Keri Gilder is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Colt Technology Services and a former winner of the Woman of The Year Award. She's passionate about promoting inclusion and diversity to ensure Colt is a business where everyone feels they can bring their true selves to work. In addition, Keri brings this passion to the wider industry as the Chair of the TM Forum’s Diversity & Inclusion Council and President of the Global Telecom Women's Network. Keri lives in London, UK, with her husband and two children and is based at Colt’s head office in London.

Keri was interviewed on My Duvet Flip, a leading careers show in the UK, by host Jack Parsons. They discussed career progression, the value of mentors, and the importance of finding purpose.

This is such a fabulous and insightful conversation, that it's definitely not to be missed.

Lessons learned by Keri through her first job

Jack begins the conversation by asking Keri what her first 'proper' job was and what lessons she learned.

"I worked for a company called Hughes Aircraft, and it's a defense contractor, and I worked out at a military base. The military base had every single military faction at the base, and it was probably the most fascinating job that I've ever had, and also maybe the most stressful, because I was responsible for all the communications on a global basis, for all the military theaters around the world," says Keri. "So, if our armed forces were not able to communicate, then they would lose the ability to understand what their next action would be in the future field. So it was fascinating, and during that job I was actually able to launch a satellite into space. It's one of the things that we did at the base."

Kerri explains that she was responsible for ensuring communications once the satellite launched into space. "We lost connection to the satellite for about six seconds, and it was probably the longest six seconds of my life because I was responsible for getting that back, and it's a very, very expensive endeavour if you launch, and then you can't communicate with the satellite," says Keri.

Working as a Network Engineer

The conversation then moves to the reasons why Keri left her job with Hughes Aircraft, with Jack commenting that it seemed to be such an interesting and meaningful job that required a high level of intelligence. Keri explains that she still loved that job, but as she was young and newly married and just out of university, she wanted to move to another company where she could make more money, and so she joined Lucent Technologies.

"When I moved, I moved into the consulting arm of Lucent, which basically meant that I was a hired Network Engineer. I always worked in an all-male team, I was usually the only female, and I was posted to Los Angeles, California. I was able to basically build the network architecture and then actually build the network for the Los Angeles Times, and all of their associated printing facilities, and all of their facilities that were in the Los Angeles Orange County area," says Keri.

Actively adding value and participating in the conversation

Highlighting that Keri worked in a team full of men, Jack asks whether this was difficult for Keri, and what a young woman going into a team of male colleagues should be thinking about, and how they should be dealing with it.

"The advice that I would give to young women is that you wouldn't be there if they didn't believe you were capable of being there. I had to make sure that I sat at the table and what I saw, more often than not, is that you'd go into a conference room and if there were other women that were with me for whatever reason, they'd sit in the chairs that were against the wall and not at the table and I never understood it," explains Keri. "Show up with your brain and show up prepared for whatever meeting that you're in. If you show up prepared, and you have the ability to add value and participate in the conversation, then you should."

Importance of having a mentor, coach and sponsor

Jack then moves the conversation on to the importance of mentoring in Keri's career, and the role it played in supporting her to advance into the CEO role with Colt Technology Services, as well as whether she believes everyone should have a mentor.

"I think you need a mentor, a coach, and a sponsor. I think you need all three and there is a big difference between them. Your mentor is somebody who basically is with you throughout your life. So, that may be your mom, it may be a friend, it may be a grandparent, it may be an aunt or uncle. But that mentor is somebody that is going to be with you throughout your career changes," shares Keri.

"A coach is usually your boss, he or she is going to tell you how to actually do your job better, and they're going to be on a day-to-day basis. Hopefully, if they're good, they tell you how to improve, and they'll help you to build the skills base that you need."

"A sponsor is going to get you into the next job," explains Keri. "You need to figure out who actually is making the decision on the next job that you want. Is it the boss of your boss? Is it your boss? Or is it someone in that circle, but maybe who can act as an outside influencer? And how do you actually build relationships with them?"

"I've had mentors throughout my entire career and usually my mentors actually have been men. And they've come naturally. I've had mentors that have been ex-clients. I've had mentors who are completely out of industry and came to me through a coach that I was paying. I've had mentors that have been family members who I've had a lot of respect for," explains Keri.

Working in sales and progressing into management

Keri then discusses her career progression, and how she moved from being an engineer to becoming a manager and leading a team. She moved to another company and started consulting in New York, where she worked in the financial industry doing the auditing from a network perspective for one of the first high-speed, high frequency trading networks. After that, Keri moved into sales engineering, and then into sales.

"I moved to a company called Ciena. We built optical equipment for all the telecommunications operators around the world, and I was able to get my first experience managing a sales team. I think eventually I would have gone into sales because I was leading the conversations in the meetings, albeit from a technical angle and from an engineering angle, but I was actually building trust with my customers through being honest about what we could do and not do for them as a vendor. This made me a good salesperson because they trusted me to be honest with them," says Keri.

Finding purpose and happiness

Keri shares that she believes it is important to be happy in the day-to-day, and that a lot of people look too far forward to happiness.

"I think you have to find a way to find your own purpose and be happy within your own skin. It's inner engineering. I didn't know what my purpose was, and I think most people don't," comments Keri. "Right before I became CEO of Colt, I thought I really needed to understand what my purpose is. I actually took over in May 2020, which was two months after Covid broke out. I wrote my purpose, and my purpose was to create extraordinary connections and to do that through health, through harmony, through happiness, and through hope," says Keri.

Creating extraordinary connections

Concluding the conversation, Jack asks Keri what her 'duvet flip' is - the thing that really gets her out of bed right now in life.

"Right now, it's really creating that extraordinary connection between technology, climate and how we can engage the communities around the world to continue to make the extraordinary connections with next generation technology, but do it in such a way where we're enabling the temperature to go in the opposite direction," concludes Keri.

Inspired by Keri's successful career?

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