Challenging The Gender Status Quo With Rachel O’Shea

May 13, 2022

While gender equality is heavily promoted in different organizations around the world, we cannot deny the fact that prejudice against women still exists, even in the smallest ways. In this episode, Rachel O’Shea shares her experiences with inequality. Rachel is a Senior Technical Specialist at Microsoft. She believes that the perception of women is always biased. That is why she dedicates her time to being better to prove that women should be treated equally to men! Tune in to learn how she’s breaking the status quo and challenging the norm!

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Challenging The Gender Status Quo With Rachel O’Shea

We’re talking to Rachel O’Shea who likes to challenge the status quo, which is a fantastic skill, especially when working in the corporate world. Rachel has over a decade of experience in the legal industry, primarily in the areas of Compliance, eDiscovery, Information Governance and Corporate Legal Operations. As a Senior Technical Specialist at Microsoft, Rachel empowers customers through digital transformation by leveraging the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge through Microsoft security and compliance solutions. By leveraging her experience in Legal Operations, Information Governance and eDiscovery industries, Rachel provides expert focus and guidance when assisting customers through their journey to the cloud and beyond. Rachel also talks about how her personal development has impacted her career when leading people. You’ll want to know Rachel’s strategy in taking back control in meetings.

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Rachel, thank you so much for being here. I’m so excited to have this conversation with you. The last time when we spoke, you had told me a story about you as a child challenging the status quo. Can you tell me the story and why you challenged the status quo? Thanks so much for inviting me. This is a wonderful platform. I’ve always been one to challenge everything. I’m sure my parents will smile at that. I had an older brother and an older sister, and there was little Rachel that would go after everything. I would roll up my sleeves, get on with it and strive with it. That has been driven from me from the get-go. I had an older brother and older sister and I just wanted to muck in with them. I wanted to play football with my brother. That was soccer in the US. I wanted to play house with my sister. In the school environment, all the boys got to go, mess around and play football in the schoolyard. I was wearing a skirt. You can’t run around, drive, slide and do all those things. I always have had this innate, “Why not? Why can’t I do something like that? Why are they different from me? Why am I different from them? Why does it have to be that way?” For me, it was understanding, “Why do the boys get to wear shorts and trousers and girls are not? I don’t understand that. Can someone please explain that to me?” It’s challenging that idea of why them and why not me. I asked my parents and thankfully, I have very supportive parents. I said, “Why do the boys get to wear shorts and I don’t?” They said, “I don’t know. Let’s go ask him.” We walked into the headmaster’s office or the principal’s office and asked why can’t Rachel wear shorts or why can’t I wear trousers and I have to wear a skirt? He said, “I don’t know.” It was school policy so they updated the school policy to allow girls to start wearing shorts and trousers in the winter. It was one of those things I challenged. They said, “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to. We agree with your reasoning. You were able to.” We were the first school in that area to allow girls to wear shorts and be elective to wear shorts or trousers. It was pretty amazing. The reason why I’m asking is that when we talk about career development and women trying to move up the ladder, many of us women don’t challenge the status quo. That is why I thought your story is so telling about it’s okay to challenge the status quo. If we don’t, then things are never going to change. My mission is to eradicate the gender gap in the world and I’m doing so by empowering women in career development. Challenging the status quo is one of the things that we have to do. You do a lot of reading and listening, which means that personal development is important. Tell me a little bit about how you got into reading a lot and what books specifically helped you. It’s not been something normal to me. I came out of college and swore I would never read a book again. In college, that’s all you do. You should read and read. I went into the business world right after college. There are a couple of projects that being a new adult in a working world, I thought I knew everything. I was going to change everything and it was going to be great.

NWB 5 | Challenging The Status Quo — Challenging The Status Quo: It’s okay to challenge the status quo, because if we don’t, then things are never going to change.

After a while, I realized that I don’t know everything. There’s a lot to learn and I wanted to go into project management. That opened my door to the idea that I don’t know everything. There are so many more perspectives out there than the one that I thought was the road to go. That kicked off the effort of, “What else don’t I know? What else is out there that I’m not aware of and a different perspective that I should bring in?” One of the things that I was looking at was transitioning from an individual contributor into a manager and a promotion at that. I haven’t been into management before. I also haven’t started a new role that was so impactful. I need to set the groundwork. I read The First 90 Days and that allowed me to align my thoughts. Some of them were wrong and some of them were right but it scripts out what that looks like. It then went into managing people, so understanding the psychology and the neuroscience of leading a group of people. There’s another book on the neuroscience of leading a team and how teams work together. It fell into Brené Brown. It is fantastic. I’ve read every single one of them, even her newer ones. It’s the understanding of courage and vulnerability. I was in those positions where I didn’t know what I was doing. I wanted to make sure I learned from my mistakes. Going from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset was key to that. The learnings from Brené and also Mindset is another book that every human being should have on their bookshelf by Dr. Carol Dweck. She’s fantastic. The foundation of changing the Microsoft culture was based on that book. It’s super impactful. Another one that helped me as I moved into a very sales male-centric IT business forum is the book by Amy Cuddy, Presence. She’s very famous. She did a TED Talk on it that became very popular. That fueled her book from moving into the mainstream. It’s about the superwoman pose, the impact of taking up space, having the mentality and the physical body language to match that so that you can fill that room, feel powerful and confident before you walk into a meeting into a presentation or anything that you need to pick up your chest a bit on. I love those books. You have a strategy when you’re attending meetings in person. On Zoom and over the computer, it’s not as prominent. You had mentioned your strategy of getting to meeting early. Tell me a little bit about that. Part of my role and virtually, it’s a little bit different but prior to that, I would do a lot of presentations. A lot of my role was to present in front of customers. One of the things I learned very quickly, being a woman in a meeting and typically you’re presenting to mostly men, given it’s the IT industry, you get into the room, set up and then become very small. It’s important to understand what your impact is to the organization and be able to articulate that. – Rachel O’Shea Click To Tweet I would do this. I would sit in front of my computer and wait for everybody to get in. They almost asked, “Who is she? What is she doing here? When is lunch coming? Who’s done the coffee run,” or something very stereotypical. I have found myself falling into that mode of becoming very small. After reading the Amy Cuddy book, I realized that it was my body language that was creating that sense of being small. I was either being not approached in the sense of you as an actual presenter. You’re an important person to this meeting or that I was the help and I was there to sit and take notes. After the fact of being strong, keeping my head up and having that physical presence in that room, a couple of things that I changed was I would come in early, set up but then I would stand up and move out of the meeting room. I would go get my cup of coffee or water. I would stand outside and greet people as they come in. I would say, “Hello, I’m Rachel I’m presenting. I’m your technical specialist here to meet with you. I’m pleased to meet you. We’ll get started in a couple of minutes.” I took control of who I was, what I meant to this meeting, and then the agenda as well so that they understood that I was in control. That is amazing. That’s the keyway. It’s an easy way too to take back that control because a lot of us women will get into a conference room and we’ll either take a seat in the wall or to one side. We’ll put our cup, our book and everything close to us. The whole thing about Amy Cuddy is to take up space, spread out and take a lot of notes. When you’re an attendee, you take a lot of notes and pay attention. That’s great for you to stand outside, greet people and take that control back. I love that. How do people take that? How do the attendees react or respond to you before and after you implemented that strategy? It was pretty stark. I then had to spend 10 minutes, 15 minutes or tell throughout the presentation. I had to almost give my resume of why I was there. I had to justify my being in that room with a lot of powerful people. By switching that course of action to taking charge at the beginning, they knew, “She’s here to do her job. She’s the reason why we are here to listen to her.” There was never that situation of having to explain why I was there and what my role was. The people on my team as well, whether it’s the sales rep or other teammates that were with me that were also presenting, most of them were male. They are also being advocates and didn’t have to bolster me like, “Rachel is great. She’s amazing. She’s our SME.” They didn’t have to do that. I didn’t feel like they had to do that either to help with putting my resume in front of an important person to understand why I’m the one talking and not the guys that are next to me. I love that. That’s a fantastic and super-easy way to take control. It doesn’t have to be in a meeting. It can be pretty much in any venue. This is truly important. You listen to some podcasts. The podcasting is along the same lines as the books as far as making sure that you were a better manager to be able to educate yourself and lead a team. Is that what you use the podcast for?

Yes. In the podcast, it’s a lot of knowledge. It’s industry knowledge as well as understanding how other leaders within my space communicate information. We have a very strong leader in our Cybersecurity Division, Amy Johnson, who puts out an amazing podcast. The topic that she talks about is cybersecurity which is very male-centric. Talking about those, how she interacts with experts, whether they be male or female but pulling in that diversity is super important to understand the different perspectives of it and how she communicates out to the public in that way. I found that helpful. I also listen to Brené’s two podcasts and reiterate the content that she pushes out, which is phenomenal. We had mentioned a little bit about men articulating certain cues. Can you talk a little bit about that? What kinds of cues do men deliver or display differently from what women display? This is a primary topic that Amy Cuddy talks through as well in some other books that you’ll find that talk about human behavior and how men and women articulate that differently. You’ll see it. Virtually, it’s very difficult because people don’t come on screen or have a fuzzy background but certainly in person, as we come back to going into the office, traveling or going to see customers. The difference that I see is when men want to listen, they lean in. When they’re not interested, they lean back. For me, it was mirroring that body language so that they understood that I was speaking their body language as well. I do typically find that when I’m having a conversation that is hard, telling the customer, “No, we can’t do something like that,” or whatever it may be, leaning in is a way that engages the entire group than if I were to power in. A very feminine way of making yourself small is to cower in and cross your arms. That automatically closes off the line of communication that somebody across the room may have with you. The other is sitting next to someone as well. I thought sitting across the room was the way to do it so I could have eye to eye contact with whoever I was talking to, but sitting next to them made it a little bit more human. We could have those hard conversations. When you’re in close proximity to each other and have that standoff human interaction is very difficult to have. You’re almost forcing it to be that close to one another. As an example, I used to manage people but when they would come into my office, I would be looking one way and the door would be the other way. I would physically turn my body towards them so that they knew that I was paying attention to them. On the other hand, when I would go into one of my coworkers’ offices, he would continue to look at the computer even though I was over here talking to him and felt like, “I’m right here.” It doesn't matter what you're trying to achieve or innovate. You need those different perspectives to help you push those lines. – Rachel O’Shea Click To Tweet I never wanted my team to feel that. I always made it a point to physically turn my body over towards the person. That way, they feel heard, understood and acknowledged. That’s a big part of that too. I want to go back to a couple of things that you said. You’re in a male-dominated IT world and you’ve mentioned diversity. You work for a very large IT company. How is diversity impacting women in your workplace? Over the course of several years, Microsoft has made an enormous impact in trying to diversify and bring in inclusiveness into Microsoft itself. It’s still an effort that we do you and continue to do. That’s one area, especially in the field that I’m in, that is still a struggle. At the level of what I do and coming from the skillset, it is a skill gap across everybody. Trying to bring in that diversity and inclusiveness has been tricky. The level of effort that we put into it as a company and as a culture is so important for all organizations to keep as a North Star so that other perspectives can come in. That’s what you need to progress and innovate in whichever organization or what you do as a company. It doesn’t matter what you’re trying to achieve. You’re trying to innovate and push that line. You need those different perspectives. For us and me in particular, it’s having advocates within your organization. I’ve had and have been very fortunate to have the most amazing managers. A manager is someone that should advocate for you as an individual. It has to come from the top down for them to advocate and have that career progression, career development, and moving people through that. If they don’t think they can do it, then why? Let’s challenge you. What roadblocks are in your way so we can move them or provide you with help to bring in that knowledge in the skill gap and move you up that ladder? The manager that I strive to be in the future is to be there, help someone progress and move on. With the diverse team inclusion, that has to come from the top down to advocate for those to move on. You have a team. How do you handle a situation when you have somebody on your team that maybe isn’t doing as well as they could be? They are simply struggling in their position and you’re are not able to move them up the ladder the way you would want them to do. To me, that becomes empathy and training and, “Why? What’s going on?” It’s asking those questions and leaning in. Maybe they’ve got some stuff going on at home that is not just a kid sick but like taking care of an elderly parent or going through a divorce or whatever it may be. It’s taking care of the human being first, understanding from that and being empathetic with that. Maybe it’s a little bit longer of a journey than we need to take.

Within my organization, it’s very true. Maybe this track and path aren’t for them and it’s okay to not continue that path, change and try new things. It’s advocating, “Are you okay? Is everything okay? Is this right for you? Is this what you truly want to do? What are your passions?” Getting into the passion of someone is important so that we’re not shoving someone into a road that they couldn’t care less about and they’re not interested in it. Maybe they see it as a stepping stone to get somewhere else. That’s good to know as well. I love the fact that you recognize that maybe the track they’re on isn’t the right track. Maybe at that point, it’s time to pivot or try something else. More than anything, it’s the conversation with that individual. Even more important than that is for the individual to be able to come to you as their manager and say, “Rachel, I don’t like what I’m doing. It’s not the right fit. What can I do?” Start exploring different things and your passion. If it’s not your passion, then you’re not going to excel. You’re going to be bored. It’s not the right spot for you. There is no shame in saying, “This isn’t for me,” and then trying to do something else, whether it’s something in the team, in the company, in the organization or a different 180 and move in a different direction. Empathy is going to come into play when you’re a manager to be able to lead that person and the responsibility of the person to communicate with the manager as well. Having mentors and not just a manager mentor or a teammate mentor but going outside into different departments and asking to be mentored, I don’t think anybody would turn you down unless they had 50 other people that they were mentoring at that time. Asking to be mentored and having a reason why and asking them, “This is what I want out of this mentorship. These are the areas that I want to work on,” has been super impactful for me. I went through a transition of, “Is this what I want to do or do I want to make a pivot away from what I’m doing?” I went onto our career website. I typed in and used keywords of things that I’m passionate about. I saw a bunch of jobs and on the internal site, you can see who the hiring manager is. One of them was super intriguing. I reached out to her and said, “You’re the hiring manager for this particular role. I don’t want the role but I’m super interested in what you do. The keywords that you use, that is something that I’m super passionate about. I would love to understand what that means within our company. What does that look like for your role? How did you get there? What does that journey look like?” She’s still my mentor and I went through that path with her. To this day, we still meet, connect and network like, “I want to get better at my sales acumen level.” “Talk to this guy. He’s great. He built this whole program around it. You would do well in talking to him.” “I want to build a community and a program. ” “Go talk to Lucy. She has done that and is doing fantastic.” Mentorship shouldn’t be just about, “What do you do? How do you do this?” It should also be about networking throughout your organization. I don’t find a lot of women do that. It’s building out your network and brand within your organization. You may not like what you do but you love the company. How do you know where else would be a good fit? Sometimes the impact comes from shutting your mouth, opening your ears and listening, and being able to take in what people are actually saying and asking for instead of trying to solve the problem immediately. – Rachel O’Shea Click To Tweet I love the fact that you reached out to this person and said, “I’m interested in learning more about your role. What do you do?” That’s a great way for people to learn what other jobs entail, and what skills they need to obtain to get to that level. I love that you’re like, “I don’t want your role. I just want to know more about it.” That was pretty cool. As far as your trajectory for your career, you’ve had several different positions in a male-dominated world. What are some of the challenges that you have to overcome in getting to where you are? One of them is undervaluing my potential and there’s a lot out there. I hope this is one of the topics that I hope you go into. Something that we talked about was asking for salary and not being able to articulate your impact on the salary. There are a lot of people that struggle with asking for money, asking for more money or understanding what their impact is on their value and their salary. That has always been a struggle for me because I never imagined in my life that I would be where I am as far as a career, my salary and all of that stuff. When I got out of college, I thought $75,000 a year was amazing and I was rich. Little did I know that’s not the case, but understanding what your impact is on the organization and being able to articulate that. If someone were to come to you and say, “What is your impact? What have you done?” If that is a conversation that you need to have, what is your documentation to prove that impact? Keeping a track of that has been something that I’ve learned over time. When you do come up for promotion, show your impact and write it down because it may not just be your manager’s choice. It may be several managers or whatever it may be. Being able to show that is important. It’s something that has taken me a while to get through. I have asked for a raise and said, “No,” but I’ve seen other male colleagues get raises and promotions. I was turned down because I wasn’t on the budget. It’s those types of conversations that I have struggled and overcome. It goes back to having an advocate and having advocates as managers but being able to network and build that has been primary to that. Along those lines, that line of thinking happens to so many of us women in corporate as far as asking for a raise and being told no, but then your male counterpart gets a raise. Not that I would ask her anything like that but it’s obvious sometimes. One of the things that you said is to show your value. I always tell people to make sure that you have a rosy folder or a Rachel folder where you can save either the projects that you’ve been working on and complimentary emails where people are praising your work and being able to articulate. Even before you can articulate it, you need to sit down, write out and make a list of all the projects that you have worked on. If you can put any type of metrics to the projects, that’s going to be important. If you can say, “I increase sales by 5%,” that’s going to be big. It could be 5%, 50% or whatever it is. For you to be able to physically say the words out loud to your boss and say, “I would like to request a raise review because of these things,” you have to spend a little bit of time putting all those projects down on paper, trying to come up with metrics.

There are always some metrics that you can come up with. They might not be the most scientific but even if you try a little bit, it’s better than nothing. Let me turn the rolls around on you as far as you are a manager. What happens when someone comes to you and says, “I want a salary raise?” What are the things that they’re doing right and not doing right? I’m an individual contributor but I have been a manager in the past. Unfortunately, it wasn’t my decision. It was the managing partners’ decision of who got raises. I wasn’t even involved in that discussion, which speaks to that process right there. For me, I had to advocate for my team up to him but outside of that, I’m fortunate I had zero influence in what ended up them being divvied out. I told them this is what was determined at that level, unfortunately. That happens a lot in corporate. It’s just the nature of the beast. What other challenges did you encounter throughout your career? For me, it’s understanding what my impact is on a team and being able to voice my opinion in a way that doesn’t become pushy or that I’m trying to nuzzle in and then listening as well. One of the tricks is you want to be heard, seen and make an impact in the room. Sometimes that impact comes from shutting your mouth, opening your ears, listening and being able to take in, especially when you’re dealing with customers. Take in what they’re saying and ask instead of trying to solve the problem immediately. You might be solving a problem that was a year old and not what they need. Those are the things that through the course of my career I’ve had to do, coming in as a college kid that thought she knew everything. Also, then learning that listening and not trying to answer the question in my head, and then trying to solve problems. It’s been a challenge I work on every day. I still deal with imposter syndrome. What about imposter syndrome? I get on meetings most days. In most of my meetings, I am the only woman on the call. Virtually, it’s a little bit easier because you take yourself on mute and say something. It’s also easy to hide as well, not want to speak up and say, “Thank you very much,” and then leave the meeting. For me as well, it is being present when I need to be. I still do my Amy Cuddy pose when I’m about to go into a big presentation and do the big meetings. Change your fixed mindset into a growth mindset. Get out of your comfort zone and continue to learn. – Rachel O’Shea Click To Tweet It’s not just customer-facing either but I work with some of the most intelligent people on the planet. Going into an internal meeting as well and knowing that I’m here for a reason, I was selected to be here. My thoughts and opinions do matter, whether I vocalize them on the call or I articulate it after the meeting in an email or a chat to whomever. That’s how I deal with that. There are some meetings where you don’t get a word in edgeways and that’s how it goes sometimes. To make sure that you are able to articulate your opinion in a more comfortable format, send an email and revisit that recording of that meeting. I just did that. I was out of the office. I went through the recording, made notes and provided my opinions to that in a chat. That’s the way I was able to articulate that. I wasn’t able to join the meeting but if I was, there were a lot of voices on there that were certainly a little bit louder. For me, that may have been a comfortable thing I did anyway. Interestingly enough, we are using Teams at work. It was a little bit of a learning curve but I love the fact that we can do so much stuff. For example, the recording is automatically part of the meeting. I can do notes and everybody gets the notes. Even using the chat is so key because even post-meeting, you can still use a chat for that meeting and either ask questions or answer questions. I am getting there. I’m becoming a fan slowly but surely. I like the fact that you said that even on virtual, sometimes it’s easy to hide. One of the ways that people hide is by not even turning on cameras. If you want to be visible and make an impact, you need to put yourself out there and turn your camera on. If you’re shy, still turn it on, do your hair or makeup or however you want to show up. It’s important not to hide. That’s crucial when it comes to women that are trying to advance in their careers to be visible, get that network, people that are supporting you and you’re supporting them, that you can ask questions of, bounce ideas off of each other and support each other. It was in Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In book where she was saying that in the White House, women are not heard. They came up with this plan. If one of them had an idea and vocalized it, it was not heard but if her female counterpart part said, “That’s a great idea,” she repeated that, then she was heard. It’s like, “How is that possible?” Being visible and not hiding is going to be important to make a difference in a splash in work and your world. What’s next for you as far as continuing to develop? You already have done a lot of self-development. One of the other things I wanted to mention is you said that you have to remind yourself that you belong there. That mentality is knowing that you deserve to be there, you deserve the job and it wasn’t given to you, you earned it.

That’s critically important for you as well as other women to acknowledge that. Sometimes we don’t give ourselves enough credit and say, “I was lucky to be in the position that I am,” but that’s not the case at all. The last couple of things that I wanted to ask you is what is next for your self-development? I keep reading and rereading. I am reading Atomic Habits. That’s been pretty eye-opening. I’m a goal setter. I have a meeting with my best friend every month. We set goals for that month. For me, I go through these struggle buses on, “What am I going to try to achieve?” Maybe I’m down on myself because I didn’t quite get all the way with my past one at the beginning of the year. All of the healthcare and fitness regimes are starting to teeter off. Through that, it’s trying to change my identity. If you’ve read Atomic Habits or want to read it, it’s about looking at goals from a different lens of trying to change your identity. If you say I’m an athlete, then you’ll live the life of an athlete. You will want to workout, do this and go on a run for 5 miles, which I don’t think I’ll ever do. By changing your identity like, “I am a manager, a good parent or an engineer,” by then living that lifestyle, you will be what you think you are. That’s been super impactful. As I look at my career development and journey, I’m going through a lot of management training at the moment. Building on the empathy and action, I will probably reread Carol Dweck’s Mindset for the fourth time to bring into the concept of potentially at some point, I will have a team that has people with different backgrounds. I’m not a parent. I don’t have kids but I may have someone on my team that does. What does it look like for them when they’re struggling and seeing their potential? How do we help them change that fixed mindset into a growth mindset? Going through a lot of that by continuing to learn, continuing my network as well and building that out. The reason I was so intrigued by being invited into this is growing that network out with like minds, which is important for me. I’m going to ask you one final thing. Can you share two actionable tips that women can apply to their careers? Build your network and brand. That’s the number one thing. Get out of your comfort zone as far as the network goes. Run your career on a career website. Understand what other people are doing, see if that’s something for you and reach out. Nobody is going to turn you down to be their mentor. Ask questions but also have a reason why. What do you want to get out of that mentorship? What are those pointed questions that you want to go after and dive deep into? The second one is learning and picking up different books. A lot of the authors that we spoke about were females. There are some amazing books out there. Simon Sinek is probably on my top list as well. Go through some of those. If you read Brené Brown, Dare to Lead and listen to her podcast, she has some of the most influential leaders. Buy and read their books. Building out your knowledge and skillset is so impactful. You can take nuggets from everything. If you get imposter syndrome, how do you deal with that? Stand strong or ask and articulate a project. Also Start With Why from Simon Sinek. There are these little nuggets I picked apart that have helped me grow. Like you said with the Atomic Habits too, once you say something into the universe, it happens. For me, I need to make sure that I work out first thing in the morning. If I don’t work out first thing in the morning, it is not going to happen. I get into my day and my routine. I make it a point to get up and workout right away. I try to do my meditation, my journaling, get ready for the day and go from there. At least this way, I’m done with my workout first thing in the morning. Rachel, thank you so much for this awesome conversation. We covered a lot of great ground. More than anything, I want the readers to pick up things they can learn from you so that they can apply them to their lives. Our mission here is to eradicate the gender gap, and we’re going to do it by continuing to empower women in their careers. That’s exactly what we’re here for.

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What a fantastic conversation we had with Rachel. To recap her two tips, number one is to build your network and brand. Tip number two is to keep learning. We talked about some great books. If you’re not a book reader, you can also listen to podcasts. Rachel is in the midst of her career and all of the personal development that she’s doing is making a difference in her career. Eventually, she wants to become a manager, and I can tell you that Rachel is going to be a fantastic manager. With that, remember to be brave, be bold and take action. Until next time.

About Rachel O’Shea

Rachel O’Shea has over a decade and a half worth of experience in the legal industry, primarily in the areas of Compliance, eDiscovery, Information Governance and corporate legal operations. As a Sr. Technical Specialist at Microsoft, Rachel empowers customers through digital transformation by leveraging the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge through Microsoft Security & Compliance solutions. By leveraging her experience in Legal Operations, Information Governance and eDiscovery industries, Rachel provides expert focus and guidance when assisting customers through there journey to the cloud and beyond. Rachel started her career at a large software development company as a legal operations manager. There she specialized in contract management workflows, litigation readiness, corporate governance and performed many paralegal level tasks. With a move to an eDiscovery Service Provider in 2011, Rachel held various roles throughout her career; eDiscovery Project Manager, Director of Client Development and as a Solutions Architect within the Information Governance division.