Title: Technical Leader

Company: Cisco Systems Inc

Location: Lawrenceville, Ga.

For 41 years, Lois Alston has been honing in on outstanding technical troubleshooting skills, currently working her way down to figure out each problem at hand within her role as technical leader at Cisco Systems Inc. Throughout her work-week, she trains and learns specific programming languages such as Cobalt and Oracle. Ms. Alston was in the U.S. Navy for 21 years, with the last 14 having been spent in computing.

The biggest challenge Ms. Alston has overcome has been being thrown into roles with limited experience and training. She has continuously and successfully worked her way through each.  Her greatest accomplishment to date was being promoted to a significant level in the Navy. She was a senior Navy Chief, which is one rank below Chief. She is extremely fortunate in that she loves her job, management, and her workers. She would like to be known for always doing a great job and being passionate about her work.

Given that Ms. Alston has always worked within the technology realm, she has strived to work on the management aspects, too. Her goal is to now focus on more management and leadership roles at Cisco. She has been selected and is in progress with a coach/mentor. Ms. Alston will be graduating soon for the ‘Next Generation Leader’ with Cisco in December 2015.