As a content coordinating volunteer for ILTA, I was interested to learn more about our female leaders of today. In May of 2018, my ILTA colleague Chandra Foreman was able to put me in touch with the Chicago Chapter Board of Women in eDiscovery. As a non-profit organization, WiE holds monthly meetings for legal professional women with a primary focus on education and networking. They also collaborate, fundraise, and mentor. I enjoyed taking the interviews and am sincerely excited to share them with the ILTA community. “Women can empower other women” as Jennifer Roe so eloquently put. I hope you find these interviews as fun and insightful as I did.
Interview with Julie Lewis, President & CEO Digital Mountain, Founding Director WiE Silicon ValleyQ. What is your favorite elevator pitch to describe what you do to someone who is not familiar with the legal field?A. We find what’s relevant in a mountain of data whether for litigation, cybersecurity or investigation matters. Q. What advice would you offer someone who has potential as a leader, but needs that extra push to stand up and take the role?A.. If someone wants to be a leader coupled with potential, I’d tell them to take educated risks. You can’t “get”, if you don’t “try”. Helping someone grow may require having he or she make mistakes and skin their knees at times. Much of our school system and getting an “A” relies on individual effort. A leader knows how to motivate a team and give credit where it’s due. They help give those that work for them a little “nudge” to improve themselves. It’s about getting the team to win and getting each team member contributing his or her best effort. Q. As a woman in leadership, how have you navigated your role? How do you determine best practices? Select technology solutions?A. I guess I don’t think of technology as men or women. I’ve always been a bit of a Pollyanna in that way. Men have helped me a lot in my career. I believe technology solutions cannot be sought by reading marketing collateral as technologies don’t often work as advertised. You (or your team) need to kick the tires and test features, functionality and scalability. Also, cost plays a role in what’s ultimately selected. Q. How did you make the move from individual contributor to leadership role?A. I was always in leadership roles since high school and love working with people. Q. Do you have any tips for identifying personal career development needs?A. Everyone is different. You have to ask the individual employee coupled with your own personal experiences working with them. Sometimes employees like to get training in areas they are already strong in. Encouraging an employee to round out their skills is important. Taking cultural backgrounds into consideration is really important as well. Where we are headquartered in the Silicon Valley, we have significant diversity which is advantageous, but may be more complex in interpreting situations. Each employee is motivated by very different factors. Q. What would you say is the hardest or easiest lesson that you’ve learned?A. Easiest lesson is to migrate to those things that give you positive energy. Always make decisions where you can look yourself in the mirror and know you did the right thing. Q. What do you love most about what you do?A. Ability to solve problems, grow a company and work with great people. I also have an ability to influence the future. For example, this week I’m teaching a girls’ tech camp at Stanford with 75 girls. Also, besides running Digital Mountain, I am Director for WiE Silicon Valley and one of our missions is to raise money for Girls Who Code to move the needle for girls in technology who want to be in leadership positions. If anyone reading this would like to contribute, the link is: https://give.classy.org/SVWIEQ. What did you do before going to work for Digital Mountain?A. I spent time at enterprise storage and Internet infrastructure companies, as well as 4 years working as a venture capital professional and around 4 years at top accounting firms. I also have my MBA and CPA. It’s been 15 years working in e-discovery and computer forensics which has been a significant portion of my career. It went by really quickly. Q. How do you manage your time? Do you have any tips or tricks?A. Well, I don’t do it very well and just bought a “No” button from Target. Hah! Delegate where you can. Q. Are you an early bird or a night owl – do you have any favorite morning or night routines?A. Night owl for sure. I like to complete as much as I can before going to bed. However, you may catch me up at 5:30AM if needed. Q. Who would you say your mentors are and how did you select them?A. I have tons of mentors for different things. I’d always suggest finding a mentor outside of your firm or company. I didn’t search for mentors. They happened organically over time. In our industry, I always loved talking with Browning Marean and still miss him (I’m sure there’s many of you out there that feel the same way). Q. Name a book that inspired you and why.A. “Bootstrap: Lessons Learned Building a Successful Company from Scratch” by Kenneth Hess. The book walked through what it’s like to start a company and both pros and cons. I also had an opportunity to meet the author for lunch in Carmel. Yes, I enjoy networking ; )Q. How do you handle challenging personalities or challenging projects?A. Realize they are short-term and migrate towards things that give you positive energy if you can. Q. When I was researching for these interviews, I read a lot of amazing interviews. One of them, I am quoting from Oprah “As a woman leader, I feel like I have to be brave a lot.” This quote really jumped out at me. I wanted to ask, do you have any advice or tips on bravery?A. There are tons of judgement calls that have to be made every day. You make the best decision at a point in time with the information you have. Ultimately, there may be some decisions that were incorrect, but you may have had incomplete information at that moment. Don’t look back and keep on ‘truckin. Q. What would you be curious to know from other women leaders?A. How they balance everything.
Please check out:
Women in eDiscovery Interviews: Part 6
Women in eDiscovery Interviews: Part 8#LitigationSupportoreDiscovery#Leadership