The Cloud Girl Rising award was created to honor women in the telecom and IT channel who have shown leadership and innovation in the emerging cloud space as well as to inspire more women to step forward and follow their example.
Bassett was honored as a Trailblazer, a female technology industry veteran who is paving the way for her organization, customers and industry in advancing cloud and next-generation technology solutions. She is recognized as a role model and mentor to colleagues and others at work and the partner community.
Lorraine Bassett PhD is Principal, Worldwide Business Development and Strategy for IoT at Amazon Web Services. She’s held that role for the past year. Previously, she was the Global Alliance Leader for DXC Technology at AWS where she led global strategy and go-to-market for DXC Technology (formerly CSC / HPE-ES). In that role, she led and closed one of the largest partner deals in AWS and DXC history, changing the way cloud vendors and system integrators do business together.
Cloud Girls is pleased to share more about Bassett in this edited excerpt from her award application.
Give one example of how you have innovated in the cloud space and shunned the status quo.
We evaluated why global managed service providers were driving only a small fraction of their business to public cloud and implemented a new model to remove these barriers and capture existing DXC customers.
How have you created a corporate vision for cloud services in your organization?
The model implemented at DXC Technology is now the baseline model for AWS and its global systems integrators.
How have you lead by example? What have you done to inspire employees and team members to take risks and move ahead with regard to cloud services?
- We persisted despite a lot of barriers. There were many times where the team felt the road to approval was too long or risky.
- I created a completely new model, with existing services. This inspired others to develop additional “Think Big and Innovate” models to align further with our partners
How have you evangelized cloud learning? Have you mentored other women in the Channel above, below and at your level?
From a cloud learning perspective, the evangelism is tied to inspiring women to “Think Big, Be Right a Lot and Have Backbone”. These are AWS leadership principles and in an environment that is predominantly male, it’s key to have a voice and use our skill set to develop models that have not been developed before.
How have you advocated for other women and enabled them to learn from you in the cloud space?
In our new IoT team, we are driving towards adversity and our team is now 50 percent men/women. This is a rare mix at AWS. With regard to enabling women, I wanted to focus on a specific area, which is IoT. The blog I will be developing in Q1 will focus on teaching and enabling women to grow in this area.