In our Meet the judges series, we’ll be chatting to some of the cloud tech experts on our judging panel to find out more about their experience, their passion for cloud tech, and what they’re making a beeline for at the awards ceremony buffet…
Jeanne Cuff is Associate Director at ISG-One.
An IT support consultant and leader, Jeanne has over 20 years of senior leadership and consulting roles in operations, human resources, network, and SaaS, working to build and implement best-of-class support services on and offshore.
Jeanne is passionate about increasing the number of women in IT through her volunteer work with the Chicago chapter of Chicktech.org. In an effort to offset the effects of the global pandemic, Jeanne is starting up a non-profit, TechEquityforAll.org, to provide technology and programs to underserved organizations and individuals.
Let’s get to know Jeanne!
I do like Tech for Good, I think it inspires me to see all these people doing some really amazing things. That’s something that I’m interested in; I’m very active in the nonprofit world, and I’m actually starting my own nonprofit called Tech Equity For All. The pandemic, if nothing else, showed us where the problems are and how access to technology is not across the board.
So that is, to me, a big one but I’m also really interested in Digital Transformation Project of the Year, I think that will bring up some really interesting things; it may be a niche or it may be global, but I think it’s really an awesome category.
Those are two categories that are fascinating to me, so those are my two favourites, although I like them all!
Last year, for the judging process, we had everything written out so this year I’m excited to see the video nominations. I feel like as a judge you’re looking for that write-up so you understand what the tool is, but the videos will really add a lot to it so I’m pretty excited to see them.
Last year we saw some people submitting things that were pretty boilerplate, more like marketing, so I think seeing something more personal, with a story attached about why it’s so good. There was an Australian company, for example, that had a great story, because they’d not had any turnover. Their staff just keep growing in the business.
The company checked out in terms of diversity, in terms of their environment, and nobody wanted to leave this company. I was like ‘wow, that’s saying something!’. So make sure your nomination is personal and has a great story to tell. That’s my tip.
I implement a suite of cloud software as a service tools called Governex, and that has had a big impact. Looking at it from the perspective of how can cloud actually help small businesses and entrepreneurs and non-profits get up and running, I think it’s a really important technology.
Companies have spent billions of dollars building up server farms and things like that in the past, and cloud technology can help grow you from the startup stage to a bigger organization; I think it really equalizes the playing field and that’s really exciting because it helps grow our entrepreneurial groups.
Oh my god, it’s huge. First of all, the nomination process is very open so people can start putting in nominations for things that may not be getting attention out there.
I think that it really helps promote organizations that are maybe led by women, and helps organizations promote their own diversity initiatives, especially startups or non-profits.
This is all an opportunity to really put those things out there; I think the awards are a chance to put something on your website to say ‘a group of people have looked at this and said yes, this is worthwhile’. Even if you don’t win, it’s still great affirmation of how fantastic your work is.
I implement software but I also have a podcast called ISG Digital Dish that I co-host. It’s women talking about stuff that men talk about in the world of digital, and because it’s women talking about it, we have our own approach to it. It’s pretty loose but we have so many great women to talk to, so for me, being part of the Digital Revolution Awards has introduced me to people like Maxine Nwaneri. And the judges from last year were also terrific.
Last year I had just gotten the podcast off the ground, but this year I’m going to look for judges to interview because they were all really interesting, and very thoughtful. So I can pull that into what I’m doing on the Digital Dish as well!
Oh a secret hidden talent! Okay; I can pick the best thing on any menu. My brother argues with me on this, but 98% of the time, I pick some of the best things on the menu. So that’s my secret talent, and if somebody wants to give me an award for eating out I am all about it.
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