As CEOs go, Siki Giunta is one of a kind. An Italian woman who can speak four languages and has a background in the arts and humanities, she has presided over the transformation of US software company Managed Objects from a start-up with eight employees to a global business with 150 employees and revenues of US$30m.
Ms Giunta comes from what she describes as a typical Italian family, in which the boys were expected to go out to work and the girls to stay at home and have children. “I think a lot of my assertiveness has arisen from the fact that, from the beginning, I had to tell everyone in my family ‘I’ve got a brain too,’” she says.
After acquiring a degree in French language and civilisation from the Sorbonne in Paris, she joined Coutts & Co as a Portfolio Manager. Ms Giunta quickly realised that “building wealth for other people was not my vocation” and joined IBM, in the mid- 1980s, on an entry-level programme. At a time when businesses were beginning to grasp the potential that computers offered,
Ms Giunta’s job was to deploy enterprise solutions for large customers. “IBM wanted me to be a sales rep, but I just wanted to be a project manager – someone who sees how people use IT and how it drives their business. And, for eight years, that’s what I did. I ran large projects,” she says.
She admits that her main skills were not in IT. “The skills that made me succeed were my assertiveness, my curiosity and my ability to communicate with people,” she explains. Her greatest strength, however, is “the fact that I can easily map out tasks and resources to get to the end goal. I make a plan and then work the plan.”
From IBM, she moved to Legent – later acquired by Computer Associates – where she worked first in marketing and then in research and development. In 1999, she was hired as President and CEO of Managed Objects, which was at the time a small business providing software to help organisations manage their IT infrastructure.
In the male-dominated environment of IT, Ms Giunta believes that being a woman has had both drawbacks and advantages. “At the beginning, you might have to work a little bit harder, to make people get away from the fact that you’re different,” she says. On the other hand, she adds, an individual woman in a crowd of men will stand out. “When I am at a big conference and give a presentation, there is more chance that people will remember me.”
Her career has also benefited, she believes, from her linguistic ability. At IBM, the fact that she could communicate with members of project teams across Europe in their own language was enormously helpful. She also takes more care than some of her male counterparts, she believes, in maintaining a personal relationship with her staff. At work parties, she makes an effort to remember the names of employees’ spouses and children.
IT can be a tough sector for women to work in, acknowledges Ms Giunta, because managers are usually required to be mobile. Women in their thirties often face the assumption that they will have children and be unavailable for particular opportunities. “The only way you can take that away is to demonstrate your availability and to be assertive about your skills,” she says.
But perhaps the greatest challenge, she says, is to be assertive without being overbearing. “It is the toughest balancing act that anyone has to do,” she concludes.
