By Jes Chapman

My first PASS Summit was in 2011. I was beyond excited to be there. I participated in every event I could, from the photo walk and #sqlrun to the welcome reception and every keynote. I distinctly remember that I had the honor of moderating the WIT luncheon panel that year. Over the years I’ve make a point to attend, live-blog, and ask questions of the panelists and presenters. It’s one of my favorite events, highlighting the amazing women we have in our community and all of the allies that support us.

This year, I’m delighted to be returning to the WIT luncheon to present on a topic I’m very passionate about: how to be visible in your career!

You do great work, and you are the only person that knows everything you do and the impact it has. How can you make sure that your manager, your leadership, and even potential employers or customers know about it? I’m going to help you create a strategy to do just that. There are three main building blocks I’ll delve into:

• Building and maintaining a network, both inside and outside of your employer. This includes mentors and sponsors.
• Creating a system to document the great work you’ve done, the recognition you’ve received for it, and sharing it.
• Developing strategies to work through impostor syndrome (it strikes us all!) and learn from failures.

In my career, I started as a help desk technician at a small ISP with no college degree, decided to focus on data, pivoted into consulting, and am currently working as a cloud solution architect at Microsoft. The common thread I’ve had is being able to articulate the knowledge I have, the results I’ve produced, and what I want next at work. I want to help everyone who attends this keynote have the same power in their career!