Andrew Thomas is a technology executive based in Seattle, Washington, with experience leading large organizations at companies like Amazon AWS and Microsoft and small, nimble teams at emerging startups. A graduate of Stanford University, he started his career in the earth sciences, building software to model how fluids and contaminants are transported through deformed and fractured rock in the earth’s crust. Clients ranged from government agencies wanting to keep buried radioactive waste in to petroleum companies who needed to get oil and gas out. With the rise of the Internet, he changed customers, focusing on the emerging opportunity to deliver online services across industries including healthcare, insurance, online advertising, and network/application security.
In addition to changing customers, Andrew began a second transition: from software builder to technology leader. Starting from an initial management role with a several direct reports and bounded scope, he learned from mentors and through experience how to lead within his span of control and to influence outside it. The most important lesson he internalized for scaling technology leadership is that success requires earning the trust of both senior leadership and builders/operators by building a shared understanding your customers and aligning on what matters most to them. Communicating effectively across these audiences requires credible depth in the business as well as its supporting technologies. Like Andrew, many senior technology leaders start with a focus in one area and have to develop the others, including mechanisms for personal scaling, as their career grows. The Master of Science in Information Technology Leadership at the University of San Diego is designed to accelerate that process, and Andrew is proud to contribute his knowledge and experience as an advisor to help students advance their own careers.