Inspirational Women in STEM and Tech: Mariam Tariq of Progress On The 5 Leadership Lessons She Learned From Her Experience
Take time to take care of yourself: This may seem obvious, but it’s been the hardest for me. I would put work ahead of myself. I realized that by doing that, I was not able to show up as my best possible self. I was less effective and that required putting in more time. It was a vicious cycle. Take time to take care of you: You will show up better, more focused and more productive.
As a part of our series about “Lessons From Inspirational Women in STEM and Tech”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Mariam Tariq.
Mariam Tariq is Senior Vice President of Product and Marketing, Digital Experience at Progress. Prior to Progress, Mariam held leadership roles in R&D, Product Management, Customer Support, and Marketing at Ellucian, MicroStrategy, Oracle, and Zenprise delivering enterprise software products and services covering Digital Experience technology, Enterprise Mobility, and Data and Analytics. Mariam holds BS and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I am very fortunate that my Dad is an avid technologist and introduced me early on to building electrical circuits and computer programming. I loved the ability to create, build and program machines or write programs to solve problems. I always knew I would have a career in technology. I studied electrical engineering in college, and during the summers I interned at technology companies.
After graduating, I worked in technical roles building circuitry and writing embedded code for satellite tracking systems. I later transitioned to being a Java developer for enterprise software companies. I realized I had a keen interest in business and built on my developer background to move into product management and product marketing in addition to pursuing an MBA part-time. Along the way, I worked for Silicon Valley startups, medium companies, and large corporations. So far, it’s been a great mix of conceiving and building new products and selling and providing support to drive adoption and customer success.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began at your company?
I have had the opportunity to work for a variety of tech companies in areas including content management, ERP, mobility and analytics and to talk to customers about their strategy and needs. It’s been interesting to visit the same companies multiple times over the years but representing different technology solutions. With my current company Progress, I had the experience to connect with the same CIO at a university that I had spoken to at my previous company but on a completely different technology. It felt like such an interesting coincidence.
There are literally thousands of enterprise software companies out there, but it’s also a small world. Nearly every industry is focused on digital transformation, looking to modernize technology stacks to drive great end user experiences and drive operational efficiency. The companies I have worked for, while not in the same technology area nor competitors of each other, sell to the same roles — like CIOs, CDOs, CMOs and lines of business. We are all supporting different aspects of digital transformation.
It was nice to take what I learned while working in higher education software and apply that knowledge around institutional and student needs to my current role at Progress where we sell solutions for other parts of the technology stack. It helped me realize that at the end of the day, we’re all trying to make jobs easier, support organizations in their growth or innovation or reduce costs. We’re solving different aspects of the same needs and problems.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I remember when I first became a product manager, I was brought in to do a presentation to a customer. Normally, I present well when it’s my own content that I have written. But many times, you are inheriting a presentation especially when new to a role. In this case, I had moved from an engineering role to a product manager role. I had a product deck provided to me. I flipped through it and felt familiar with all that was on the slides.
I went to the presentation and I was terrible. I was essentially doing what you should never do — which was read off the slides. I could feel how bad it was going. There was no excitement, no energy and more importantly no demonstrable evidence that I knew what I was talking about.
I was so focused on the slides and wasn’t looking outside of that. What did this customer want to know? What were their pains? Through the experience, I learned a few things. First, ideally, collect that information ahead of time about who you are talking to and what they want to know. If you don’t have that opportunity, in most cases, it’s perfectly fine to start a presentation with questions to find out and encourage a short dialogue. Second, it’s important to know the why behind what you are telling people. Why is what I’m telling you important? What impact will it have? How can I help you? What is significant about what I’m about to tell you so you should stay attentive and not tune me out? (let’s face it — no one is going to be enthralled to sit for 30 minutes to listen unless it’s interesting to them). What does my audience need? (Not what am I tasked to tell them).
Granted that wasn’t the last time I gave an imperfect presentation. I have given others but almost every time I had a disengaged audience (which trust me you can feel), the problem was my preparation — not necessarily time spent but how I had prepared. The reality is that it’s not easy to add that context. It takes research, planning and asking questions. It takes time to connect a message to those you seek to influence.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
A company stands out when there is a focus on excellence and commitment to customers balanced with a management team that truly cares about the employees. The best companies are not the ones where you feel management is in an ivory tower ruling but instead setting direction while empowering employees to contribute and make a difference. This enables the entire company to feel connected to the mission. Convergence of customer and employee needs lead to the best products and services. Also, that environment fosters collaboration where teams are working with each other not against each other.
That’s why I love working at Progress. Our executive team is transparent with employees about the business and direction. We have great processes and resources available to us and a marvelous People team (we don’t call them HR) to support our success in every way possible. Working in a fast-paced field, experiencing both great technological and economic changes is not easy. Having clear direction, support, and an excellent team to work with takes the edge of the stress and puts the focus on what we can achieve together. I think it’s very important to feel this way in your career and ensure that the companies you work for truly exemplify this outlook.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
It’s hard not to be thinking about AI especially with all the buzz on chatGPT from Open.AI. We’re at an interesting point with AI in general. The concepts around AI have been around since the 1970s. I remember my dad had a copy of Patrick Winston’s book Artificial Intelligence. Winston was a well-respected professor at MIT and taught a class on AI. When the book came out, we didn’t have the computing technology to manifest those concepts. Fast-forward many decades, we’re now starting to see the impact AI can have. ChatGPT has certainly sparked a lot of experimentation and it’s pretty impressive to see how good it is.
At Progress, there is utilization of AI in our products with more to come. For us, it’s a true productivity driver. We build software that enables organizations to deliver digital experiences while driving a high level of efficiency. Generative AI technology is enabling us to drive more interactivity and productivity in our software.
People talk about AI replacing humans. But I believe it’s more about replacing what can be repetitive and freeing up resources to drive more creativity and innovation. There is also the risk I worry about with our youth in relying on AI versus learning some core skills. I am keeping an eye out with my kids!
Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Are you currently satisfied with the status quo regarding women in STEM? What specific changes do you think are needed to change the status quo?
Not at all. I am a member of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). For several years, I worked on programs to raise awareness of science and engineering careers for high school girls. While numbers are going up, we’re nowhere close to a 50/50 distribution.
There are two things to resolve– One is getting more girls into STEM and providing enough opportunities in our schools for all students starting in elementary schools. There are STEM programs but not nearly enough. I was lucky to have my dad engage me with STEM. I wouldn’t have found it on my own. I had that one-on-one support. To get awareness of STEM, there has to be a level of involvement that goes beyond a project at school here and there. There are good camps and programs outside school. The challenge is that it’s not available to everyone.
Second — we have to make career advancement and opportunities more accessible for women. I have peers (not only women) who I see hitting a plateau in their careers. It’s not because they are not capable. It’s either because their skills are underappreciated by management above them, they don’t know how to advocate more for themselves, or will accept the feedback they get without question (many times not explicitly provided but indirectly through lack of advancement). Women, I believe, can be susceptible to this. If we’re told indirectly through lack of opportunity or by not getting promoted that we’re not ready to take on more, we believe it. Many will fault themselves or wrongly assume it’s a capability or competence issue. It often is not. Managers are not all created equally. Some will recognize talent, others will not. I think more diversity training and a true focus on educating senior leaders to understand workforce diversity, how to coach and mentor talent will help.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by women in STEM or Tech that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts? What would you suggest to address this?
I believe there is unconscious bias that happens. Women think differently. When ideas are not the same or you are a minority in your opinions or ideas, you don’t feel supported and you think it’s you. Or you are led to believe your ideas are not significant or valid. I have experienced this many times in my career in not seeing eye to eye with those around me. I recall an example when I expressed concerns that a product we were building had no market. I was in a room with eight male peers and no one would take my concern seriously. I recall saying “Eight engineers who have never worked a day of their lives in marketing, designing a marketing product, makes no sense!” The product went ahead and it was scrapped years later at a cost of millions of dollars. One month of market research would have confirmed it and saved a lot of time and money. Knowing I couldn’t produce evidence in one week and the engineering team could draw up a product concept in that timeframe, I felt silenced when it came to presenting our status to management.
Every management team wants a successful company. No one wants to lose money. There is hardly ever a deliberate attempt to thwart a great idea because of who had it. The challenge is that you can hit egos and unconscious bias and even fear in others with your ideas.
I can look back and say there were some different ways I would have handled that situation. One was to find some support or mentorship and build relationships early in joining a company. There were executive leaders that I wished I had taken the time to get to know versus assuming they would be too busy or not interested in what I had to say. I wish I had spent time on that. You never want to approach a senior leader negatively or complaining but be friendly and constructive. You want their time, and in exchange succinctly provide insights that they often don’t have. That is valuable to them.
Second, in my work generally, I would have focused my time more on the results that mattered the most so my contribution was more impactful and visible, leading to more trust. I tended to try to do too much and had a reluctance to say “No” to anyone. Succeeding in the most visible and impactful area of the business would have earned me more credibility points than trying to support every person and every project demanding my time.
While it may take some guts and perseverance, a respected leader will be listened to. To earn that respect you first must show you can deliver on the most impactful successful outcomes. This requires careful planning and consideration as we’re often given more work than we have time for. Delivering great outcomes, combined with building a strong network of supporters including senior leaders, will provide the currency to be listened to when an opposing point of view is brought to the table. It’s not always this hard to be taken seriously by male counterparts but regardless, operating this way is a good approach and never a waste of time.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a woman in STEM or Tech. Can you explain what you mean?
There are a lot of different roles in any STEM career. It’s not only about being a scientist or engineer. I started that way and then realized I craved to know more about the business side. I was able to pivot my career from where I started to carve out a path aligned with my strengths and interests.
I didn’t stay in a pure engineering role or go the route of engineering management. When I graduated, I thought I would be a software architect because I felt the people who could code, wire circuits and build products were the most respected and coolest. I realized that my interests were more aligned with strategy and finding opportunities to grow a business and support customers. My engineering background has been useful to support that. For example, I used my development experience to support training sales engineers and having a deeper level of conversations with customers.
What are your “5 Leadership Lessons I Learned From My Experience as a Woman in STEM or Tech” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)
Lesson 1: Know your strengths. You don’t have to be good at everything. Hire or collaborate with people who compliment your abilities. I am an engineer by training but there were other people much more passionate about building products. My analytical and competitive strengths lined up better with defining what to build and understanding the market, which enabled me to be more impactful.
Lesson 2: Collaborate and seek out others’ help. Most of what you will learn will not be in school but from those around you. I am very introverted. There were times I would go and define a strategy on my own. I thought I was doing the right thing as a leader. But a leader doesn’t have to solve everything on their own, nor should they. It was fine to seed ideas and set direction, but involving others is key to getting buy in and consensus.
Lesson 3: Take the time to stay informed. We live in fast paced times. There are new technology breakthroughs to stay on top of. You need to understand your business — the numbers and performance and stay in touch with customers. There’s a lot to consume. Don’t get overwhelmed but allocate time for learning. To think ahead, you need to keep up.
Lesson 4: Sharpen your communication skills: For a long time, I focused on presentations or being able to get on a stage. The most critical communications are the ones you have each day, one-one-one, meetings, etc. You need to influence, share, negotiate and more. There are great programs like Toastmasters that go beyond making speeches and are easily accessible for a very nominal cost.
Lesson 5: Take time to take care of yourself: This may seem obvious, but it’s been the hardest for me. I would put work ahead of myself. I realized that by doing that, I was not able to show up as my best possible self. I was less effective and that required putting in more time. It was a vicious cycle. Take time to take care of you: You will show up better, more focused and more productive.
What advice would you give to other women leaders to help their team to thrive?
Be very clear about priorities, outcomes and timelines. We’re all trying to do too much. It’s impossible to meet every demand. It’s much better to do fewer things and do them very well than to do too much. Get personal with your teams. Understand what they do day to day. Then ensure you are clear on priorities and let the team know it’s okay to push back and even negotiate those priorities. Set measurable outcomes, ideally each quarter, and review them to ensure accountability. Every company I have ever worked for had many new “small” asks creeping in and before I knew it, I was overweight on tactics vs. strategy work.
Also, ensure that the team understands the ‘why’ behind what you do as a team. I’m a big fan of Simon Sinek and his concept of “Find your Why”. Many people come to work each day not truly inspired and passionate. Knowing the Why of the team, group and company can help connect the dots between the work and the mission.
What advice would you give to other women leaders about the best way to manage a large team?
Set clear directives across your entire team with strong leaders and managers to drive success. Empower that team to execute on objectives and clear work, or set priorities to get the most important things done. Understand the strengths and gaps on your team to drive alignment with goals and objectives. Make sure the entire team feels informed. Do this by being regular in your communications about the business, learnings, decisions, etc.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Loren Jarrett, who is my current manager, has been a tremendous influence for me. Loren was the first woman manager I had in my career. I had the great opportunity to work for her twice. Once earlier in my career and again now. She is a master at bringing closure. She doesn’t do it by forcing a decision down or trying to know everything. She has an inherent sense of what she brings to the table and how to bring the best of others to reach consensus. I had not seen this before.
I had a tendency to get wrapped up in what I didn’t know or even get intimidated. There is balance in knowing what you do well, what you need to learn and where to lean on others. You don’t have to be great at everything. Loren taught me a lot about the value of surrounding yourself with rockstars and empowering them. She is a strong leader who also invites collaboration. She brings in people to work together and set directives. That approach defuses office politics because direction and roles are clear.
After the first company we worked together at was sold, we went on to work in different companies. I stayed in touch with her over the years, reaching out from time to time for mentoring. She was always generous with her time. After 10 plus years, an opportunity came up to work for her again. So note — when you find people like that (and you don’t always have to have a direct working relationship with them), stay in touch. Networks are important!
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
I mentor others and make myself available for them as much as I can. I value the mentorship and help I have received. It wasn’t always easy to find. I had to seek it, and while everyone I asked didn’t respond, many did and have been generous. Often, there was little I could offer back other than a sincere “thank you.” Paying that forward is the best way for me to give back. I would love to do something on a much wider scale. I have some projects underway to support those goals.
I have been a Girl Scouts troop leader for four years now. I have the ability to influence and support girls, gain confidence, align to strengths, learn to work in teams and build other life skills that will set them up for a better, brighter future where they can explore who they are and find how to make a unique contribution.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
Talk about your fears and doubts. In my career, when I looked around, I saw a lot of success. I attended many panels with leaders who talked about their amazing accomplishments. Admittedly, I’m competitive and achievement oriented. I often felt intimidated or saw the limitations in myself or was frustrated with the speed of my progression. The reality is that I wasn’t alone in how I felt. I have encountered failures, setbacks or plain old being stuck and uncertain on where to go next. This is part of the process and it’s OK.
Early in my career I worked in a technology company led by a very charismatic CEO. He was sharp, articulate, and one of those people who captured a room and got people excited. I was a junior engineer at the time. He had taken the company through a very successful IPO and had retired shortly after. 15+ years later I decided to try and reach him on LinkedIn. I wanted to know more about his career. I had never interacted with him directly. Yet, he immediately responded and we had an amazing conversation for over an hour.
I was surprised to learn that before he took the CEO job, he had been let go as a senior Sales executive in a well-known company. The new company was basically a “two guys and a garage” situation but he decided to take the job. He took the company through an IPO and over $100M in revenue. The failure caused him to reevaluate what he wanted and he became more successful
In my own career, I stalled in a few jobs. Or I realized the culture was good for some people but wasn’t the right one for me to thrive. I think we learn more from mistakes and failures than when everything goes well. I’d love to start a “talk about your failures and insecurities movement”! I think there’s plenty to learn from how people recover and move forward that can inspire others in not feeling alone and know that others have hit some bumps and didn’t have a rocket ship trajectory.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“If you talk about it, it’s a dream. If you envision it, it’s possible. If you schedule it, it’s real.” Tony Robbins
The key message here is to take action on what you want to achieve in your life. I found it was easy to get sidetracked with responsibilities and being busy. Knowing what you want and setting goals is the first step. Then it’s all about actions you take each day — whether it’s fitness, quality time with family, reading, pursuing a passion or interest outside your work. Anything that’s worth accomplishing doesn’t require that you give up massive amounts of time. But schedule a little time each day.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
