMware to have a healthy culture, led from Pat Gelsinger on down. We’re not put on earth just to work – family and our lives are important. But if we’re going to spend so much time working, we might as well have fun and figure out how much it is we are capable of. I feel VMware offers a great environment, and I look forward to what I become at VMware.

A Passion for Transforming Networking & Security

NSX is unlike any other product. VMware is not a security company; and NSX is not a security product. BUT – NSX impacts security by opening up a completely new environment – your virtualized environment – to security products. Up until NSX, there have only been two places in the overall environment to ‘do’ security – in the OS (operating system); or in the network. With vSphere, a new part of the environment opened up. NSX gives a completely new way to enable security by opening up the virtualized environment for security companies to hook their products into. They are no longer limited with the legacy constructs of redirecting traffic to enforce security. I joined VMware because we as a community have not had a product to affect security so greatly since we started securing networks in the 1990’s with firewalls and IPS’s.

Joining the Networking & Security Business Unit at VMware

Transformational technologies are rarely birthed whole, in one fell swoop. NSX is ready for organizations to begin the journey, taking advantage of the unique network and security capabilities only available in hypervisors. Now is a great time to join VMware, and the NSBU in particular, as we embark on the drive to bring network virtualization to hypervisor customers.

Every morning, I’m challenged to convey the promise and benefits of NSX to organizations that aren’t aware of how much their daily operations will change – how much their business or mission will change – with our software, for the better. All sectors and businesses are under pressure – you can either make incremental changes and try to linearly scale what you’ve always done, or make a bet on a solution that significantly changes the environment, allowing productivity gains otherwise unavailable.

Browse the latest opportunities within the Networking & Security Business Unit

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