Hey everyone! Michelle Washington here, excited to join this community!

General
1

Hello everyone,

I’m Michelle Washington, and I’m pleased to join this community. I work as a Chief Technology Officer at Mid-stage SaaS Company (formerly Twilio, Microsoft), based in Seattle, Washington. With 25 years in the field, Started as a software engineer, progressed through architecture roles at Microsoft, led R&D at several startups, became CTO at current company in 2022. First Black woman CTO in the company’s history. Passionate about technical excellence and inclusive leadership.

What brings me here

Found the community through discussions about technical leadership and career progression. Values the cross-functional perspectives and authentic experiences shared. Wants to share insights about breaking barriers in tech leadership while learning from other executives. Interested in the intersection of technical strategy and business impact.

My interests

  • Enterprise architecture and scalability
  • Inclusive technical leadership
  • Mentoring underrepresented engineers
  • Digital transformation strategy
  • Technical team building and culture
  • Speaking at tech conferences about diversity

Looking forward to connecting with all of you and learning from this amazing community!

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Michelle, so great to see another woman in tech leadership here! Your journey from Twilio to Microsoft to CTO is inspiring. I’d love to hear about your experience building and scaling engineering teams, especially in the transition from individual contributor to executive. The challenges of maintaining technical depth while handling strategic leadership are real. Looking forward to learning from your experience!