BOSTON CHILDREN'S PHOTOGRAPHER, BOSTON FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHER, BOSTON NEWBORN PHOTOGRAPHER

This week marks an incredibly important time in my life.  It is my last week at IBM.  After 13 years of an incredibly wonderful career, I have resigned and on Friday I will turn in my Thinkpad for good.  I’d love to say I have mixed emotions, but I don’t.  I am completely and totally thrilled to be making this move, it is the right decision for me and I have waited and planned and thoughtfully executed.  I am done.

That said, I’ve loved my job almost all of the time I’ve been there.  I started in February of 1997 not knowing what I was in for.  I managed Customer Service for Lotus.  I worked incredibly long hours, pulled all-nighters, and formed a good deal of my work ethic that I still have today and will carry with me when I leave.  I worked with Ellen (C) and for Ellen (G) and can’t even put into words what they taught me as friends and mentors.  I had a lot of fun with the crew up on 4E in North Reading.  Gary, Stella, Heather, Jean, Lyndsey, Tina… I hate naming names because I already know right off the bat I am not mentioning everyone who was so near and dear to my heart and so I apologize for that.  We accomplished a lot in that group… we moved from a small local center to managing Customer Service for North America complete with outsourcing to an ibm.com center (unheard of in those days!).  It was incredible.

I moved into the education group in the fall of 2000 and went through yet another series of similar transformations.  Under the guidance of Crystal, and along side my dear friend Julie, and a very talented staff of managers and team leads, we joined multiple individual education sites into one national (now global) virtual center.  I had once again, so many dear friends… Kindra, Doaa, Shari, Erin, Carol, John B, Tony, Tom G, Kerry… “the Eds” from the LP side… again, too many names to name, so worried I’ll leave something off the list.  Melody (the Doctor is in).  I will never, ever forget the beautiful wedding shower everyone threw for me at the offsite — so amazing to have had friends and colleagues with such generous hearts.

In 2005 I began to focus on the migration to Learning@IBM and once again participated in an incredible transformation.  Long hours, odd hours, new team members… about 15 months delayed, but the final project was an incredible success.  Hours spent with Pam, strategizing, planning, whining… she talked me down from many a ledge.  AJ, Avis, Jeroen, David, Libby, Jason, Paul, Tim, Terry, Viv,  the entire LMS team.  In that transition I had the pleasure of learning from Vonnie who helped me greenlight the GLRT.

With the GLRT came a number of new challenges, successes, headaches and laughs.  Helping me through that was Jonas, Michael, Ron, Ron, Jim, Eric, Carrie, Chris, Stan, Ernie and Bill.  Another transformation that people thought would take weeks, but getting it right took months, and quite possibly years.  A project that I can’t take full credit for, but am incredibly proud of.

The last year or so has been spent supporting Vonnie’s infrastructure for Learning Delivery, working for Cynthia, alongside her wonderful team — Angela (my new partner in crime), Jim, John, Melody, and Pat.

In every single job role, and during every single year, I actively participated in major transformational changes of how we do business.  I am constantly amazed when I look back and think “we never, ever took a break.”  But that’s what I thrive on, and it’s how I have excelled and built my own business… build a distinct brand, become the best you can be, deliver exceptional value because that means more than being a low cost solution, give back where you can, develop those around you to bring the marketplace to a higher level and evolve before the world passes you by.

So with that, Farewell IBM, I wish you well.