In honor of Women’s History Month, we are featuring a series of guest blogs from Microsoft employees who are doing influential work here in the Bay Area and beyond. Learn more about (and share!) what inspires and empowers them every day.
- Marketing Manager, Consumer App Marketing
- Years at Microsoft: 3.5
“I didn’t always know what I wanted to do, but I knew the kind of woman I wanted to be.” – Diane Von Furstenberg, Designer.
Growing up in the heart of Silicon Valley, surrounded by new and interesting technology, I was exposed to this business at an early age. I was enthralled with the problems tech companies were looking to solve, and fascinated by the innovative solutions and products they offered. I often 
thought that if I could merge technology with my interests and passions, I’d create my ideal career.
In college I majored in marketing and interned at a large tech company, while nurturing a deep interest in women’s studies and sociology. Today, in my role as Marketing Manager for the Developer Outreach Group at Microsoft, I feel I’ve pulled all the threads of my life together: technology, business, marketing, innovation, sociology. In that sense, I really do have it all. I am focused on connected devices and getting other B2C top consumer apps for the Windows Phone and Windows store. Basically, every top app that is in the iOS store should be in the Windows store. My primary responsibility is to build and execute marketing programs directly with the app partner to ensure development of the app, user acquisition and device sales. I am also my team’s scrummaster constantly redefining my team’s productivity model through Agile Marketing.
“When women are put in leadership roles, brands get better and morale gets better” – Muhtar Kent, Chairman & CEO of Coca-Cola Co.
I first met my manager Shaina Houston in 2010. I was in immediate awe of the team she built – a team where collaboration was the root and teammates played to each other’s strengths and hard work were the branches. It was apparent that driving adoption and creating perception change in highly competitive cities in the US was truly a shared goal. Shaina’s dedication to her team was apparent just by my interview process alone, requiring me to meet her multiple times over the phone and in person, as well as with several members of her team. And all of that was before the final onsite interview! I guess you can say that I was already empowered before I started my first day at Microsoft because of the keen interest and attention Shaina showed – clearly, she was dedicated to finding the right person for the role. Shaina had probably learned that by surrounding herself and building a team with great people, great things can happen. I struck gold when she hired me onto her team.
The best career advice I have ever received is something so simple and yet has been able to ground me time and time again: ask simple questions and listen very carefully. So often, we talk too much to try to get our point across and are unable to decipher what the other person across the table really needs from us. Actively listening allows us to accurately digest multiple pain points in a discussion and help develop a targeted solution. As an extrovert, I have to really work hard to practice this, but whenever I do, I always come up with something creative.
I am so proud to be a woman in technology and am thrilled to continue to be a part of further technological advances in decades to come.
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Nisha lives in San Francisco, enjoys hot yoga, SoulCycle and spending time with her family and friends. In her spare time she runs a consumer technology meetup (SVNewTech) and has grown the organization from 3,000 members to 12,000 today.
