A Conversation About Innovation, Collaboration, and Joining the Open-Source Movement
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This article appears here with permission from SAPinsider. Copyright © 2020 WIS Publishing. All rights reserved. A Conversation About Innovation, Collaboration, and Joining the Open-Source Movement Stefanie Chiras, Red Hat’s Senior Vice President and General Manager, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Business Unit, Shares the Importance of Finding Your Voice and Bringing Value to the Table in the Tech Industry tefanie Chiras, who was recently engines for her undergraduate degree at Harvard, promoted to Senior Vice President pursuing her master’s degree and PhD in mate- and General Manager, currently rials engineering at the University of California, leads the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Santa Barbara, and completing postdoc work in business unit at Red Hat. Chiras aerospace engineering at Princeton University. Sjoined the organization in 2018 — transitioning Following her studies, as well as a summer intern- from the business side of IBM Systems — excited ship working for NASA, Chiras chose a career in the to move fully into the open-source world that Red technology industry instead of becoming a college Hat is so committed to, building off her experience professor as she originally intended. in hardware space. Chiras began her career at IBM Research in Her background includes studying mechani- 2001, and then transitioned through the engineer- cal engineering with a specialty in combustion ing and development side of the business, where SAPinsiderOnline.com she worked in everything from chip design to When I went to college, I loved physics and had system architecture, system design, and testing. grown up working with tools, so a mechanical engi- In 2012, she moved to the business side of IBM neering major seemed like the perfect solution. In my Systems, where her first corporate role involved senior year, another professor who was an amazing creating a business in the Linux space. Through that mentor suggested I go to graduate school and encour- exposure to the open-source ecosystem, Chiras aged me to pursue teaching at the college level. But gained familiarity and interest in Red Hat, which first, I took a summer internship at NASA in the she worked closely with as a trusted partner before materials program in Langley, Virginia, working in a eventually joining the organization. huge airplane hangar that was converted into a lab, SAPinsider recently spoke with Chiras to learn breaking sample materials apart, and studying how more about her journey in the technology industry they fractured. It was the first time I saw the passion and in the SAP space in particular. In this Q&A, she of people working together in a field like that. It was discusses the path that led to her current role, how a magnificent environment, with everyone so happy key mentors have influenced her life, and the rela- to be there every day, sharing ideas and fueling one tionship that Red Hat and SAP have forged to offer another’s innovation. I absolutely loved it. joint customers value today and into the future. In grad school, I went into materials engineering and pursued my PhD in that space with the full inten- tion to teach. I started teaching at the college level Q: Was there anything specific during my postdoc work and then decided to change about your upbringing or over to the commercial side of the industry. While education that helped lead you I loved the teaching aspect of academia, the lure of to a career in technology? collaborative and unified research being done in the industry was very appealing to tackle real-world prob- While I was growing up, both of my parents were lems. I joined IBM Research and ended up working in public school teachers. And my dad felt he could fix processor chips. I slowly worked my way up the stack anything that could be taken apart, no matter what it and gained a background in everything from metaliza- was — he just had to try. For example, he once wanted tion to chip design, system architecture, system design, me to help him fix a transmission that had gone out testing, and characterization. Then, around 2012, I on an old car. When I told him that I couldn’t do it, he moved from the engineering development side over said, “People do this every day. You can certainly do it to the business side, which was a big shift. once.” That was his line, and he gave me a fearless atti- tude toward tackling things, such as auto mechanics, that I didn’t know much about. Very few of the things Q: You’ve had quite a journey I have done in my life were things I knew everything throughout your schooling about before I got started. That exposure early on to and your career. Are there any going ahead anyway helped shape a worth-a-shot, particular skills you developed can-do view that helps guide everything I do, and that you feel helped your continually urges me to move to the next step and progression? take on anything. During my high-school education, I was very lucky I learned early on how important it is to surround to have a physics professor who was an unbelievable yourself with subject matter experts in other areas mentor. His teaching style was very pragmatic — he and be willing to learn from them. For example, when followed a this-is-how-the-world-works approach rather you get a PhD, you know a whole lot about a very than a textbook approach — which opened my eyes focused topic. Then, when you look to apply all that to a different view of science and changed how I’ve knowledge, it only works if it is complemented by other looked at things throughout my life. people’s expertise in other areas. Knowing your area SAPinsiderOnline.com is only part of it — it is far more important to know the boundaries of your knowledge and how it interacts with everything around it. It’s a choice to be open to learning. It’s okay to lack knowledge about something, and it’s a gift to find an expert in that area and work with them. Looking for new places to learn from is something that has kept me motivated throughout my career, and it’s one of the reasons I joined Red Hat. It’s so rewarding to listen to customers and act as that liaison to bring what they need upstream. For example, customers that run their business on SAP Q: What spurred your move software ask what we can do to help ensure they can from the hardware side of move forward, and that, in turn, feeds our ecosystem the technology industry to decisions — whether that is a choice of processor, enterprise software, and what public cloud, or SAP application. I find that three- do you love most about your dimensional arrangement so exciting because it’s like current role at Red Hat? an engine of innovation with many requirements from different areas, and it’s never stagnant. Coming from the business side in the systems division at IBM, and working in the Linux space, I had a great appreciation for the value of the ecosystem. I had an Q: What are your current opportunity to absorb Red Hat from the outside in, priorities and plans for helping and I was very intrigued by its approach, culture, and to bring SAP customers into the open-source aspect. The collaborative nature of the future? the environment was very appealing to me. I believe in the vision of open source and the innovation it builds Our core principles — of listening to customers first, on, and so it felt very natural and comfortable to me. ensuring we deliver what they need today, focusing Having come from the hardware side, I was eager to on what they need tomorrow, and giving them flex- engage in a space with a much broader ecosystem ibility going forward — are very similar to what SAP and upstream communities of everything from chip is delivering to its customers as it works to help them manufacturers to architecture suppliers, cloud provid- modernize. There’s good alignment between our focus ers, and independent software vendors. areas, and the technologies we deliver are extremely There are jobs and careers, and then there are complementary. With all the innovation that’s coming movements that you want to be a part of. I joined down the pipeline, customers want flexible environ- Red Hat to participate in a movement to understand ments that are resilient, reliable, and secure, and they open source and how to bring that value forward to are looking for partners that stand behind the com- customers. The beauty of my role is that it sits in the mitment to ensure all that while keeping up with the middle of that. It gives me the opportunity to work technology. And that’s where we come in. Red Hat is with Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers and under- very focused on what we call “the open hybrid cloud,” stand their needs, what problems they need to solve, which is a platform that provides customers with the what’s coming down the pipeline, and where they flexibility they want to deliver today and allows them want to move their business next. And it lets me take to more easily consume innovation and change as what we do with Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating they move forward, but without compromising their system, which serves as the technology underpinning security, stability, and resiliency. of all our other products, and helps connect that to Customers’ strategies and needs are forever chang- the rest of the portfolio.