Going global for a company in today’s world doesn’t just mean opening new centers in every country. Then run them in a strict singular manner with little to no chances of changes and adjustments. A template way of running the centers doesn’t add up in today’s interconnected world. They must understand the differences in the market, the culture, the customer concerns, and requirements to scale and optimize their services/products. They also need to modify their way of working to blend in their new environment before they stand out as a truly global organization.
Having a truly global leader at the top who can provide an insider’s look at how enterprises can successfully move into international markets is a crucial step for any organization to start with. Anna N Schlegel is one such truly global leader who has unlocked new and significant net revenue to the organizations she has worked with. Today,Anna N Schlegel is Vice-President of Global at ProCore Technologies.
A Global Journey
Anna’s journey has always been on enterprise globalization. She started as a technical translator and very quickly saw the need to work on other aspects like code reengineering to internationalize it, make sure that all content was prepped to go global, and understand what countries were important to each company. So, it has been a slow roll over decades to learn how to help companies go global. She ended up writing a book as each company and team taught her so many valuable lessons.
Over the past 30 years, she has led globalization, PLC, engineering, international product, technical content, corporate strategy, and marketing teams at top technology companies in Silicon Valley, including Cisco Systems, Google, VeriSign, VMware, Xerox, and NetApp. She has worked extensively driving global market growth by entering new markets, enabling Joint Ventures and OEM partnerships in various countries across the globe. Her strategy leverages product market fit, and an enterprise cohesive upfront investment, to build a strategy for global expansion and support the company’s growth goals.
Anna is also a philanthropist having started several non-profits and participated in dozens since age 10. The first non-profit she enrolled in was her dad’s who had a goal to clean up all mountains around their city in Girona, Catalunya. It became a community of 1000 hikers who hiked together once a month cleaning up different areas of the region. Anna today serves on 3 international Boards and leads the Women’s study at the Catalan International Economic Circle. She is also a member of the Catalan DIPLOCAT and a co-founder of several non-profit organizations, such as Women in Localization and STEMentors Silicon Valley. She was the Chair of the WIT organization at NetApp. The Catalan Government recognized her achievements and awarded her the “Creu de Sant Jordi” Medal of Honor in December 2021. This is the highest distinction for a Catalan citizen.
Acing Her Current Role
Anna’s current role at Procore Technologies is to oversee a couple of centers of excellence, one is focused on globalizing the company and the other one is focused on our enterprise content strategy. Procore Technologies is the #1 Construction Management Platform. They streamline every process from pre-construction to closeout for construction companies. They help build the world with less risk and bigger profits. Their platform is used by construction companies with projects in more than 180 countries on any given day. They uphold their uniqueness by visiting construction sites, talking to customers constantly, and running innovation labs. As a technology company, Procore utilizes multiple technologies to measure data, expedite workflows, analyze data, manage content, organize projects, run engineering development, track customers, and more. “We are all about construction, that is the only thing we do, so imagine thousands of us improving how to run a construction project,” says Anna.
In her position, Anna oversees all aspects of globalization, fresh ideas come in the form of the use of artificial intelligence, and geo alignment programs so that the HQ and the field offices are super aligned for example. Her team also brought in a framework to measure Procore’s globalization and content strategy maturity.
“We run an innovation lab… we are full of cutting-edge ideas. I always say that “we are the edge”. I really drive my teams crazy sometimes with new ideas, we eventually get most of them implemented! Having worked for 6 main Fortune 500 companies has taught me so very much. I can bring many frameworks that work, and we keep iterating on them, depending on the company,” says Anna.
A Visionary Leader
Every day at work, Anna puts her global upbringing to good use as a leader. As a European in the States, she always merges the two cultures. She is a Catalan living and working in California and it has made it an interesting merger of approaches!
Anna has always attempted to be a values leader first and treat folks with a lot of respect. Clarity is very important to her and so is speed in innovation that always drives her. She is a leader known to see things, problems, and solutions 2-3 years ahead of her job. She also makes sure to bring thousands of colleagues along that journey, even though it is tough to keep everyone on the same page.
Talking about things being tough at work, Anna has faced and continues to face so very many. Being an immigrant and a female continues to be her top 2! She overcomes them as they present themselves. “I am more patient now, I understand that being a female and immigrant in large roles is not that common, so I try to not take things personally and focus on delivering the best work I can with my teams,” she says.
As a women leader, Anna ensures that she supports more women at work by being vocal, pointing things out, being part of the employee resource groups, and mentoring. Just like she let herself be mentored and coached early in her career, she lets folks shadow her and she constantly mentors them.
“We all need each other. I do not support diversity in writing, I am active and intentional about it. I am also the President of Women in Localization, which I co-founded back in 2015. I am a board member of the “Young Women of the Tech Interactive Museum” in San Jose California. I co-founded “Imagine Educating Everyone’ in Kenya to support 5 villages with an emphasis on helping young girls reach out to college. I live in diversity. I was the Chair of Women in Technology for 10 years… you get the picture! Women are very underrepresented and I find that not acceptable. I also do not like diversity goals just to have them, we need programs that actually make women thrive,” she asserts.
As for maintaining open communication as a leader, Anna tries to have open hours, lots of stakeholder management at the executive level and always has newsletters and slack channels open to all to reach out to her teams. She and her team try to be as communicative as possible.
Looking out for Trends to Adapt and Stay Ahead
Considering her profession of being a globalizer, Anna sees a very fast move with generative AI. There is no longer a need for, for example, translators, as people use neural machine engines to translate content. Translators are now those who help train strings or edit the final content. As for the construction world, there is seen the evolution of BIM, the evolution of how construction companies make decisions based on their own data using Procure’s AI solutions, and also construction being very conscious about sustainability.
As an organization, Procore has teams that are focused on several areas of how they will globalize the company and of course, many product and engineering teams making sure their platform is ready for the country compliances, safety, project management, financials, design coordination, etc. They have several ideas up their sleeves like the recent launch of the Procore Construction Network, a sort of LinkedIn for the world of construction. The goal, shares Anna, is to offer a connected experience for all our customers around the globe.
Achieving Sustainability Goals
Procore has several solutions and they report them via their ESG reports. Sharing an example, Anna states they have goals such as:
Building a Better World
- Providing customers with construction management software that helps reduce construction waste, mitigate the risk of rework, and enable safer job sites with improved quality control.
- Offering integrations for ESG tools through the Procore App Marketplace to enable customers to measure and understand their sustainability data.
People and Communities
- Educating the next generation of future construction professionals by providing free Procore access to 97% of American Council for Construction Education accredited undergraduate construction management programs.
- Partnering with 107 new organizations to donate Procore products, and donating $250,000 to our Historically Black Colleges and Universities Scholarship Fund in partnership with the Association of General Contractors of America, in 2021.
Governance and Responsible Business Practices
- Establishing oversight and management of ESG at multiple levels of the company, from the Board of Directors to a cross-functional ESG Committee that develops and drives ESG initiatives across our business operations.
- Driving board diversity, with 44% of the Board of Directors identifying as female.
Words of Wisdom
To all the aspiring entrepreneurs, here’s Anna’s message:
“Train yourself in your gaps. I took classes on speed reading; I took classes on matrix management and Board Management. I never stop learning; I have degrees from 5 universities. I never thought I would, but over the years I enrolled in areas that would make me a better leader. I started with philology in Europe and continued with telecommunications studies here in the States. My favorite stint was at Stanford University over the course of 5 years on behalf of NetApp studying Gender and Minority studies, because as we all know, high tech is not being led necessarily with gender equality, we are very far from it.”
Quote: “My goal is to work for companies that have a worldwide reach and impact the lives of many.”
Quote: “Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to make something simple” – Sir Richard Branson
Quote: “We strive to continue to be the best globalization and enterprise content strategy teams in the industry!”
