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Alisa Nessler
Vice-President,
ESM Customer Support,
BMC
Software
By Jamsheed Gandhi
I always wonder, Is it possible for someone who has dealt with the chaos and the insecurity of various start-up environment’s to ever fit into the hierarchy and the constraints of corporate life? Well, BMC Software’s Vice President of ESM Customer Support, Alisa Nessler, is one such candidate that has made the transition effectively.
“I started my career at a start-up and loved it because at a young age I was given the opportunity to take on as much responsibility as I wanted. That gave me my entrepreneurial spirit,” she says. “While startups are a great opportunity to build something from scratch and to learn extensively about many different facets of the industry and business, they are also all consuming in terms of your commitment. So, after eight years in that environment, I was ready to see how I could apply what I had learned with a larger company and get back into mainstream IT,” she added.
Nessler does not seem afraid to challenge norms and try new approaches in her current role. She remarks that it’s her experience as an entrepreneur that helps her through every day issues. She looks for people with diverse backgrounds to be part of her team as they bring different perspectives at both, the strategic and tactical level.
A passionate SCUBA diver, she takes the effort to take some time out from her busy schedule and loves to get away to a remote location, which is well out of the reach of cell phones and the Internet. Early this year, she vacationed on an island off the coast of Panama, the nearest town of which was a 45-minute boat ride.
She recollects, “It was an eco-lodge with no phone or electricity service. The only lights in the cabin were solar powered and it was a great escape for me to re-energize, focus on my diving, and enjoy the natural habitat on the island.”
She has definitely put her entrepreneurship skills to good use in having an excellent rapport with her staff. They are so dedicated to her that they managed to send her a chocolate cake and a bottle of champagne on her birthday, while she was at a remote location in Panama!
Personally, she is proud of her three nephews; and is especially fond of the oldest one, who has begun to demonstrate both academic success and curiosity about the world in general.
She adds, “I love it when people take initiative or when a team comes together to accomplish what everybody thought was impossible. People who have hidden agendas and/or folks that do "passive sabotage" drive me nuts.”
At the end of the day, Nessler really can't really imagine any other career that would have given her this kind of an opportunity to learn, adapt, and still be challenging. “Perhaps I would have specialized in some kind of research in the field of science if I hadn't gotten hooked on to programming in college,” she concludes.
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