Star Profile of the Week - Karen Lay Brew- Microsoft

Karen, who founded the Women in IT movement at Microsoft, graced us with her presence, when we came to her at the very last moment to replace the moderator for WPC in Denver ,that had become ill at the last moment. Karen not only stepped up to the job, with no preparation time, she added her own experience in making a memorable event for us all. I met Karen literally an hour before the session and as with people like Margo Day there was a wonderful friendliness about her. That in part is one of the traits of a true leader, someone who never makes you fell any less important than themselves, even if they're positioned much higher up the ladder than you are. In essence what benefit is it to make people feel any less important than you. If one is to make a team then the team must respect the leader, but a true leader is one that brings forth the best in each member and lets them shine. I suspect this is much of what has put Margo and Karen where they are today.

Karen was brilliant in her role as moderator. She had scripted questions to follow, but she found a way to enhance the topics she had to pull answers from us for and delivered her own perspectives adding to a varied set of opinions. In the end Karen made an even more important contribution by keeping the lines of communication open with IAMCP and our attendees. She has also agreed to grace us with her presence, this time as a panelist at SMB Nation October 1, 2007. I certainly look forward to her valuable input and I hope if you are not in attendance you will catch the video later which we will post when it's made available.

To learn a little more about this week's star WIL&T Profile of the Week read on below:

Karen Lay-Brew, VP Sales, Marketing, Services Group (SMSG) Solutions Delivery (SD) is responsible for driving business value and improvement of business processes, systems and tools that support Microsoft worldwide sales and marketing, operations, licensing & pricing programs, and services business. Karen joined Microsoft in January 2006 after working at large multi-national corporations in different parts of the world. This included 20 years of leadership experience in IT, Shared Business Services, Operational Excellence, Six Sigma and Change Management. Karen is very active in diversity initiatives at Microsoft, having set up the Women in IT organization, and serving as the Executive sponsor of the Microsoft Asia Professional Society.