Heartfelt Gratitude for Incredible Collaborations at VMWare!

As we undertake the big-bang corporate transition - I find myself reminiscing about the memorable journey of the past five years at #VMWare. It's impossible to put into words the richness of experiences and allyship experienced, but I would not be doing justice without thanking the kind, humble, super-talented colleagues and friends I met at VMWare!

“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” - William Arthur Ward; So here it goes –

Phase-1 - The Golden BTA Days: Forever grateful to Dermot McCarthy and Mike Bruemmer for selecting me in the Business Transformation and Automation team, where I first experienced how a kind and human-first culture driven by an Empathetic Leader like Mia Leondakis feels! Your unconditional support when I suddenly lost my Father during a work-trip - helped me bounce back mentally and have faith in life – and for that you hold a special place in my heart.

BTA was my gateway to witness how VMWare’s #EPIC2 values were personified by the day-to-day working of our marvelous BTA stars like Sri Vellimedu , Karthik Venkataraman , Heather Haskedakes , Sonali Naik Pandit , Deepak Bajaj , Ravi R. , Abhilasha Choudhri , Edward Berwick , Shakir Hussain , Padraic McPherson , Abhishek Rao ..? Stephen Chew – Thank you so much for being my wonderful mentor and a guiding star..?

Special Thanks to my superb cross-functional partners - Stacey Leuzze , Lei Talens, PMP, CSM , Christopher Thompson , Liz Isom , Devanshi Sheth , Pashmeen Mistry , Deepu D Sumam , Susan Scheer Aoki , Paul Chu , Shweta Jain , Sagar Thakur – for imparting your wisdom and making my experience to be rich, worthy and eventful, across all the projects we collaborated on.

Phase-2 - The Customer Success Endeavor:? It was nothing short of an honor to be considered and guided by a stellar Customer Success leader like Mary-Beth Donovan to architect the transactional and delivery process launch of VMWare’s first CS offering - ‘Success 360’! Grateful for the opportunity of witnessing how a seasoned leader like Meenu Agarwal created the vision of a new VMW-CS org with her valuable insights!?

I feel so lucky to have been working with the amazing leaders on numerous critical initiatives through all the stages of ‘CS Lifecycle journey’. Recalling the partnerships in each stage of VMW-CS evolution:

Stage-1 - Dive-In: In the initial 90 days of CS Launch – we created a ‘CS S360 Escalation’ process in consideration with all the existing escalation processes at VMW! Thank you, Jason Reckelhoff, PMP, CSM and Mary-Beth Donovan for guiding me on the art of structuring the narrative for concise messaging – for it was my first exposure to the concept of framework-based-thinking!

Stage-2 - Gather Input and Go Further: Once CS started gaining traction at the broader organization level, we received multiple requests from GTM & Sales to drive various business programs. Grateful for the confidence and guidance from Mary-Beth Donovan , Jason Reckelhoff, PMP, CSM – I was fortunate to architect the CS delivery processes for VMW’s first multi-cloud credit-based program called ‘VMWare Cloud Universal’ (VMCU). The success in execution of operating rhythm holds strong on shoulders of my wonderful colleagues J. Kevin Arvin , Danielle Van Hook , as well as the strong cross-functional GTM & CS partners like Jon Phillips , Vijay Krish , Kamesh Vemu , Sumanth Hathwar, Lei Talens, PMP, CSM , Angeline Kish , Brian Bender , Rebecca Hudson, PMP CSM , Rick Shepherd , Manisha Shah , Thespina Fletcher , AJ Johnson .

Stage 3 - Pragmatic and Programmatic Approach: With constant maturity and evolution of CS org, quite a few lessons and optimization opportunities arose. Thank you so much Julie Moylan, Srinivasan Muthu , Sylvia Gendy , J. Kevin Arvin , Megan Coppin for guiding and partnering through various process support, escalation resolution, enablement, and offer optimization arenas we navigated together. Grateful for unwavering support and leadership from Tim Hammill , Chad Gorman , Rick Shepherd , Glen Musick , Amy Brummel , Waleed Salah , Anne King , Jon Phillips , Vijay Krish , Vidhyashankar Balasubramanian , Manish Choudhary , Lei Talens, PMP, CSM , Joseph Appiah, CPA , Jitendra Dangi , Erica Miles , Bastien Casset , Terence Gleeson , Michael Bartzel , Rashad Jenkins , Steve Egart , Phil Taupier, CSM , DHIRAJ KUMAR , Shanto Aloor on our quest to continuously enhance and automate various internal/external processes - directly impacting customer & partner journey milestones, while we constantly upscaled the VMCU CS programs (e.g. Time To First Redeem, Sales to CS Handoff, Consumption Planning, Partner Success launch!). Thanks Priscilla Hernandez , Amy Hills , Rob Ure?a , Tasha Puri, MBA, Prosci?, CSM? , Esther Tamang for supporting various change management endeavors!

Stage 4 - Execute Strategically as a Thought-Leader: I thoroughly feel that VMW-CS evolved as a trusted organization for broader VMW Business to drive strategic and recurring revenue milestones, since its 2020 launch.

Sara Vaughan - your thought-leadership and best practices guidance empowers us to convert strategy to scaled operations, while maintaining an impactful collaboration with CS Leadership. Grateful for your and Omer Jaweed 's unwavering support during CS wide ‘New Solution Intake’ program launch to improve delivery readiness, in tandem with my lessons from CS lifecycle stages noted above! I feel so fortunate to work with wonderful teammates like Julie Moylan , Rebecca Hudson, PMP CSM , Sophia Kalliaras , who continue to share their wisdom and energy to create business impact in every initiative undertaken!

Thanks a bunch to Mark Debicki and Kevin Meeks for their rock solid support through this transformative phase at VMW!

Lastly, deeply appreciative of the VMW programs like Executive Engage - where I found my angel mentors - Minny Walia and Shailaja Vemuluri whose insights continue to enhance my confidence and exec presence levels..

Cordially grateful for all the experience & relationships; Excited about the upcoming ventures to continue our impactful collaborations created till date!

With sincere Thanks, Chetna...