TECH TITANS: Climbing the Leadership Ladder with Rathi Murthy, then CTO of Verizon and current CTO of Expedia

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:01) Today, we're bringing you an episode of Tech Titans, and this one is a throwback all the way from 2020. Rathi Murphy, then CTO of Verizon, joins us in this episode to share her experience on becoming a leader of many companies and her philosophy of the five C's of leadership. You're listening to Joel Beasley, Tech Titans.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:26) So you've gotten to work at a whole slew of great companies from Yahoo to eBay, American Express. The list goes on, and then now you're at Verizon Media. How did you do that? Did you sit down with the Fortune 500 logos and you're like, I want, I'm going to pick this one and that one and then create a vision board? How did that happen for you?

(Rathi Murphy at 00:00:49) Unfortunately, I'm not that strategic, I don't think. No, I actually have, if I think back, I've always followed my heart. So it's been a journey of following where my passion is and wanting to do something different that's transformative, that's leading and driving a change somewhere. So I think I started, of course, when I got out of school, I was hired directly into Informix.

(Rathi Murphy at 00:01:22) At that time, they were trying out this whole new notion of object-oriented databases, and I wanted to be part of that journey. Then I jumped into JavaSoft because they were launching JDK 1.0, and I wanted to be part of that big wave. It always felt like the next big wave, and I want to be part of something big that could transform. That was one aspect. The other aspect was really following strong leaders.

(Rathi Murphy at 00:01:53) So I would say I had a really, really strong leader and mentor in Neil Zaple at Yahoo, for example, who helped me find my strength and my passion of leading and driving digital transformation. And so I did follow him. I went to eBay and was driving digital transformation across the marketplace, and then went to American Express to truly drive not just technology digital transformation, but participate in a company that was pivoting from being an exclusive catering to the rich, white, 60-year-old male to being more inclusive and catering to the underbanked and underserved. And again, retail was going through a huge transformation, and it still is, trying to understand their omnichannel experience. How can you connect from the supply chain to the brick-and-mortar stores to online and mobile and make that a seamless consumer experience?

(Rathi Murphy at 00:03:00) And I think technology can be hero in all these stories. So that's kind of where my heart led through this journey because I found those areas that were transforming as a business, and I felt technology could be the hero in pivoting that transformation.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:21) So is this what you share with the people you're mentoring or the people that are looking up to you to follow their heart and work on what they feel called to work on?

(Rathi Murphy at 00:03:31) I 100% feel follow your heart, not really going after titles, but really following your heart and your passion and leaders. I think someone that you can learn from and inspires you and brings out the best in you. I think the combination of those two lead to great outcomes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:57) I heard you talking in some of your content about the five C's of leadership because you were just talking about leadership pillars. And so I wanted to ask you, what are the five C's?

(Rathi Murphy at 00:04:10) Oh my God. I hope I remember that. I keep saying things, and I forget what I say.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:15) I'll hook you up. If you forget, I'll let you know what they are.

(Rathi Murphy at 00:04:21) So, you know, when we started this whole COVID work-from-home space again, I was thinking we got to change the way, pivot to how we operate as leaders. We're not there at our workplace, walking the halls, talking to people. We need to figure out how to stay connected and motivated and inspire our teams the way we used to. So I came up with kind of five C's as our golden principles that we worked with our leadership team. The first was connect.

(Rathi Murphy at 00:04:59) We have to constantly find new ways to connect with our team. I've been doing it. Being a media company, I've been doing a lot of videos and streaming because we have a really, really globally distributed organization. So, again, eating your own dog food, as they say. So take our own technologies and connect with our people in fun, interactive ways, whether doing happy hours, stimulating walk the halls, if you will, and just providing new connection streams.

(Rathi Murphy at 00:05:37) And the second is really collaboration. We have to, and I talked about, and you hit on so many things, Joel, yourself. How do you coordinate with business partners? How do you understand the customer? How do you build platforms and technology to service the customer?

(Rathi Murphy at 00:05:59) It's truly by making sure that we are working in a connected ecosystem and collaborating really well across the different business units in Verizon Media. So collaboration and customer centricity has been key to the way we have been operating. The third is create. Especially through the pandemic, one of my big themes has been we have to constantly watch the customer trends and the consumer patterns. It's been shifting.

(Rathi Murphy at 00:06:33) Customer behaviors have been shifting significantly, and we have to be ready as a business to pivot. So really focusing on creation and innovation so we can experiment and be able to pull out new teams that will enable us as a business to get ahead of our customers has been really key. So we have done hack-from-home events, different ways to continue to keep that spirit of innovation within the company even through these times. The fourth is culture. Culture is really key.

(Rathi Murphy at 00:07:12) It's not just about getting work done, but also bringing all of us together. And like I said, one of the pivotal things that brought me back to Verizon Media was Yahoo's fun culture. Work hard, play hard. Continuing to keep it fun where we all feel a sense of belonging. And our company has really shown up so well.

(Rathi Murphy at 00:07:36) Our leadership team has been doing open houses and daily connect with the teams that everybody really feels connected to the mission and feel that they are being taken care of. The last but not the least is community. We can only win when we bring everyone else together. Taking care of the small business. Verizon Media has been contributing a lot to support the small business community.

(Rathi Murphy at 00:08:08) As you bring our surroundings together, we also thrive. We are here for our customers and everybody around us. So for me, the five C's was connect, collaborate, create, culture, and community.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:23) Yeah. And that's why you're you because I would not have remembered that. You nailed it. That was amazing. What are some of the trends that you see amongst women leaders, common advice that you give or patterns?

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:38) Because I know that there are a number of women that listen to the show. They come up and talk to me after the talks, and I'm just curious what you're seeing being involved in that community and mentoring there.

(Rathi Murphy at 00:08:51) I would say a few things. One is reach for the stars. Often, women seem to limit ourselves just to not dreaming big enough. I suffered from the same. I didn't ever dream that I wanted to be a CTO, and I often felt like I'm happy. I'm very happy where I am. I don't need to move further. And I was being egged on by my husband as well, who would say reach for the stars, keep reaching higher because you pave the path for so many other women to dream bigger and reach for the stars. So reach for the stars. Think really big.

(Rathi Murphy at 00:09:35) Be confident. Oftentimes, we really suffer from not knowing 100%, and we want to be experts in everything before we take on a challenge. So really be confident. You know enough. You know you have the capability to learn what you don't know, leveraging the power of others and strengths.

(Rathi Murphy at 00:09:57) So be confident you can do whatever you need to do. And third, I would say is support everybody else around you. We need to stick together, and women leaders need to really help each other, where, again, very few of us being there for each other to pull us up will really make us a very strong community and help bring more of us into this field.