Snowflake

Jenny D.

Great to be a part of the "Classroom to Boardroom" panel at Snowflake's Silicon Valley AI Hub with other University of California, Berkeley alumni Board Directors. My topic was Leadership Skills as a Board Director. Here's my key take aways: 1️⃣ The pattern I've watched for 30 years in Silicon Valley: 🔹 Internet → mobile → cloud → SaaS → now AI 🔹 Every wave, companies bet the differentiator is the technology itself 🔹 Every wave, the actual winners were the ones who transformed their people around the technology 🔹 The tool has never been the moat. The workforce transformation is. 2️⃣ The questions I bring as a Director: 🔹 Not "what's our AI strategy" - but "what do our people need to do differently to make this strategy real?" 🔹 What do they need to know that they don't know today? 🔹 What new behaviors and skills does this require? 🔹 How does the work itself need to be re-sequenced and restructured? 🔹 Does management have a real plan to drive this change - or just a rollout plan for the software? 3️⃣ Where this expertise comes from: 🔹 A Cal Liberal Arts undergrad studying the human condition, org behavior, motivation, how individuals and collectives adapt to change 🔹 Trained to think like a researcher: keep probing past the obvious answer, into the real why and how 🔹 Built and led talent transformation at scale as an executive practitioner 🔹 Now I bring that same probing instinct into board oversight 4️⃣ Business Executive vs. Board Director - the shift in how leadership shows up: 🔹 As an Executive: ask the big questions, then execute for results yourself through the team you control 🔹 As a Director: ask the same big questions, then guide, mentor, and coach the executives who are executing. "Noses in, fingers out" 🔹 Same rigor. Different seat. ✔️ Bottom line: History keeps repeating the same lesson. The technology is never the differentiator. The transformation of the humans using it is. That's the question I make sure is on the table in every boardroom I sit in. Thanks to: Gordon Rausser, Eliot Sun, Corey Goodman, Christopher Lee and Cal Alumni of Silicon Valley #Berkeley #BoardDirector #Leadership #TalentTransformation #LeadershipDevelopment #AI Greenfield Global GO BEARS! 💙💛🐻