I will never forget the time when I was sitting in my office and heard Pam’s office door open. The opening of the door brought a quick presence to the moment which drew all attention to Pam.

She walked over to Sven’s office and then back to hers where she picked up the phone to continue a conversation with help desk. Her voice was composed and precise…
“Sven is not in his office. I can only assume he is in the rest room puking up his guts. I have already emptied the contents of my stomach so am able to have this conversation with you. In case I haven’t made myself perfectly clear, this is for Bill Gates, the flight leaves in 2 hours and we need access to the server now in order to copy the files to a portable hard drive.” Pam never missed a beat. Although not audible, I could feel the sweat and panic coming from the other side of the conversation.

Bill was a regular customer and our team had created a demo/prototype for him to present at an event. The server had been down for hours and the help desk team was franticly working to solve the problem. Happily the server came back online in time to get everything copied. This was before remote access had decent speed or reliability.

Pam is a true role model, always calm and clear with her intent; I was lucky to work with her for five years.