I didn't set out to be an executive. I set out to build things that worked.
My career began in large-scale software delivery, where I learned a lesson that has never left me: the quality of an engineering organization is not an accident. It is built deliberately and patiently, usually by someone willing to do the unglamorous work of setting standards and holding them.
Early on I was the engineer obsessing over the craft. Over time I realized the highest-leverage work wasn't writing more code. It was building the conditions under which a whole team could do its best work. That shift, from individual craft to organizational craft, is the through-line of everything since.