IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2020 - 21

Sargent volunteered at the National Science Foundation for two years through
the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Technology Policy
Fellowship supported by Intel.

be able to give back . . . I think what that
does is it allows you to grow a broader perspective," she explains.
An additional benefit of volunteering is that it opens doors. Sargent has
had many opportunities that came not
through work but via her volunteerism.

The goal, therefore, is to create a
"better-together" plan so that "everybody together" can solve the endcustomer's problems. "We look at how
to do this through an end-customer's
lens. How do we solve customer problems and how can technology help
them?" Sargent explains. "[The] IoT is

exceptionally complex, and it takes a
community across the ecosystem to develop and deploy an IoT solution. There
are several required building blocks
with many attributes, multiple supply
chains and companies, and a set of interdisciplinary skills needed to create
an integrated IoT solution. The key for
success is demystifying the complexity into actionable pathways through
technical decomposition and business
relationships so that the industry can
leverage [the] IoT to provide business
value to solve end-customer problems."
Sargent is a natural fit for sales and
marketing. After spending her first 20
years building systems "behind the
curtain," she was able to easily transition into the knowledgeable trusted-advisor role. Still, that's not to say that it
wouldn't be a great fit for someone right
out of school-sales and marketing has
an entire career path for a technical
community. "Sales and marketing has
the same technical leadership pipeline
as the rest of Intel; they have the same
recognized engineering leadership positions and principal engineers," Sargent
adds. In addition, Sargent makes it a
priority to incubate and bring technical

Engineers as Trusted Advisors
Today, in her current role for U.S. Channel Scale and Partners in the Sales and
Marketing Group, Sargent works with the
technology executives at the companies
that serve the end customers. Her role is
as a trusted advisor to these companies,
and her job is to create a scale plan that
integrates the IoT, machine to machine,
complex systems, and distributed analytics into their business objectives.
It goes beyond creating opportunities
for Intel silicon to be a part of a piece of
hardware or system. The Intel team must
ensure that there is a transfer of knowledge so that their partners know how to
use these systems effectively. "If they don't
know how to use, apply, or build a design
around utilizing them in terms of a complex system ... then hardware sits on a
truck waiting to be sold," Sargent explains.

Sargent shows a journey through IoT. "It takes a community across the
ecosystem to develop and deploy an IoT solution," she says.

JUNE 2020

IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE

21
IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2020
