Sydney Hockett believes it’s important to have both men and women mentors through your career.
“It’s so important to have strong female mentors but equally as important to have men,” she told CRN. “You’ve got to get along with both and find ways to make both work. If you can find really supportive, strong men through your career, your family or whoever it may be that helped you along the way can be just as valuable too.”
Hockett, vice president at San Francisco-based holding company Evergreen Services Group, credits both her parents as her mentors in showing her that she can do anything she put her mind to.
“My dad couldn’t be more of an advocate for me and for women in the workforce,” she said. “I think just having those influences, whether it be intentional or not, were a huge blessing as I look back now in terms of never questioning what I could or couldn’t do or what was available to me.”
And it was an early male mentor who gave her sound advice on finding her career path.
“He encouraged me to stop thinking so big picture about a title or an industry or a job and to think about what I like to do day-to-day,” she said. “If I look at one hour of the day, what are the parts of that hour that I really enjoyed? What do I not like doing? That kind of reframed all of my thinking around how I’ve approached where I’ve ended up in my career and being able to really pinpoint the things that give me energy, the things where I think I really add value and vice versa.”
For Women’s History Month, CRN is profiling women in the channel about how they came up in the industry, lessons learned and what they want to pass on to others coming up in the IT channel.
Hockett spoke about how she carved out a career in technology and private equity, how she faced imposter syndrome and what advice she gives to other women coming up in the space.
How did you get into this career field?
I think I always knew I was interested in the business and private equity space to the extent that someone in college can understand what private equity is and what that means. I knew that was the direction I wanted to head. What I also knew is that I’m somewhat less interested in the technical side of finance, so modeling and investing and all that. What I really enjoy is talking to people and building relationships. I started off more private equity adjacent and then moved into this space as I came to Evergreen. This has fit well in terms of it’s just such a tight-knit community, particularly the MSP space. It’s the things I like to do in my day-to-day around relationship building, understanding people’s businesses and how they’ve gotten to where they are. It’s been fun to operate from the private equity vantage point in terms of helping these business owners find the next best home for their businesses and things like that.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
I think I had some of the classic younger dreams of being a professional soccer player. I’m not sure there’s anything specifically business related or true to my career today that I thought a whole lot about when I was younger. As I went through high school and college I started to think about, ‘How are you going to make a living? What are you going to spend the rest of your life doing?’ What I always knew was that I liked working with people and that’s what brought me energy as I’ve always been extroverted. I love getting to know a ton of different people, a ton of different industries, getting to be on the phone talking to people, face-to-face and doing that day in and day out versus sitting behind the screen or deep in Excel.
Did you have any mentors?
Both my parents played a big role in that, to be honest. My mom went to business school and had a full career but then stopped working when I was born. I grew up understanding some of those trade-offs and sacrifices she made but always feeling very empowered to do what I wanted as a woman, career wise, and to operate in very male-dominated fields. She was in investment banking and ultimately finance and so I think that was always an example to me. My dad couldn’t be more of an advocate for me and for women in the workforce. I think just having those influences, whether it be intentional or not, were a huge blessing as I look back now in terms of never questioning what I could or couldn’t do or what was available to me. As I went through college, I still think back to the women I saw that maybe I didn’t have a personal relationship with but that I found really inspiring. I was constantly reading all this content around them breaking down barriers and really leading their field. That always spoke to me, and then as I entered the professional world some of my managers along the way have been impactful.
What’s the best career advice you’ve ever gotten?
It was from my first boss, actually. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do longer term and what I was really interested in. He encouraged me to stop thinking so big picture about a title or an industry or a job and to think about what I like to do day-to-day. If I look at one hour of the day, what are the parts of that hour that I really enjoyed? What do I not like doing? That kind of reframed all of my thinking around how I’ve approached where I’ve ended up in my career and being able to really pinpoint the things that give me energy, the things where I think I really add value and vice versa. It was one of those smaller things that seems obvious in retrospect but was really impactful for me.
What do you like about your job?
I like a lot about my job, there’s internal things and external things. Internally Evergreen is a very young, driven organization. In some ways it is very reminiscent of a startup in the sense that we haven’t been around that long so a lot of people are earlier in their careers. We’re just getting started so I think there’s a lot of scrappiness and grit that comes along with that. Everyone I work with is extremely humble and at the same time the smartest people I know. I feel stupid every day which is something that I like as I feel like I’m learning all the time but not at the expense of ego or competition.
I think externally, all of the things I’ve already mentioned about wanting to hear people’s stories and working with people day in and day out, I get to do in spades. I’ve met such a unique collection of individuals through my work, gotten to hear so many different stories and hopefully made a difference in their lives. As they think about businesses that people have built, spent their entire lives owning and then ultimately selling those is a huge decision. Being able to be the person that helps them find the right partner is pretty meaningful. I get a lot of value and satisfaction out of that. So I think it’s the day in and day out of what I’m doing and then also the people that I’m surrounded with.
Do you consider yourself a mentor or do you have opportunities to mentor others?
I do. It’s something that’s come up more recently. I’ve managed a fair amount of people over the last couple of years. I think what’s been actually more exciting is recently some of those people have moved on to other managers and I’ve been able to play more of that mentor role. I think that that changes the dynamic when I don’t have to turn around and do their performance review but can still be someone that gives feedback, that is the sounding board, that fields question and also is an advocate for them. I think that’s been one of the most rewarding parts, is being able to advocate for some of these people, particularly young women, who I’ve worked with and now be somewhat of a voice for.
What’s one piece of advice you’d give your younger self?
I think it would be to follow my gut. I think I have found myself in situations, and this is natural along the way where because of my major in college, you’re supposed to go into this field or you’re supposed to like these jobs. I think deep down there’s been moments where I’ve followed paths that I didn’t think I was really going to like but it felt like what I was supposed to do. There’s always some level of get a job, start working and get some experience when you’re younger. The times where I have followed my gut had been the most successful for me.
Even coming to work at Evergreen I wasn’t looking to leave my previous job, but as I got through my interview it was really a gut feeling that I wanted to leave. It was people I wanted to work with, I liked the mission of what we were doing and I would say I kind of went into it a little bit more blind than people might usually do going into a job. But it’s paid off in spades. If I could remember that in moments of decisions, within reason, I’d say follow your gut.
What are some goals you still want to achieve career-wise?
There’s a lot that I probably don’t even know. There’s some personal ones around becoming the face of Evergreen in the MSP industry. I want to be one of the first people that an MSP owner thinks of when they think about selling their business. I think that there’s broader ones. Evergreen is kind of in a startup phase and I want to see us continue to be really successful. I care a lot about maintaining our culture and being able to scale that successfully over time and playing a pivotal role in that. More broadly, there’s something around continuing to define what my career goals are as well. By nature of being in a newer company environment, it’s hard to know what the next five to 10 years look like. It’s a blessing and a curse to have the freedom to chart those out. Continuing to do that along the way is important to me and ultimately, I want to be an example for women both in tech, in finance and private equity. It’s a hard path, some harder than others and I’ve been really lucky. I wish that I could set up a lot of other people with the same opportunities that I’ve had and hopefully we can do that down the road.
What’s been your secret to success?
I think being really true to yourself. There’s been no situations in which I’ve tried to be someone or something that I’m not and it’s worked out well. When I first started at Evergreen quite honestly I felt a lot of imposter syndrome. I didn’t come from a deep technical finance background and I didn’t come from an IT or tech background. I consistently found myself feeling like maybe I didn’t deserve to be there or didn’t have the skills, and this was not at all due to any anyone else. Everyone was super supportive, it was just really internal. I think trying to fit the mold of pretending I had more investing skills or that that’s what I wanted to do or that I was really interested in listening to finance podcasts in my free time… that really wasn’t that helpful. I think when I was able to get comfortable being myself, leaning into the skill set that I had and being a leader in that way is when I really found the most success. My coach has been one of the most influential executive coaches in my life and she said, ‘You’re there because people want your voice heard and you not sharing it is a disservice to you and them. The less you share, the less they’re going to listen to you.’ It’s one of those things that in hindsight is 2020 but it was an eye-opening moment of giving it a go, saying your thoughts, voicing your opinions and doing it in your own way. The stronger you are and behave and feel in your own opinions, the more other people are going to trust them and follow them as well.
What advice would you give to young women coming up in tech or PE or finance?
I think it’s an interesting question because the natural responses are to push forward, to break barriers. The reality of being a woman in all those fields is that there’s navigations to do in the sense of some people are going to be super welcoming and others are not. I don’t think you can just plow through every barrier that there is, I think there’s an art and a science to it. I don’t think you should ever give up and I don’t think you should ever sacrifice your own values or what you believe in or what you want to do.
But at the same time, I think the best thing you can do is learn to navigate the situations you’re in and to write your own story. Not everybody is going to come around to women being leaders in these spaces but you can learn to work with those people, and you’ll get a lot farther versus finding yourself in adversarial situations. It’s kind of a roundabout way of saying I think the most successful women have found a really amazing balance of being true to themselves, being strong forces in their field but at the same time having the ability to work with all different shapes and sizes of people that come along with that and situations they find themselves in.