Technical ability hasn’t always been the most important factor for one woman’s career in the technology sector. A recent honoree of CloudNow’s innovation awards, Caroline Wong (pictured) cites teamwork and an appreciation for life outside of the office as critical to her success. 

“It is about teamwork, and it turns out what has helped me tremendously in my career has been my ability to write and to work well with others … to communicate both verbally and in written form what’s going on technically,” said Wong (pictured), vice president of security strategy at Cobalt Labs Inc., an application security services company.

Wong’s company provides on-demand, manual penetration testing for web apps, mobile apps and APIs. “So we’re really trying to help organizations to secure their applications,” Wong stated.

Wong shared her journey through tech with Lisa Martin (@Luccazara), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the CloudNOW 6th Annual “Top 10 Women in Cloud” Innovation Awards held at the Google campus in Mountain View, California. They talked about the finer points of Wong’s background that have had a big impact on her career.

Well-rounded technical leadership

As Wong moved around in her career, she settled on a team with a healthy work life balance that complemented her well-rounded personality. This helped her appreciate her career decisions, and it positively impacts productivity, according to Wong. 

“People come into our office and they’re like, wow, people are happy, people seem well rested, people seem really focused and like they’re hardworking. They’re excited about what they do, but they’re not so stressed out,” Wong said. 

Although every award winner at the event has an impressive resume, none of them are particularly extraordinary gifted, Wong explained, emphasizing this humility is important to help the aspiring next generation feel these accomplishments are tangible and well within reach.

“We’re not extraordinary; we didn’t necessarily overcome any crazy challenges or barriers. … I think by sharing our stories and how different we are, and how we came from all sorts of different places, I think that can really be inspiring for the next generation,” Wong concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the CloudNOW 6th Annual Top 10 Women in Cloud Innovation Awards.

Photo: SiliconANGLE