ThriveGloabal, Jul 2020 – “Everything that happens is ultimately my responsibility.” With Charlie Katz & Lisa Partridge
Everything that happens is ultimately my responsibility. Period. However, one cannot and should not do it all alone. No one person has all the answers and think of all the perspectives to consider when making decisions.
As part of my series about the “How Business Leaders Plan To Rebuild In The Post COVID Economy”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Lisa Partridge. Lisa is CEO of XYPRO Technology Corporation, one of the country’s leading cybersecurity solutions companies.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I started out on the sales side of the organization here at XYPRO, a software development and consulting services firm in Southern California. In small companies, everyone pitches in to help in every area and so I learned a lot about what’s involved in running a software company, supporting customers, coming up with product ideas, networking, etc. The market for our solutions was a relatively niche group that uses a particular “big iron” server for very high volume online transaction processing called an HPE NonStop server. Our customers are B2B, Fortune 500 companies that are part of the global financial & telecommunications infrastructure. Thanks to the vision of XYPRO’s founders, we pivoted our specialty focus to Cybersecurity in the early 1990s and were early players in the space. Other than a small blip in 1994, Our business grew slowly but steadily. I was given quite a bit of autonomy in how I built up the sales organization and distributor network, learning as I went, moving into an officer level role as VP of Sales and later promoted to company President. When the founders realized they wanted to retire, I was approached to gauge my interest in a management buy-out. In 2014 I became the CEO.
