Alex Ivanov

When I started my career as a software engineer, I avoided picking up my telephone because I was unsure of what to say. I kept my head down and didn’t speak up because I didn’t want to do or say the wrong thing, asking a question in class, forget about it. In fact, if someone had asked me to get up on stage and share my work, I would have been terrified.

But over the past 20 years, I’m happy to say I’ve gone through a huge personal transformation. I feel as though I can talk to anyone, anywhere and am bursting with confidence. How did it all happen, well here is a little glimpse into what helped:

Read over 300 books (all non-fiction)

Took two Dale Carnegie training classes on effective communication and high impact presentations

Attended over 75 industry conferences

Spoken at over 30 industry conferences

I have been to over 100 business networking events spanning at least 6 different cities, in the process I grew my network from 300 to over 3000 people:

Los Angeles

Boston

Dallas

Tampa

Chicago

Calgary

I’ve split my career between software and system engineering roles when you look on paper, unofficially though I’ve been a:

Software developer

Technical lead

Chief architect

Product owner (my favorite)

Test lead

Change agent