I was introduced to Jennifer Ives through a mutual colleague, Sejal Amin. Sejal is one of the growing alumni of the Real Technologist podcast. Sagel and I were discussing how to move the needle from mentoring to refocusing on sponsoring others. What's the difference? Mentoring is often talking, teaching and strategizing. Sponsoring means taking steps to make opportunities. Sponsoring means investing in someone and truly advocating for them. In this context, Sejal talked about the value she personally gets from being part of an industry organization called Chief. Chief was founded to drive women forward into positions of power and to keep them there. Another Real Technologist alumni, Shannon Leitz also shared with me how important Chief was to her. 

Jennifer Ives is a founding member of Chief which now boasts over 20,000 experienced, diverse and influential executive women. I'm not a shy person, nor am I someone who is easily intimidated. That said, when Jennifer rapidly responded that she would love to be a guest, I started to wonder what sort of powerful or possibly intimidating presence I would encounter.

I always do a light amount of research putting a time box around the effort bob or I put into our detective work. We scheduled the recording and sent the invite. 

I dialed in one minute before the meeting was set to start only to find that Bob and Jennifer were already online and deep in conversation. As it turns out, Jennifer had done her own detective work to find out more about me, and in the process, had learned about "the Ops to my Dev", that is Bob. I listened for a moment to a delightful conversation that I can only describe as Jennifer interviewing Bob. 

What I encountered embodied in this life force known as Jennifer Ives is something unique and insightful. She is simply lovely in every dimension. Visually, she was wearing gentle lace on a modest blouse and an absolutely glowing smile. She positions her camera so she's looking directly at you, and as we all know from our lockdown days, that can be pretty tough to do... you know, positioning a camera so it's pointed at you straight on as opposed to looking downward at it.

I noticed Jennifer make constant eye contact, nothing distracted her. She didn't reach for a phone to turn off the ringer and no messages popped up on her screen taking her eyes away from me. Jennifer is instantly warming. When she speaks, you immediately sense how smart she is. There is a natural sense of trustworthiness.

I can see why C-Suite executive women and those like me, who drive change want to engage with her. She's authentic. When I found out that she's a geospatial engineer who worked with super secret government agencies, I was hooked. Our 60 minute conversations stretched into nearly an hour and a half. 

We are both passionate about humans and about technologies. We both believe that the best solutions are those that have a wide range of diverse thinkers involved. We both seem to position ourselves between diverse positions, ever negotiating. 

It turns out we are both middle children. Middle children are considered the "stealth leaders" of the birth order pack, according to Katrin Schumann, author of The Secret Power of Middle Children. Jennifer has all the telltale signs: she's a negotiator, a consensus builder, a risk taker, and an innovator.