How We Succeed: Matt Stryker, MBA’01
I have a global responsibility—I work with people in almost every country around the world …
I work remotely for IBM from my home in Bloomington, Indiana. My entire career at IBM has been as a remote, work-at-home employee—all related to marketing with a common thread of growth and industry initiatives. I travel across the world once or twice a month, but for the most part, when my son wakes up in the morning, he looks down the hallway and there I am at my desk working with people from all over the world.
There are days I follow the sun—I will start the day on the phone with my colleagues in India, then spend most of the morning with Europe, the early afternoon with our North America team, then our Latin America team, move on to the Middle East and Africa, then I’ll spend the evening with Asia and Japan, providing direction for the marketing execution of our brand.
The most important thing you can be to a company is an entrepreneur—somebody the company can turn to for growth opportunities, charting new territory, and figuring out exciting new opportunities.
My career path at IBM has been around growth initiatives—you can call them start-ups in many ways—across the company. Sometimes people think it’s funny that I work at IBM, this massive company, but I advise people to be an entrepreneur. What I do is bring an entrepreneurial spirit to motivate people to accomplish our company goals as a team.
I am Matt Stryker, program director and manager of demand programs in the software group for IBM, and I achieved more than I ever imagined with the Kelley Full-Time MBA Program