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I was thrilled to welcome to the podcast Margo Day, Microsoft’s Vice President of US Education since 2012 and no stranger to the channel. Margo leads Microsoft’s largest business focused on this segment and was Microsoft’s US Channel Chief for 5 years from 2001 to 2006.
In this episode, Margo shares with our listeners the US Education business, Microsoft’s focus on outcomes, how she thinks about partners in her business and her career journey.
Margo’s enthusiasm and passion for education and empowerment are contagious and come through in this interview. Her business role and her life work are both closely aligned with Microsoft’s mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
Toward the very end of our interview, Margo shares her personal story of the incredible and selfless work she does in collaboration with World Vision to make a difference in the lives of girls in Kenya. That work has been game-changing and has created new opportunities for thousands of girls whose only other path was Female Genital Mutilation and early marriage. Here’s a link to Margo’s personal blog about this work*.
In addition, in this interview you will learn:
- Skills and competencies critical to success in preparing for the jobs of tomorrow – excellent communications skills, creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and traits such as character and citizenship.
- What Microsoft is doing to help students use the tools of tomorrow in the learning of today.
- How Minecraft with Code Builder is being used in Education to develop computer coding skills and understand big data.
- Hacking Stem and how it is making learning experiential – data, coding, engineering students can see and visualize data examples in lessons plans to help democratize STEM and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math).
- How Microsoft tools in the classroom like One Note, Microsoft Learning tools, and Translator are helping students acquire skills to compete.
- How institutions are thinking about cost and optimizing operations by shifting their data centers to the cloud and how cloud tools can improve operations and create new scenarios by leveraging predictive analytics.
- Managing the campus – how ISV applications can greatly improve business operations leveraging IP that’s been developed for other customers outside of Education.
- Security and developing an Identity Based Security Model
- What’s she is seeing in the transformation that she didn’t expect to see a year ago.
- The work in research and how Research Institutions are using big data to do breathtaking work.
- Where should Microsoft partners invest in 2018?
- What characteristics make a great partner?
- Top challenges organizations in technology face today?
- How Margo got started in technology.
- How to reach Margo Day – margoday@microsoft.com
*If you or someone you know is interested in making a donation, please visit www.kenyagirls.seeyourimpact.org.
You can listen to the podcast here or on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play, Player FM, other Android podcast players.
As with each of my interview and articles, I appreciate your feedback. You can reach me on Linked In or on email at vincem@cloudwavepartners.net. You can also review this podcast by going to iTunes and searching “Ultimate Guide to Partnering” and clicking on the album art and hitting the rating link. This helps others find the podcast.
I hope you enjoy this episode!
Vince Menzione