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She Leads with Carly
She Leads features authentic conversations with women leaders across industries—founders, executives, athletes, and change-makers. Hosted by Carly Malatskey, each episode dives into leadership, career growth, and the real challenges behind building influence and impact. Designed for listeners seeking inspiration, practical advice, and powerful stories from women shaping the future of business and beyond.
She Leads with Carly
116: Fiona Tan | Chief Technology Officer, Wayfair
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Fiona is the Chief Technology Officer at Wayfair, an American e-commerce company that is the destination for all things home – a place to find the right furniture and home goods online. With 25+ years of experience leading technology teams, Fiona began her professional career working at top technical companies, including Oracle, TIBCO Software and Ariba. At TIBCO, she rose up to be the Vice President of Engineering in her 16-year tenure at this intelligence cloud data company.
Prior to Wayfair, Fiona served in executive leadership roles at Walmart – first as the Senior VP of Engineering for Customer Technology at WalmartLabs and then as the Senior Vice President of U.S. Technology at Walmart.
Fiona earned her bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from MIT and her masters in computer science from Stanford University.
In this episode, we cover the following topics:
1. Fiona's childhood and the emphasis on education
2. Studying Computer Science at MIT
3. Gender disparity in Computer Science
4. Transition from college into the professional workforce
5. Her long tenure at TIBCO software
6. Transition from Consumer to Enterprise Software companies
7. Impact and challenges working at Walmart
8. Hiring and building a team
9. Transitioning from coding into managerial role
10. CTO role
11. Balancing perfection from good enough
12. Reflecting and learning from previous mistakes
13. Women in STEM
Fiona's life-time craft she is honing? Cooking
▶️ Video interview available on Youtube.
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