Dixie Garr: Mapping her Future
Forbes.com introduces a phenomenal woman named Dixie Garr, who was profiled by award-winning essayist Stanley Crouch, Garr was vice president of Customer Success Engineering at Cisco Systems.
Forbes.com Photo credit Markham Johnson
Garr grew up in Dubach, La., where she was the youngest of eight children. She graduated high school and received a National Merit Scholarship. Garr completed a double major in three years and then went for her master’s degree coursework as a Hughes Aircraft Co. fellow in computer engineering at UCLA. But she left before finishing her thesis.
She had a break in her career, and she knew she had to make herself known to the technology world. In 1991, she went to a leadership program and came across other powerful women leaders who were smart and talented as her. The only difference was they were “making their own way.” After that experience, according to Forbes.com, Garr went home knowing what she wanted to do and how she was going to do it.
Over the years, she would go to conferences and workshops where she would announce, “I’m someone’s VP, they just don’t know it yet.”
In 1998, during a worldwide recruiting search, Cisco Systems heard about her and heard the statement she had made. Cisco hired Garr to improve their customer experience.
Today, she is considered an A-list speaker and received the Black Engineer of the Year Award in 1997. Forbes also said that Garr will still say she is someone’s VP, but they don’t know it yet.
Dixie Garr is a woman who can easily see her future and work to reach it. Her confidence and determination made her who she is today.
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