Coupa

Being a global company, we must enable people to work across various time zones. And Coupa's culture is such that I don't have to work 15-hour days to do that.

Zoom is critical, since everyone can be on a call simultaneously and turn on their cameras if desired. Being able to work asynchronously with shared documents is also incredibly important. These tools are pretty ubiquitous now, so we take them for granted.

The economic downturn in 2008 forced my career to take an unexpected turn. I had to quickly pivot from my profession, earning new certifications and acquiring a wide range of skills to qualify for a different field. While this change was frustrating and intimidating, I was fortunate to have a strong foundation of underlying skills that made the transition possible.

With the support of mentors and friends, I learned to be more adaptable and flexible. This experience taught me the importance of enhancing my soft skills and focusing on building relationships, which are now key assets in my career.

I've had the privilege of working with and for some incredible leaders, both women and men, throughout my career. They taught me the importance of building strong relationships and focusing on my soft skills, which have been invaluable throughout my professional journey.

These leaders also equipped me with the tools and knowledge to become a great people manager and mentor. By partnering with my teams and creating a safe space for them to learn and grow, I've empowered them to manage up and provide valuable input that contributes to our collective success.

Encouraging other women to become leaders is a crucial part of building a strong, inclusive and thriving workplace. I've found that one of the most effective ways to do this is by acting as both a mentor and a sponsor. As a mentor, I provide advice, guidance and support while actively advocating for other women on my team.

A key part of this is helping them build a professional network. Networking is vital for career advancement, but building meaningful connections can be challenging. As a leader, I try to help by making introductions and creating opportunities for them to connect with senior leaders and peers they otherwise might not meet.

My day-to-day at Coupa is dynamic and engaging. I start by collaborating with my team to tackle quality assurance tasks and ensure our cloud services run smoothly. Throughout the day, we balance work with fun—playing games and enjoying healthy conversations over lunch.

Coupa is the first company where senior and C-suite leaders make time to converse and welcome you with open arms! You are only one Slack, email, or knock on the door away from getting mentorship and advice on navigating growth at Coupa and creating a network to support you.

I am a lead software engineer in the services procurement product area. We are on a journey to build the best procurement services offering, advanced statements of work and worker capabilities. I am super excited to build and deliver a strategic set of capabilities for future releases as a part of the SOW solutions to the market.

We are targeting to have robust support for complex SOW capabilities in the next 12 months in our core services procurement offering. I will collaborate with our product managers, developers, quality engineers and architecture team on design and development.

As we provide advanced capabilities with AI integration, I want to ensure we deliver high-quality features on schedule and that the deliverables go smoothly by removing any roadblocks.

I have the ability to quickly learn new technologies and products while working on the services procurement team. Additionally, our experience in integrating the CCW power app as a core platform and working in a team with extensive domain experience in this area has prepared us well to achieve the targets and enable our customers on this new journey.

Through this project, I hope to enhance my skills in technology integration further and gain valuable insights that I can apply to future projects.

It's been inspiring to work in an environment where collaboration, innovation, and purpose come together to drive real impact.

Coupa provides a pleasant and safe environment for work, giving us the tools to grow within the company and achieve our personal goals.