APC’s Streets ahead

In 2005, she was approached by networking vendor, Juniper to set up its enterprise channel, by then Street had made connections with a few different people in the industry and took the approach at Comindico and did a similar sort of thing.

“Juniper at the time had four large partners and the company brought me and a couple of others in too grow the enterprise channel. We took it four partners to about four hundred,” she says.

“I didn’t manage four hundred, there was a smaller group of partners –six gold and twenty silver and the rest went through out distributors across Australia and New Zealand. The role at Juniper was a national role and I got to travel every state because different partners have different needs,” she says.

“It’s almost like Australia has sub-countries and a partner who is successful in QLD may not be successful in NSW. During this time I found that communication is very important in building relationships. To get channel partners to trust you do need to build a relationship which needs to continue to be positive.”

Street has been very happy and positive in the industry. She says perseverance and having a goal is pretty important in working in the channel. However it is also important too have a fun and happy working environment and also make sure there are happy partners.

“Once you have the right relationships it then becomes a matter of connecting the dots. I will then introduce my tech people to our partner’s tech people. I don’t need to have formal tech training because depending on what the topic is, a lot of knowledge comes from partners,” she says.

“Most of my focus is talking to the marketing and sales people and I don’t have to talk too much about technology.”

Being a successful woman in the industry doesn’t mean you have to act any differently from your natural self.

“I totally disagree with that bimbo like behaviour and I have seen some woman in the industry act this way. There is no reason to behave unintelligently. If you act professionally then people will treat you equally,” she says.

“It’s not my way of doing business and I’m also not as aggressive as some women in the marketplace, at the same time I don’t have to act stupidly at functions. I think if you are happy with who you are you don’t need to put on an act and try and impress others.”

Street believes any woman finding the right sort of company to work for helps them to move forward in their career. It’s important for the company to believe in the capabilities of woman and what they have to offer in the industry.

“I have worked with Sue Stokes at Juniper and she is a great person to work with. She’s been in the industry for a long time and to have a female point of view was great. Sometimes [a woman’s] approach or the way we do things is slightly different.”

Although Street has mostly worked at companies where the work force has been 80-90 percent men - except for the marketing department, she says she has become use to working live without having woman around.

“I don’t think I would like working in an environment that was a hundred percent woman. It’s all about having a good to have a balance. Women can bring different things to meetings and steer the talk away from something rather than gold and football,” she says.

Now that Street has worked in the ICT industry for the past six years, occassionally she wants to think about going back to do something with her artistic qualifications.

“If I left IT, I would look at doing something else in a very different field from the ones that I have worked in, but I still have few years left in me,” she says.

“You never know what happens in life. Right now I am happy to make channel mine own, but beyond APC, you never know what I will do.”

american power conversion danielle street hardware lilia guan