How to Fix Tech's Mentorship Problem w/ Amex's VP of Technology, Sarvenaz Myslicki

**Conor Bronsdon** (0:00)
Hi there, this is Conor Bronsdon, producer and sometimes host for The Dev Interrupted Podcast.
If you looked up the term, firing on all cylinders in the dictionary, I'm fairly confident there should be a picture of Sarvenaz Myslicki next to it. A next-gen leader who earned the role of VP of Technology at American Express by the age of 30, Sarvenaz is a published author, an in-demand thought leader on mentorship, and has one of the largest followings on program or TikTok.
Sarvenaz joined us for an incredible live conversation at our Interact Conference about the real trial and errors that have led to her role at Amex, as well as the beliefs, mindsets, and rituals that have allowed her to become a mentor for developers she's never met. I just wanted to give a giant shout out to the more than 1,700 engineering leaders who joined us at our Interact Conference. We had people from more than 95 countries show up, which is just absolutely incredible. And we had six hours of some of the best engineering leadership content I've ever experienced. We hope that all of you are going to join us again October 25th for our third virtual Interact Conference. And thank you all so much for attending. We hope you enjoy this discussion as much as we did.

**<UNKNOWN>** (1:08)
Savernaz, we're stoked to have you at Interact and on the Dev Interrupted Podcast for this conversation. Thank you so much for joining.

**Sarvenaz Myslicki** (1:17)
Thanks for the invite. I'm really excited.

**<UNKNOWN>** (1:20)
Yeah, you've had such a stellar career. You are now the VP of Technology at American Express. Very impressive.
One of my favorite ways to better get to know our guests is to ask them how they got where they are today. Could you kind of walk us through who you are in your career path?

**Sarvenaz Myslicki** (1:40)
Definitely. So after graduating from the University of Florida, Go Gators, in 2013 with a degree in computer science, I went into a rotational leadership program at a company called Nielsen. And it really appealed to me because one of its main purposes was to expedite your career growth as a leader. It was pretty unheard of to get a senior level role at that company after two years, but that's exactly what happened if you made it through the program. So after the program, I moved into technical project and program management and then pursued my first people management role as a director of R&D.
So suddenly I'm leading engineers with decades of specialized expertise and it actually pushed me to start a part-time masters in computer science to make sure I kept honing my own technical skills. Then in 2018, an old connection that I made during an internship with American Express reached out and she's one of those leaders that you just dream of working for. So I was sold pretty easily and I took a director role there focused on tech modernization. And then after about a year and a half, I applied for a VP role leading our credit and collection systems, coincidentally right before the start of the pandemic. So leading that team at a time when millions of people needed credit was definitely intense.
And so my current role I took in July and in this role I lead organizations responsible for our member web experiences on americanexpress.com, loyalty experiences, enterprise services and site reliability engineering.

**<UNKNOWN>** (3:22)
Wow, that's awesome. You got your, you have the PhD in ComSci, computer science?

**Sarvenaz Myslicki** (3:28)
Just masters, PhD one day.

**<UNKNOWN>** (3:31)
Masters. What kind of things did you do in that program?

**Sarvenaz Myslicki** (3:35)
Oh man, well, so it was a part-time online master's from Georgia Tech, so it had the flexibility I needed and the professors were like top tier. In fact, it's a top five ComSci program in the world and I just learned things that really filled a lot of gaps from my undergrad.

**<UNKNOWN>** (3:55)
That's awesome. And then you said you did like a rotational program, right? Can you give more detail on that? Like what did you do in that rotation?

**Sarvenaz Myslicki** (4:03)
Yeah, it was really cool. So over two years, we did four different six month rotations and one of them was really technical.
Two of them were more around leading teams, more like project management. And then one of them was as a client service partner. So they took us completely out of engineering, showed us what it's like to deal with the customer, to be kind of customer facing. And that was really, really helpful as well.

**<UNKNOWN>** (4:29)
So yeah, I mean, obviously a meteoric rise. I think you have, maybe you're leading a team of about 350 plus. How many people are on your team today?