S1 E11: Cracking the Code: From Underestimated to Undeniable with Dawn Armstrong, Human Good

In this episode of Leadership Variations: Unfiltered, Amy Bladen Shatto sits down with Dawn Armstrong, Vice President of Information Technology at Human Good, for a candid conversation about moving from underestimated to undeniable as a woman in STEM.

Dawn shares how she built credibility across male-dominated technical environments, transformed dysfunctional IT teams, and learned that trust—not control—is what creates real performance. She also discusses the leadership skill that matters more than ever: adaptability.

From AI and automation to career ownership, mentorship, resume bias, and negotiating for what you want, this episode explores the realities women leaders face when technical expertise is no longer enough to be seen as ready.

Dawn’s message is direct: seize the opportunity, ask for what you want, and stop waiting for permission to lead.

This episode is part of the Cracking the Code: From Underestimated to Undeniable series, spotlighting women leaders in STEM who have built influence, credibility, and impact in complex environments.

In this episode, we cover:

• How to rebuild trust inside dysfunctional teams
• Why technical expertise alone is not enough for senior leadership
• The credibility challenge for women in STEM
• Why adaptability is now a leadership requirement
• How AI is changing strategy, productivity, and leadership decisions
• What scarcity-driven leadership costs women
• How mentorship helps more women advance
• Resume bias, gendered language, and hiring systems
• Why women must ask for promotions, raises, and opportunities

______________________________________________________

Chapters:
02:33 — What Dawn Built That Is Not on the Resume
03:07 — Turning Dysfunctional IT Teams Into Collaborative Teams
06:07 — Building Trust Through Honest Conversations
08:19 — Moving From Technical Expert to People Leader
10:31 — Gaining Credibility in Male-Dominated STEM Spaces
12:16 — Why Adaptability Is a Leadership Superpower
15:01 — AI, Productivity, and the Future of Work
17:08 — Becoming the CEO of Your Own Career
19:24 — Breaking the Cycle of Scarcity Leadership
21:45 — Resume Bias, Gendered Language, and Hiring Systems
25:56 — The Undeniable Take: Ask for What You Want

Transcript

Amy 0:00

Welcome to the Leadership Variations Unfiltered Podcast, where each limited run series tackles the leadership problems no one is naming. How women in STEM actually succeed, why leadership fads always fail, and where talent strategy breaks down when stakes are the highest. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, folks. My name is Amy Blayton Chateau, leadership consultant and coach to Women in STEM, and your host of the Leadership Variations Unfiltered podcast. In this first limited series, cracking the code from underestimated to undeniable series, we spotlight women leaders in STEM who've risen to senior roles, often without the recognition they so deserve. Today's guest is Don Armstrong, Vice President of Information Technology at Human Good, a large nonprofit provider of senior living communities located on the East and West Coast and serving thousands of residents across California, Arizona, Nevada, Washington, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Idaho. That's a larger number of places. Dawn is a lifelong builder of systems, teams, and transformation. Her career spans construction, healthcare, and tech startups, industries where impact is often invisible until something breaks. She's led major infrastructure overhauls, modernized outdated IT operations, and introduced AI and automation into organizations long before it was trendy. At Human Goods, she recently launched a proprietary AI chat box and rolled out Microsoft co-pilot to drive productivity and unlock institutional knowledge across the enterprise. But Dawn's real signature move isn't just about tech. It's how she leads people through change with clarity, empowerment, and an insistence on learning as a way of life. She's known for building trust across the C-suite and the server room, for hiring SMART and leading lightly, and for refusing to let legacy thinking slow down what's possible. Dawn holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Manitoba, a BS in information technology from the University of Phoenix, and a master's in technology

What Dawn Built That Is Not on the Resume

Amy 2:21

management from the University of Arizona. Welcome to the show. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Thank you so much, Amy. Thank you for having me. And thank you so much for that introduction.

Amy 2:33

Well deserved. We're so thrilled to have you here. So I guess we'll go ahead and get started. I always like to start with a framing. I think in coaching senior women in STEM, I'd like to ask, since I find the most powerful parts of someone's leadership often aren't on their resume. So I'm interested in terms of what you're leading today and what something meaningful that you are proud of, you've built, or you've influenced that others may not be able to see from the outside or on your resume.

Turning Dysfunctional IT Teams Into Collaborative Teams

SPEAKER_01 3:07

One of my favorite things to do as a leader, and one of the things I excel at is bringing a team that is dysfunctional and not living up to its potential to being a well-oiled, completely productive, just a perfect well, not not everything's perfect, but just an incredibly close-knit team that's very collaborative and works really well together. And it takes a little bit of time, but it's so enjoyable to see what happens as you work through each of the issues that comes with different pieces of a dysfunctional team. And I just love to see the team come together in that camaraderie. And what's so important is trust. As you begin to build that trust across the various elements of the team, and then you bring these often IT departments are like silos, right? There might be an application silo, you know, service desk, infrastructure, cybersecurity, all these different, you know, maybe the cloud guys don't like to talk to the data center guys, they think they're better, you know, all of these different areas. And frankly, you know, there's a lot of that mentality in IT that if I hold things close to the vest, I have job security. And also, you know, there's a lot of, I know what I'm doing, and I'm going to keep it here so that you know that I know what I'm doing. Right. There's, you know, there's a lot of ego involved. I mean, let's face it. When you get into IT, you love to fix things, you love to solve problems, you know, you like the shiny new tech. That's just what you love, right? So all of that thing goes to the type of personality that ends up in IT for the most part. And so that brings about some dysfunction in teams, right? So I just love to get in there and work on each person and bringing them around to a more collaborative style of working. But it all honestly, it all comes down to trust. They need to be able to trust everyone else on their team, and they need to have transparency. I need to be completely transparent with them, and then they begin to be vulnerable and trust me and my decisions, right? And then their leaders' decisions as well. It's just one of my favorite things to do.

Amy 5:50

Love it. Was there any example that you can think of? I'm sure you do this all the time, but is there any example of that that you can share with us that where you were able to shift? Maybe it was a dysfunctional team at first, and you were able to get in there and really burn that trust with them.

Building Trust Through Honest Conversations

SPEAKER_01 6:07

When I first started it, one role I came into, you know, when I first come into a job, I like to interview everybody who's going to be reporting to me and also their direct reports, depending on how many levels down it goes. But I like to like to have a chat with everybody. I try to make it very casual. I try to make it in person whenever possible. But nowadays, in most of the roles I've been in in the last probably, well, since COVID, have been most people are remote. But that's okay. But I like to have try to be, you know, you bring them around to this is a casual conversation. I'm not interviewing you. I don't like to say, hey, send me your resume, because that immediately puts people on the defensive, right? They think, oh, there's a new sheriff in town, already worried that they're gonna lose their job. So I like to have a very casual conversation with them and ask, you know, what was working for you before and what wasn't. Right. And to be honest with you, I have literally had guys cry in those meetings. Oh my gosh. I have had fellas be so browbeaten and mentally abused for lack of a better word, that they have cried in those meetings.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

And that just goes to show you that it doesn't matter. And they had male managers, so I'm not gonna, but it just goes to show you that it doesn't matter whether it's a male or female manager, there are bad managers everywhere. There's bad leaders everywhere, there's bad managers everywhere, people that just don't have that empathy or that understanding of people to be able to lead them properly, right? So bringing that type of dysfunction back into you know, an individual that is thrilled to get up in the morning to go to work, like what a change in that person's life. Right. That's one of the things that you know gets me up in the morning is really getting that type of thing going.

Moving From Technical Expert to People Leader

Amy 8:18

Right. And what a testimony to you that you're able to bring out that kind of vulnerability in people, men, you know, who find it especially against societal norms, I should say. It shows that you're really able to bring out that trust, like you want to be able to do. So that's amazing. I'm gonna shift a little bit and talk about your path to leadership. So quite often, especially in STEM or in highly subject matter-oriented careers, we have a deep expertise, or you're moving from that expertise and then you're suddenly leading, and there's just a really different set of skills that are required. And so often I see, especially with people in coaching, that's the only way to promotion that they see. And maybe frankly, the company hasn't offered another way to promotion. So they go from their expertise where they're really comfortable to this leadership role where they frankly don't have the skills, but that's where they're led to. So I'm so curious, when you made that shift, what did it look like for you? And was it clear in terms of what to do? Did you feel like you had those skills? Was it something you had to figure out? Or was it clear? Yeah, what did you do in making that shift? How did you prepare for it?

SPEAKER_01 9:33

I'll be perfectly honest with you. When I first started, you know, I was I came into the IT business. Well, I started off in telecom and you know, kind of transitioned into IT because it was pretty obvious that that's where the world was going. So I was a subject matter expert. I was in professional services, you know, going, traveling all over the world and working at customer sites and you know, being that subject matter expert. That's a lot of fun, but it gets old, certainly. Right. You know, and then so it was time to move up and be a people manager. And I'll admit, my first couple, you know, maybe one or two, I won't say any more than that, but people manager roles, you know, I wasn't very good at it. I was kind of a hard ass. And that doesn't work. My grandmother used to say, you know, you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.

SPEAKER_02 10:29

I heard that from my grandma.

Gaining Credibility in Male-Dominated STEM Spaces

SPEAKER_01 10:31

Yes, yes. I learned pretty quickly because in this business it's mostly men. Every college course I ever took, it was or every certification class I took, you know, sometimes I was the only woman, sometimes there might have been, you know, two women, right? When I would go out to these locations, whether it was in the US or abroad, it's almost always all male. Very, very rarely would I see a female that wasn't like the HR person or something, right? So, you know, every one of those taught me how to deal with different types of people. So some of them are ego. Oh, they're bringing in the woman to fix the problem that I couldn't fix, or who's this little lady coming in? I mean, the whole gamut. Sometimes I dealt with that by I would take the guy out to lunch and we'd have beer and burgers and we'd chat, right? Or I'd have to be mean to the guy and crush him under my foot, or the next guy, you just sort of bat your eyelids and you know be the little lady and have him help you lift this. And you know, sometimes you just have to use what you have to get the job done, right?

Amy 11:45

I love that you're saying that though, because the truth of the matter is you have to find your authentic self in that moment. That was where I was actually going. You beat me to it, but gaining credibility, whether it's as somebody who's going from a subject matter expert to a leader or as a woman in a role that's so male-dominated, I would think, and I've seen with the people I'm coaching, gaining credibility is very, very difficult.

Why Adaptability Is a Leadership Superpower

SPEAKER_01 12:16

You have to pull out every trick that you have in your bag for sure. Because people are snowflakes, right? Everybody's got their thing, everybody has their thing they're dealing with. You don't know what those things are. So you just have to learn how to get the job done with what you have in front of you. So I guess adaptability is a pretty key word, right? And as a leader, adaptability, especially today, is so important because if you look at things that are happening in today's world, right? You don't know if tariffs are gonna be up or down today, and you don't know what the next release of AI that's gonna happen two days from now, because every two or three days there's another release of something in AI. You have to adapt and you have to understand, okay, well, how am I gonna adapt to that change? How is my strategy gonna adapt to that change? I was at a conference, a leadership conference a couple of months ago, and they had a really interesting slide where they talked about how, you know, in finance, in HR, and in some of these core business support processes, right? You know, over the years, those will change like at a slow, you know, maybe five, 10% rate, whatever that is, right? But IT, where it used to be three, five years, we'd be changing. Literally, now we are changing our strategy every 18 months. It's like this, right? Okay, that's massive. How do you upskill your team for that? How do you upskill yourself for that? How do you prepare to strategize for that? How do you deal with the CFO when he wants you to figure out your budget today for the end of 2026? That's 18 months. The entire world is going to be different 18 months from now. Anyways, I completely went off track. I'm sorry, no, no, no, no.

Amy 14:15

Actually, you didn't go off track. And the challenges are so different. If you're being asked to do, I mean, we're talking about credibility, you're being asked to do something by the C-suite. And if you don't do these things, you're going to lose credibility. So you've got a triple whammy. You've got, you know, your gender, which makes it harder. You've got the subject matter expertise, which makes it harder. Plus, you have what's going on today that makes it even harder than it would be normally. So the situational concerns of today make getting that credibility especially concerning. I mean, you said adaptability. Is there any more that you can recommend? I mean, that's huge. And maybe that's what it is. Maybe it's learning as you go. I

AI, Productivity, and the Future of Work

Amy 15:01

don't know.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Yeah, it's definitely adaptability. I love the challenge of AI, to be honest. I try really hard not to think about, like, you know, I try not to think about the Terminator movies and Skynet because I'm sure that's where we're headed. But, you know, I just try to think about the next couple of years and the changes that the increases in productivity that we can do today are just absolutely amazing. Right. Like I can write a policy or a job description now, you know, in minutes where I would just sit there. Like, first of all, that's not something I enjoy doing. Right. But, you know, I could at least get 75% of the way there in five minutes. Right. It's awesome. And it gives me the opportunity to do things that I need to be doing or that I love doing, right? So that's power. But yes, you have to be adaptable and you have to be able to grab those opportunities, right? And I think as women leaders, that to me is the most important part that's got me where I am today is you have got to grab the opportunities. And you've got to see, like, for example, when I worked at a startup, when you start to see things shift, or frankly, at any job you're in, you need to understand what's going on in the business. And if you're starting to see a shift, you need to understand, okay, now is my opportunity to grab the next role here or fill the next void that I know I can fill, move up, or maybe it's time for me to move on. Maybe that door is closing behind me. So I don't want it to hit me in the ass, so I better get out.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

But it's it's being realistic. Yes. I mean, let's face it, it's scary. Yes. For sure. You know, you're leaving the comfort of that, you know, everyday paycheck.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

But sometimes you need to take that

Becoming the CEO of Your Own Career

SPEAKER_01 17:08

leap.

Amy 17:08

We were talking about this right before we started, but it's every person today being the CEO of their own company. It really is. You know, you can't sit back and say, oh, I'm just going to be doing this for the next 10 years, because nothing like that exists. And that can be scary and just absolutely stalling if you let it. Or you can say, well, so what do I need to do on a daily basis? Let me look to possibility. And it's still scary, but it's much more empowering when there's that word. I don't like to use buzzwords, but it gives you the ability to take control and do something for yourself when you know I'm looking at the next day, I'm chunking. That's what I tell my coaching clients. I'm going to chunk it into what can I do and what can I do tomorrow? Not let's worry about what's going to happen.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

Well, you know, that's an AI term, chunking, right?

Amy 17:59

No, I started smile and I was like, why is she? No, I actually finished my dissertation. In my mind, when I was doing PhD, I thought it was a term that I gave myself. I can't think about doing my entire dissertation.

SPEAKER_02 18:13

Yeah.

Amy 18:13

Chunk it into, you know, I'm doing my introduction, I'm doing my methods, I'm doing, I'm sounding so so nerdy right now. It's scary. But that was my term that I gave myself. So I use AI term, feel smarter.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Yes, good for you. That's exactly how AI deals with like if you feed a huge PDF document into AI, right? It takes all those pieces and it chunks it out. Really? Yeah. So so AI is chunking your dissertation, just like you dunked your dissertation.

Amy 18:44

That's the coolest thing ever. You were ahead of the game, Amy. Let's face it. Wow. Well, I can tell my coaching clients that though. On that note, moving on. So looking back across your career, was there a particular challenge or a like watershed, a ha moment that was a catalyst for you? We all have moments that don't go quite as well as we wished they would have. But something that you look back on and say, the learning from this moment that didn't go as well as I wish it did was just, I'm glad it happened because it changed this or gave me this or something like that.

Breaking the Cycle of Scarcity Leadership

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Well, yeah. I mean, I think there was several of them, frankly. You know, there was one event where, you know, there was some major leadership change in the IT department over a the short course of time. And, you know, I was kind of middle management, and I eventually ended up with a female CIO, and we did not see eye to eye at all. And to be honest with you, she was incredibly difficult to work with, and she drove every woman out of that department. Oh no, you know, there are times, I mean, maybe they're behind us, but I have seen it where women can be pretty brutal leaders to women, and I think that back I don't know, five, six, seven, ten years ago, I think that women had to step on other women because there was only so many spots at the top, right? I think that that has changed now, or I like to think it's changed. You know, I spend I'm digressing here, but I spend a lot of time bringing women up. Right? Like I've been involved with, you know, girls in tech and the girl scouts and different things like this to make younger women, whether they're teenage girls or women just starting out in the industry, especially in cybersecurity, right? Because that's kind of a passion of mine as well. But I want to mentor them and say, you know, you need to reach out and grab for the next opportunity, right? And you know, being a leader and having open spots or or having connections in the industry, I'm also able to say, hey, there's a job over there. I can get you an introduction, right? I've never been great at networking. You know, I've been a pure technical person for most of my career. So I wish I was that person that could remember faces and names. Like salespeople have that innate ability that they can meet you once and they know your face and your name and all your history and they remember it forever. I can't do that. I like to make sure that I bring women up, whatever opportunities I have, right? I want to be able to help them advance their careers for sure. So I've done a few speaking things, like I don't know if you've heard of Oesis, Women in Cybersecurity. I haven't, but tell me.

Resume Bias, Gendered Language, and Hiring Systems

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Yeah, that's a really great organization, uh, nonprofit that's been around for oh my gosh, like 15 or 20 years, started by this lady, Lynn. And they have conferences every year, they bring in a lot of students. They're all big mentorship programs. They have Target and a bunch of other large companies that sponsor a lot of cybersecurity training programs and things like that. But yeah, I did a speaking thing two years ago, I think, and it was about how to gender wash your resume. And why do you have to gender wash your resume? Well, what is gender washing? So, you know, Stanford has done studies where you could take two identical resumes, you put a man's name on one, you know, like Jim Smith, and you put a woman's name, Dawn Armstrong, on another resume, and they will pick Jim Smith every time.

Amy 22:40

That makes me want to cry.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

I think the number is like 96%, is like some crazy amount, right? You know, and so you know, we went through a lot of tips about how do I change the speech in the resume, right? There's a gentic speech and communal speech. Women speak more communally, like we. Yeah. Right? Team collaborate, men are more I, me. And if you think about who trained a lot of the larger companies, and frankly, even medium companies who are using even small applicant tracking systems now, like greenhouse or all these different ATSs, right? You know, those all have AI behind them. Well, who trained those AIs? Yeah. So they're completely biased. So they're picking up that agentic speech because that's what they were trained to do. So you have to move your resume more to that side of the fence. And then you know, other things too, like don't put where you live.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

Don't even put your city. Nobody needs to know where you live.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

You don't want to be judged by where you live. Because what if you want you will move? What if you're 45 minutes away from that location and they only want you to be 30 minutes away?

SPEAKER_02 24:03

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

Right? Be careful how much experience you list and never put the years behind your when you graduate. Right. Maybe you should only put your first initial on the resume, D Armstrong. And I notice what a lot of women are doing now on LinkedIn is they take their photo off. That's so interesting. Because if you take your photo off, then you're not going to be discriminated based on your race or you know how good looking you are, or whatever, right?

Amy 24:39

I will say this the advice that marketing agencies and most people, or I shouldn't say most people, but a lot of people who talk about professional LinkedIn, anybody who's recommending that, and I have done a little bit of studying of this recently, they say if there's no photo, the profile is not taken seriously.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

I mean, I'm a hiring manager as well. So me giving that advice and then trying to use my own advice when I'm hiring can be a little difficult because I do go on LinkedIn and look at the candidates. Right. So when there isn't a picture on there, I'm like, okay, why isn't there a photo on here? It's a double-edged sword. I think that women have to think way more about it and really be thoughtful about what you're putting on there, what photo you're putting on there, all of that than men do. You know, men can have a picture of them hiking, you know, and having a backpack or having their sunglasses on, and it doesn't matter, right?

Amy 25:44

Well, sadly.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

But for a woman, you better have gone and paid $500 for a headshot. Wow. Well, that's like I said, sadly. But true, yes.

The Undeniable Take: Ask for What You Want

Amy 25:56

Well, with that, I can't believe it, but we're coming to the end. I always close with the same thing. I call it the undeniable take. So, what is one truth that you would give to the woman who is ready to lead in a senior role, but she's being apparently underestimated. So, in other words, she knows she's got it, but she needs help in cracking the code, like you obviously have.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

I would have to say, you've got this. Grab the bull by the horns. You've got it. Seize that opportunity, ask for what you want. Never, ever, ever take that first offer. I have a hard time asking for what I want. Don't just ask, just walk in there and say you deserve it. I do that a lot. I mean, I love to negotiate contracts. It's one of my favorite things to do. And it's amazing what you get when you negotiate a contract just by asking. You have to take that all the way to the bank when you're negotiating a raise, a new job, a promotion. Ask. And if they say no, ask for something different. Because you're eventually going to get something.

Amy 27:09

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Well, Don, this has been a pleasure to have you. What a great conversation. Thank you for your time.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

My pleasure, Amy. It's it's been fun. Thank you.

Amy 27:21

This brings us to the end. So thank you very much.

SPEAKER_02 27:25

Another great, great conversation.

Amy 27:33

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