Chat with Shellye Archambeau – Silicon Valley’s first female African-American CEO
This evening unfolded a remarkable chapter as I attended a fireside chat with Shellye Archambeau, hosted by the Black Founders Network at the University of Toronto. Shellye, one of Silicon Valley’s first female African-American CEOs and previously an executive at IBM, has crafted a legacy that extends far beyond her role as the former CEO of MetricStream.
Her name, synonymous with influence and success, was listed as No. 2 on the 25 Most Influential African-Americans in Technology in 2013.
The session was a reservoir of insights, and in this piece, I reflect on a few pivotal takeaways that resonated with me during the chat.
A few key reflections include:
- Mapping Goals to Reality: Start by identifying a goal, and then delineate everything that must ring true for it to materialize. Armed with this, sketch a plan to navigate towards making those conditions a reality, thereby edging closer to your goal.
- Pattern Recognition for Success: Seek out individuals or companies who embody your aspirations. Identify patterns in their journey and replicate those steps, acquiring requisite skills, exposure, and networks to propel your own trajectory toward similar success.
- ‘No’ is Not Always the Final Answer: As Shellye shared from her wealth of experience in sales and marketing, a ‘no’ can sometimes stem from an obstacle rather than a lack of interest. The key, especially for us young dreamers, is to discern the ‘why’ behind the ‘no’, address it, and pave a path towards a ‘yes’.
- The Value of Sales Skills: For young individuals navigating their career paths, mastering sales can instill the art of reading people, negotiating, and inspiring actions, thereby laying a foundation for robust leadership skills.
- Acquiring In-demand Skills: Even if you’re uncertain about your career direction, immerse yourself in a role or company where you can acquire skills that are highly sought after, ensuring you always possess something that is in demand.
Attributes observed in successful founders encompass:
- A relentless curiosity and a perpetual commitment to learning.
- A passion so palpable that it permeates through their teams.
To emerge as a stellar leader, establishing and maintaining a consistent leadership style is crucial to avoid confounding your team and wasting resources like time. Being specific in your requests, such as soliciting feedback in a targeted manner, and showcasing vulnerability also pave the way for authentic leadership.
Shellye expressed an aversion to the term “work-life balance”, advocating instead for “work-life integration”. The objective, as she explained, is to seamlessly weave work into the tapestry of our lives, creating or adopting systems that facilitate the inclusion of all the activities we cherish.
Ruthless prioritization and diligent execution on those priorities are cardinal, as is remembering that significant achievements are rarely solitary pursuits. Asking for help, being ready to reciprocate, and viewing mistakes as valuable learning experiences form the bedrock of sustained success.
In the realm of company building, Shellye emphasizes the paramount importance of enamoring your customers. An intimate understanding of them empowers you to serve them in unparalleled ways. She said,
If you are going to build a company, fall in love with your customers and know them better than anyone else. This will enable you to serve them better than anyone else can.
This chat was not just insightful but also deeply inspiring. The lessons imbibed today will linger, guiding me toward future endeavors, and I eagerly anticipate more of such enlightening sessions.
Dr. Ehoneah Obed (Pharmacist, Software Engineer, Health Informatician, Founder)
My work focuses on identity engineering, which is the deliberate process of designing and updating who you are, personally and professionally.
Most people experience identity as something fixed or accidental. It is shaped by parents, early success or failure, education, and society’s definition of what a “good life” looks like. They adapt to it rather than questioning it. What most people do not realize is that identity is not just something you discover. It is something you can actively engineer.
Personal identity engineering is about gaining control over how your beliefs, values, and self-concept are formed and reinforced.
Professional identity engineering is about translating that internal identity into skills, work, leverage, and visible contribution in the world.
When people feel stuck, it is rarely because they lack motivation or talent. It is because they are trying to change outcomes while leaving the underlying identity system untouched. Careers stall. Confidence collapses. Direction feels unclear. The system keeps producing the same results.
I learned this by rebuilding myself multiple times.
I trained as a pharmacist for six years. While working in hospitals, I began learning to code alongside my job. That led to building real software, selling products, transitioning into software engineering, completing a master’s degree in health informatics at the University of Toronto, and now building startups and systems full time. Each transition followed the same pattern. My identity did not change because I thought differently. It changed because I took specific actions that produced new evidence, and that evidence forced a new story about who I was capable of being.
That is the core mechanism behind identity engineering.
Identity updates when you intentionally generate evidence that contradicts your old self-image, then compound that evidence until the old identity can no longer run the system.
This blog is where I document that process. I write about how to design identity experiments that are small, controlled, and reversible. How to build proof-of-work that changes both how you see yourself and how the world responds to you. How to move forward without waiting for clarity, confidence, or permission.
This is not motivation and it is not coaching. It is systems thinking applied to human change.
I also write The Ledger, a weekly record of systems and experiments for building a life you own.
And I built the Identity Audit, a diagnostic tool that helps you understand your current identity state before you attempt to change it.
I am not presenting a finished theory. I am engineering this in real time, using my own life as the test environment. If you want more agency over who you are becoming, both personally and professionally, you are in the right place.
Dr. Obed that you , for even though we were not live in that conversation but you let us be inspired by by giving us insight of your conversation with Shellye.
You are very welcome, Tommy