Womenflare Executive Fireside Chat: Sabine Davies

Hi, everybody, and welcome to our fireside chat, this time organized by Womenflare. We are celebrating today, International Women's Day, with our DAG Sales Director, Sabine Davies. As you heard, we have a great audience here in the office, and many, many colleagues watching worldwide from our different offices, from Europe to US, Latin to Asia Pacific. My name is Annel Quevedo, and I am the lead for EMEA, and for Women in Sales. As I mentioned today, as I just mentioned, this event is to celebrate International Women's Day. But what is Women's Day for? Well, the goal of International Women's Day is to celebrate the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women, while also advocating for gender equality. This serves as a reminder to raise awareness about the achievement of women globally, and also to raise the awareness for more equality and diversity, where all individuals, regardless of their gender, have the same opportunities and rights. With this in mind, we have today a woman who serves as an inspiration for all of us, not only from the professional level, being an excellent leader and colleague, but also privately, as a mother, wife, and a strong woman. Sabine Davies, for all of you who might not know about her, Sabine, originally from Berlin, Germany, has been our sales director at Klaugler for one and a half years. Prior to that, she worked in different sales, management, and director roles at IBM, Dell, and EMC. Please join me in giving a warm welcome to Sabine Davies. So Sabine, let's start with a warm -up question to start getting to know you a little bit more. Can you share maybe a fun fact about yourself? Let me start with saying thank you for organizing and setting this up. It's a huge pleasure being here. I've watched quite a few Fireside Chats, so thanks, Danell, for this initiative and the opportunity to speak to everyone and address everyone. Fun fact, so I believe there are quite a few, but first thing that comes to my mind, I actually had a career before this one, which was I was seven years old and I was part of the ballet for GDR, the state ballet, and it was a very short career, so let me tell you. So I was born and raised in East Berlin. I was a gymnast and there's a selection squad which kind of picked the kids that were eligible for the state ballet, which was a lot of Russian professional ballet dancers who take it very seriously. So I went to weekly training at seven years old and I thought this is far too serious. It was all about competition and being excellent, so I thought I have to entertain some fun to the group. So I started animating the group and for us to make stupid jokes and have fun and laugh. So after six months, they threw me out of ballet. But what did that teach me and what's something that I can take or have taken into the past 22 years of sales is I've always enjoyed group entertainment, bringing teams together, being quite direct, sometimes too direct, but it was actually a very good experience, something I'm proud of. I was picked, but then it ended after six months and I was thrown out. But I can say I danced for the state GDR official ballet team for five minutes. That is amazing. Thank you for sharing. And I just mentioned some just some little things about your career, but can you let us know more about your professional journey? Yeah, of course. When I think about that, I have 22 years of sales and sales leadership roles. And when I think about it, I actually discovered my love for sales when I was 17 years old, selling burgers at McDonald's. I don't know if you remember, but back then my maiden name is and back then there was this commercial. So I was selling burgers at McDonald's in East Berlin and everyone laughed at me and said, well, this burger, please, Mrs. Lange. And I really enjoyed the interaction with people. And that's when I realized this is fun. So a little bit later, young, I needed the money. I entered dual studies at IBM and I spent about 10 years at IBM studying plus working. I became the youngest manager at IBM Germany. Back then IBM had 26,000 employees, not like IBM today at the age of 27. But then I realized I always had three criteria in my career. That was ego, fun and money. And it stayed the same three criteria for the past 22 years, just the order changed. And back then ego and money was upfront. So I left IBM, went to EMC, had in total 15 years at EMC, being then merged to Dell Technologies until one and a half years ago when I decided I wanted to do something more meaningful, something more relevant, where I can actually make decisions, create and shape. So this is when I then decided to join the Cloudflare team, the amazing DACH team. And we can hear in your journey that you have been in this tech industry for a while, but we also see nowadays in this predominantly male dominated industry that we are at, that it's hard to see many women. What do you think that we could do to encourage and motivate more women to pursue careers in the tech industry? I'm not sure if I would make it a gender thing so much. I think it's more about empowering young talents, people overall. It's about being brave and bold. I remember a few situations back then when I was in the IBM leadership program, when I was asked to join this women in leadership program. And I didn't know why I'm there. I thought I have this job because I'm good at my job. So I never questioned, is it because I'm a woman or I always was convinced it's because I'm good at what I do. And I think it's more about empowering and people finding their passion and trying things. It's okay to try something and to fail. A really good leader that I once worked for said, he never failed, has never tried anything. So I think it's about young generations, young talents, being bold, trying new things, even though they think that might not be the first thing that comes to my mind. And that might be something that's specific for women because I think women tend to be more, I want to be perfect. I want to be a hundred percent. Something I struggle with on a daily basis to say, it doesn't have to be perfect, just do it. And I think if you have that mindset and just go and try out different things, encouraging people to just give it a go and touch and feel, then I think there could be something which attracts a lot of new talents across different genders, nationalities, backgrounds, all sorts. And for sure, by trying different things, as you mentioned, you fail, right? This is part of the journey. And now as a very successful leader that you are now, I imagine that you also have a lot of challenges on your way. Can you maybe share a pivotal moment that really shaped your management career? Well, as you can imagine, in 22 years, there are quite a few of those moments. So it's hard to say one moment, but when I think about the purpose why we're here together, it's celebrating women's flair. And there's one situation that sticks to mind. So at EMC in 2010, I was one of three female salespeople in the German organization. And I was the first one who got pregnant back then. And it was funny because EMCHR, they just didn't know what to do with me. They didn't know any of the rules. They didn't know about maternity leave or anything. So we found out together. And then I just started a new job before I got pregnant. And I was so passionate about that job. And we're just entering a really big logo here in Munich. And I was working so much. And when I then finally left on maternity leave, I do remember it took me about five months to stop reading emails. I got one email that said, my manager changed roles, and I started crying. It was like, it was this, yeah, just learning how to cope with the different hats you wear on a daily basis. I think that's something that also has a big influence on my career. And everyone wears lots of different hats. It's, you're an employee, you're a parent, you are a sibling, you are a friend, you're a partner. So this for me was actually, yeah, it's a big change in everyone's life to become a parent. But I was always passionate about my job and to learn how to cope putting these different roles and wear these different hats and bring it together in one person. That was probably quite challenging, but something I wouldn't want to miss for the world, because the more you bring in from yourself into, always bring your whole self to work as a person with all your different roles, can actually bring a lot of advantages to, yeah, personal and business life. And now that you're sharing this challenge, what we also hear from other successful professionals is that mentorship and sponsorship is instrumental for career development. Can you share if you had like maybe any mentor or role models that really also shaped or helped you in your career? Yeah, definitely. I'd say, first of all, one of my biggest mentors is my sister. So we share and exchange, yeah, a lot on a daily basis. But when I think about professional mentors, a few jump to my mind. The one is, yeah, a former leader of mine. And that relationship, I was like his right hand. And that relationship worked like a good marriage. So lots of arguing, discussing, agreeing, moving, changing, and then just getting it done. So, yeah, a partnership and mentorship that I think actually worked both ways, where always a lot of good came out on diverse discussions. So allowing different perspectives, trying new things as well, disagreeing, and then, yeah, moving forward and agreeing on something. A second one is also a woman. She inspired me a lot. It's Patricia Floresi. She'd actually be great for Cloudflat. She's the CTO for Google now, in case we should reach out. So she's one of the most brilliant minds from a technical understanding that I've ever met and worked with. And I asked her once, so how do you keep up to date with your learning? She's also a mom. She has a family. She has been an executive for 15 years. And she told me the story. She said, don't ever talk about something that you don't know. Like people just don't believe it. It's not trustworthy. And I said, but how do you do it? You have these conversations about AI and machine learning and like that knows all. And she said, well, imagine a situation, you sit in a room and someone wants to talk about elephants. And you know nothing about elephants. So you start talking and say, well, but you know a lot about worms. And you start talking and say, well, an elephant is this giant animal. It's great. It has two big ears. It has a big trunk. And then it has a tiny little tail. My tail looks like a worm. Let me tell you about worms. And she had this great approach to how you keep up to date. But at the same time, you stay believable and you turn a conversation into something meaningful. And then you might end up selling a lot of worms when they actually wanted to play with an elephant. That is great to hear. And we can see also like this storytelling is also very helpful in tales. And now that we're here among friends, colleagues, I have to confess something. So I must confess that while I was doing my research and preparation for this interview, I took the opportunity to talk to some members of your team and ask them, who is Sabine as a manager? And I am super delighted and also excited about the insights and the feedback that you team gave me. So from one side, they describe you as somebody with a lot of professionalism, a business focused, with a great sales experience, problem solving, with an open door and always there for your team. From the other side, additionally to all that, with a very supportive and empowering leadership, with a lot of empathy and understanding the personal and professional needs of your team, while also creating a lot of communication in a great work atmosphere. And this is very remarkable. You cannot imagine when I was hearing this, I was like, wow, it's great to hear that feedback from our managers here at Cloudflare. But can you maybe share what has shaped your management career and let you have this leadership style? Well, first of all, I'm humbled to hear that. It's really nice. And yeah, it would be wrong to say that I have a recipe because I don't hear that feedback on a daily basis. So first of all, it's really nice to hear that. I believe my main belief is being in management. It's not about me. That's, I think, the first thing. It's about the team and the individuals in the team to be able to do their best. And yeah, coming back to the story I initially told with my failed ballet dancer career, that's something that I try to do actively in the team is to provide an atmosphere of belonging, of being open, transparent. Everything can be discussed. It has to be respectful. It has to be trustful. And usually something good comes out. So I've always tried to create this team brand, this feeling of belonging, of inclusiveness. But when I think about a team, and that's something where also the different hats I mentioned earlier come together, because actually being a parent, it might sound silly, but it does often influence me a lot at work. Because imagine when a kid is starting to learn how to walk. You don't walk for the kid, you reach your hand to help. So I don't have to teach anyone here to learn how to walk. There are a lot of sprinters and professional marathon runners in this team. But what I'm trying to do is to pave the path, to remove obstacles, to hold an umbrella, to give a hand. So I'm more in the background trying to support everyone to do their best and to be successful in their job, because me then having a good time comes automatically. You actually also mentioned about these different hats that you have and that we all have in our professional and private lives. And I think this might be also very relevant for many of us, and especially for the ones with a family. And now especially for somebody with a very successful management career, what do you think has helped you, or how do you manage to have the right combination of a management career and your family life, to combine them successfully? Well, recipe would be set too much. It's hard. It's not easy. Anything else would be not right to say. But what has helped me is to prioritize brutally. So I, for example, in private life, I outsource everything that's not quality time. So that's something that when I first became a mom and then the second time, logistics are overwhelming. So I outsource everything that is not actual quality time with my family, which means I do the grocery shopping online. I have someone do the laundry, even when it's about bringing kids from A to B, that's not quality time, that's pure logistics. But I also prioritize the other way around. I say the morning and dinner, that's wholly family time. So my boss usually phones me at that time, that's a running gag at our dinner table. He also knows I don't pick up at that time, and that's fine. Everyone has a family or at some point will have a family. So it's okay to say you're a person and you have a private life. But then I work after dinner, maybe. So we are lucky enough to have the flexibility to do both. But it's a lot of organization. It's a lot of prioritizing. And it's not always easy, but it has worked for me. I never wanted to choose. I love my job. So I wanted to work, I wanted to have a career. I was happy going back working after a long time with the babies because it keeps me sane. It's something that I do for myself. It's a lot of work, but it works. You have two young daughters who will be soon joining the workforce. What do you wish them for their professional lives? First of all, I want them to be happy. I know I was on the phone with my older daughter. So they're 10 and 13 on the way to puberty, two girls, which is scary. She told me earlier, don't give that example, but I give it anyways. So if they're happy becoming a bus driver and that's not what I would choose for them, then they should go for it. So first of all, I want them to enjoy what they do the rest of their lives professionally and privately. But generally, what I try to encourage them is to try everything. We grow up in very traditional Bavaria, which it's not the way I grew up. I grew up very liberal, I'd say. And in Bavaria, you have a clear role model in many parts of this world. And I don't want them to think like that. It starts with in school, they separate the genders for sports. The boys play soccer and the girls do gymnastics. And I'm like, why? Why can't the girls do soccer and the boys do gymnastics? So we do everything at home. And I just want them to try and to find out what do I want? What do I like? I want them to go climbing, you know, do ballet, horse riding. I don't know, bungee jumping, whatever they do, because only if you try, you know what you want to do. So I don't want them to grow up with this narrow mindset. And I wish the same for them that I have. I want them to find out what's my passion and what's my talent and best way to combine the both. For me, it was my early McDonald's career, finding out that I enjoy working with people, which I can do on a daily basis. Not every day is the same. I can compete. I can win. I can have fun. We work hard, but we also enjoy working hard. And I'm exactly where I want to be. And I want them to be able to do the same at some point. Great. And thank you so much, Sabine, for sharing all this knowledge and your experience with us today. We really appreciate it. And thank you to the audience here in the office and everybody watching worldwide from our different offices. See you next time with more successful women at Klausler. Have a lovely evening.