What was your route to the top? My career has been driven off of an entrepreneurial spirit. Over the years, I've started and successfully run and then sold a number of businesses, including a printing company and restaurant, and I still own a gift store in Boulder that I started 20 years ago. I have a law degree and an MBA. After working as a trial lawyer, I moved in-house to a high-tech Fortune 500 company, and through a series of acquisitions of that company found my way to California where I was fortunate enough to connect with Matt Fawcett and NetApp Along the way, I started CLOC to drive needed change in the corporate legal services space. My diverse background surprises some people, but in my mind it all fits together. The thread that connects all of these experiences is passion. I figured out early that I am intellectually curious and need to do things that engage and challenge me.

What keeps you up at night? (i.e. What are your biggest business-related concerns?) I deal with a broad range of opportunities and challenges daily, and they all feel important and urgent. I've found, however, that everything really resolves into a single big question: How can we enable better teams and better collaboration? When I focus on that, it all falls into place. In my role at NetApp, this comes down to finding and hiring the right people, to nurturing and shaping the team and enabling them to work together in new and powerful ways. In my work with CLOC, it's applying those same focus areas to our entire industry. Collaboration is at the absolute heart of everything: without it, there is no innovation, no progress, no lasting success. In a rapidly changing industry, no single person or organization has the answers. The only solutions that work are those that are based on the pooled ideas and efforts of people working across different experiences and perspectives.

What is the best leadership advice you provided, or received, and why do you think it was effective? I think many of us have this idea of a heroic leader standing on a hill, single-handedly forging the way. For me, the most important aspect of leadership is to enable people. I'm good at a few things, but only exceptional at one: Identifying strengths in others. When I help someone see their talent, and find the best application for it, it is empowering for them and hugely gratifying for me. This is how you build great teams and great relationships. It's why I always want to hire someone smarter than I am, with skills in areas that I lack. I believe the real impact of a leader is to foster and nurture people to make the most of their capabilities.

What is the most valuable career advice anyone has ever given you? Follow your passion, not your fear or the expectations of others. The legal profession provides such variety of opportunities, do something that you love.