Jennifer Byrne
Former CTO at Microsoft
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A technology industry veteran, Jennifer Byrne has held leadership positions at some of the world’s largest tech companies – Microsoft, McAfee and Symantec among them. But she acknowledges her biggest professional challenge has been building that career in technology without actually having much training in it.
“I’ve had to be really disciplined about acquiring and keeping technical knowledge throughout my career,” said Byrne, today the chief product and technology officer for LiveHire, an Australian company whose talent management and acquisition software allows job candidates to engage with recruiters and hiring managers.
Her tech company employers – through their internal product training – have been the best starting points for obtaining that technology expertise, according to Byrne. “Then I’ve taken I don’t know how many online courses on various technology concepts and skills,” she said. “And I am incredibly disciplined about reading: I read industry information, technology information, probably at least an hour a day – always have.”
Byrne joined LiveHire in mid-2023 after it acquired Arrived Workforce Connections. As CEO of Arrived, Byrne had restructured the seed-stage staffing startup into a tech company with an enterprise-grade, software-as-a-service platform. Her years in enterprise tech enabled Byrne to attain a broad skill set across business disciplines – including sales, strategy, management and leadership – that’s been beneficial in her roles at these smaller companies.
“I grew up in companies like Symantec, Intel, Microsoft and have learned how to be a big operator across big business,” she said. “That’s very helpful for companies who are in their own growth journey and learning how to go from startup small mode to a more sustainable business model and a lot of different geographies. You really need to have all of your executives be very well-versed and very competent across a lot of different functional areas.”
As a big believer in the notion of a skills-based economy, Byrne wouldn’t discourage anyone from pursuing a desired career because of where they started. The “bloom is off the rose” when it comes to four-year degrees that correspond to a profession, she said.
“A lot of jobs are changing so fast, it’s really hard to know what degree you’d even pursue,” Byrne said. “That creates an environment where hiring managers are much more open to looking at candidates who don’t have formal education in the fields that they’re trying to pursue. But they will look for evidence that people have acquired skills, either through online courses or different experiences or internships or apprentices or personal learning.”
Byrne originally planned to be a psychologist. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and ran a Seattle nonprofit serving mentally ill and vulnerable people following graduation. But after marrying a U.S. Department of State diplomat, spending five years overseas and having two children, the nonprofit jobs available back stateside didn’t pay well nor were they inspiring, according to Byrne. She subsequently saw the disruptive promise of tech and what it could afford professionally and personally.
“So I went back to school for a year – a night school, just a small college – and learned computers, got a few networking certifications and other certifications, and found my way into my first technology job,” Byrne said. “It is much easier if you spend a few of your years earlier in your career in a very specific technical role that just gives you context and skills. The opportunity to be paid to learn and do it full time is a pretty big gift. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t other angles.”
Byrne started her tech career as a systems engineer for a small consulting firm serving U.S. government clients. She is a proponent of making lateral career moves that are incrementally different from previous roles to learn new skills. Her first position at McAfee, in 2008, was senior strategy director of global alliances, which included management responsibilities for the computer security software company’s Microsoft relationship. When Byrne decided a few years later that she wanted to build an internal McAfee business development team focused on specific vertical industries, she formulated a proposal.
“They let me do it, and I landed in that role,” said Byrne, who became McAfee’s senior director of global business development for vertical markets. “That taught me how to build a lot of different competencies in finance and business analysis, market research and go-to-market strategy that I really didn’t have. That was very important, because it did move me closer to the operations of the business.”
A second lateral opportunity came at Microsoft, where Byrne started in a market-facing security officer role and then became chief technology officer for worldwide industry.
“That was a big sea change for me, because I had moved from only needing…to be very competent in cybersecurity technologies to now having to have a very broad understanding of technology in order to understand all the products and the entire Microsoft portfolio,” she said. “And I didn’t get that role because I had technical expertise. I got that role because I had all this strategic business expertise that I had learned in those earlier roles at McAfee and elsewhere.”
Byrne, who later served as chief technology officer for Microsoft U.S., believes her ability to effectively communicate with varied audiences has proved to be her most valuable skill throughout her career.
“To be really good in a corporate setting, you have to have really versatile communication skills,” she said.
That requires not only hearing what people are saying, but ensuring they feel heard through both active listening and non-verbal cues, according to Byrne. It’s about fine-tuning messages for different audiences – from giving an executive briefing to leading a sales kickoff meeting – and the ability to manage one-on-one conversations and also deliver an address before thousands of people.
“I’ve always been a pretty good communicator – just debate teams from high school and on – but it’s a skill where there’s a lot of room to grow,” Byrne said. “You have to be in the context in which you use those skills in order to learn them. It’s a skill that ultimately I’ve honed over a really long period of time, across a lot of different environments and experiences that gave me the chance to practice.”
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