Linda Apsley Applies Her Technology Expertise And Leadership To Consulting Success
The path to leadership varies greatly from industry to industry, sector to sector. In the technology sector specifically, this can be uniquely challenging for a variety of reasons, especially for women. The heavily male-dominated field is extremely competitive, always evolving, and always shifting in response to both technology and shifting market demands.
This combination of challenges makes seasoned tech executive Linda Apsley’s journey to success all the more compelling to follow. The technology sector’s leadership demographics are only 3% women, and Linda Apsley is an inspiring example of that exclusive cohort. With a proven track record of driving technical change and high-scale stability across a number of disparate industries across the tech sector, Apsley’s example is one to follow.
Early Life, Education, and Inspiration
From a very early age, Linda Apsley was encouraged to fully apply herself to her interests and seek out the best teachers. This philosophy guided her during her time at Brigham Young University, where she focused on organizational communication, driven by a deep interest in how organizations function as systems and the impact of leadership on outcomes. After graduating, Apsley discovered her passion for computers, which would go on to shape her career in profound ways.
Linda Apsley’s passion for computers so early on in the technology’s development meant that there weren’t many opportunities to learn how to code outside of specific environments, but that barrier wouldn’t stand for long. Apsley followed her passion and taught herself to code as soon as she graduated from BYU, learning from any coding magazine she could get her hands on and learning through trial and error. Her first project was a children’s math game written in Basic—a humble beginning for what would prove to be a lifelong career.
Professional Story
Microsoft has been the home and starting point of countless tech professionals and experts since its inception, and Linda Apsley is no exception. Starting as a Program Manager in 2000, Apsley helped design and deliver the first Windows Server and Client customer deployments for Windows Server 2003, 2008, and Windows XP. She also managed multiple running relationships and partnerships with vendors and other companies, and created the Technology Adoption Program and scaled it across the Windows, Office, and Server and Tools divisions. She also established multiple systems for triaging and fixing bugs and errors, developed sustainable internal engineering practices, and so much more.
After eight years of success in various roles, Linda Apsley rose to Director of Program Management for Microsoft’s Business Online Services Group, where her skills led to further success. A number of enterprise-class cloud services were launched through a program she designed, she worked with subject matter experts across nine engineering teams, architected the service integration principles, delivered the first internal deployments for Office365, and more. Her technical and management skills directly contributed to the consistent and innovative growth and development of Microsoft in her tenure there.
Her tenure at Microsoft would come to a close eventually, but not before doing a stint in Xbox where she worked on the Service Excellence program as a foundation to transforming the Xbox engineering principles to succeed as a live service. She was also responsible for the program management integration across the services, providing guidance and structure for all of the services to work together. In her final Microsoft role, her leadership and management were critical components of the service’s successful ideation, implementation, and launch.
After Microsoft, Linda Apsley would pursue tech leadership success across a variety of sectors and businesses. She served as the Vice President of Revenue and Data Engineering at Time Inc., was a member of the Board of Directors at DataMentors, modernized data engineering ecosystems at two different large financial services companies, and served as the Chief Technology Officer at GEICO. In every position Linda Apsley served, she significantly strengthened the company’s technology infrastructure, empowered and fostered new talent, and streamlined various processes and pipelines.
Workplace Philosophy
Linda Apsley’s workplace philosophy is all about information, prioritization, and specificity. She knows that in order to do her best work, she needs to be constantly on the cutting edge of new trends and technologies. She maintains relationships with other tech leaders in her network, keeps an eye on industry news and events, and reads constantly in order to keep her knowledge base as current as possible. She credits her success, in part, to this eternal, hungry curiosity.
Her approach to each new project is consistent, regardless of industry. Working alongside the relevant stakeholders, she starts by defining and refining the vision for the project at a high level, to set a guiding star to follow. From there, she digs down into the practical components: what problems she’s trying to solve, and what problems lie outside of scope. Once that’s determined, she can begin working with relevant teams to ideate and problem solve. The second step, however, is crucial.
“I always believe that it is important to understand both the system you are working in and the people who are involved,” she says, “I like to approach projects with respect for decisions of the past and for the people involved.”
Honesty is a core operating principle for her as well, both interpersonally and as a technical expert. Identifying the limitations of scope in a project naturally requires being honest about what is and isn’t feasible in a given technical environment. On an interpersonal level, Apsley maintains honesty because it opens the doors for connection with her teams, which then leads to learning and growth opportunities for everyone involved.
She says, “I learn a lot from the people I engage with. There’s so much variety of thought and ideas, and at the heart of it all, most people care deeply about the same things – honesty, family, and helping others.”
Where Is She Now?
Linda Apsley is currently applying her expertise and guidance to a number of roles simultaneously. She’s operating as a Senior Advisor to BCG, with a focus on technology, data, and AI in insurance and finance; Runpod.io, a cloud-based AI model training platform startup; and Vendia, a data automation platform startup. She’s continuing to leverage her technical and leadership expertise toward building transformative tech teams and solutions across the sector.
She has also launched her own company, Apsley Consulting Group, where she’s the CEO. Apsley Consulting Group provides executive leadership development and coaching to potential clients, alongside general technology consulting services. They aim to diagnose root causes of technology problems in order to guide companies toward platform and system stability. From developing data strategies to solving difficult technical problems with systems, creating corporate technology strategy and facilitating regulatory compliance
