Before retiring from Dell, my last role at the company focused on developing and driving the company’s AI Strategy. That strategy covered both our portfolio strategy for harnessing the revenue opportunity that AI represents, but also how we would use this breakthrough technology to reshape and modernize the company itself. Prior to that, I spent 2 years leading Dell Technologies Corporate Strategy organization, 10 years driving the company’s Infrastructure Solutions Group strategy team, and several years leading strategy for Dell Technologies’ Storage business and working in product management. Prior to joining Dell in 2005, I held a variety of roles at Intel Corporation over a 10-year span.If you had 100 guesses as to how I ended up a leading authority in the tech industry, you’d likely go 0 for 100. My unorthodox background and career path surely helps to explain why I am known for bucking the technology industry’s conventional wisdom to see new opportunities where others could not. One of the first signs of my unorthodox career path, my time at McDaniel College where I earned a double bachelor’s degree in English and Political Science. Throughout grade school and high school, I was a middling student and vigorous non-conformist, a punk in all senses of the term. But during my time at McDaniel I realized, with the help of several amazing professors, it was largely my choice to sink or swim, and that I could learn and engage with the world in a vigorous but productive way instead of constantly colliding with it in unproductive ways. After graduating, I joined Intel Corp. as a temporary worker doing IT account administration, the lowest rung on the IT ladder. But I pushed myself to excel at every task and became a full time Intel employee after six months. Each subsequent step in my career required me to move further out of my comfort zone. And along the way I learned perhaps my most valuable life lesson: that our limitations are largely self-imposed, and we are capable of learning and excelling at far more than we think. In 30 years, I went from an IT account admin "temp" to a Senior Vice President at Dell Technologies and leading voice in the industry. Over my 30 years in the technology industry, I have found myself at the tip of the spear for nearly every disruptive technology trend over that period. Those experiences have been amazing, and each has been an important way point marking the major impact that technology has had on the way we live and work.