60 Seconds with WITS Northeast Speaker — Audrey Troutt
Audrey Troutt is the Director of Mobile Engineering at Comcast. Her session at WITS Northeast is Grow Others to Grow Yourself: Lessons Learned Going from Tech Lead to Manager to Director.
Why is speaking at WITS important to you?
Speaking at WITS is important to me because I want to give back to the community that made me who I am today. The tech industry moves so fast, and the only way we can keep up and thrive is to be constantly learning and sharing what we are learning with others.
What inspires you?
I’m inspired by my teams: the passionate, fun, and hardworking people that come together to drive innovation and build useful and beautiful apps for people.
Most useful article you’ve read in the last month
It’s not an article, but I recently finished a book club on the Unicorn Project by Gene Kim. It’s a fiction book with a strong female lead and it uses the story to teach the reader about important ideals like psychological safety, the flow and joy of work, and continuous improvement. It’s fun, I’d definitely recommend it!
When you were a kid, what was your dream job?
I wanted to be an entrepreneur. As a 5th grader, I thought that meant someone who invents things and sells them on late night TV, but still I was excited by the idea of having a lab where I’d tinker and invent and solve the world’s problems.
Tell us something about your session
As I have leveled up in my career I was really surprised by how much I didn’t know about what it looked like to lead at the next level. I am deeply grateful for the mentors and leaders I’ve had over the years who have opened my eyes and shown me what it takes to influence and lead larger and larger organizations. I thought it would be helpful to reflect back on each of those surprises and lessons learned and share them with WITS. My dream is that I inspire someone to pursue an engineering leadership role!
What other sessions or speakers are you most excited to see?
I was very fortunate to have seen Priyam and Sarju give a version of “Tech Leaders Building Diverse Teams” at Comcast and I’m really excited to see it again! These are two amazing engineering leaders with a very practical and thoughtful toolkit for leaders.
Click here to register to see Audrey and the other amazing women in tech speaking at WITS Northeast.
