Connecting engagement to demand is the goal of all sales and marketing organizations and the success of the team is largely dependent on the vision of their leadership. So we were interested when GovDataDownload featured a profile of Michelle Rudnicki, NetApp’s new Vice President of the U.S. Public Sector team. 

Rudnicki is a true tech visionary, having had career experience in engineering, sales development, and customer-facing activities. And now she’s bringing these talents to a team that has already built strong relationships with local, state, and federal agencies, as well as educational institutions as they navigate their data-driven journeys to mission success. 

Read on to learn more about Michelle Rudnicki and her plans for driving more success for the NetApp team and the customers they serve. 

Technology and data have been at the center of a major transformation in our world. This is even more true today as we connect globally in a new economy and manage jobs, education, healthcare, and much more from remote environments. At the core of helping users manage this digital transformation is Data Visionaries. This month, we are featuring Data Visionary Michelle Rudnicki, a technology industry veteran who recently joined NetApp as Vice President of the U.S. Public Sector team.

Prior to joining NetApp, Rudnicki had a robust technology career, starting as a chemical engineer and beginning her career within the IBM labs. During her tenure at IBM, she held 14 different roles and had a front seat to the technology evolution and the rise of digital transformation. Whether in engineering, sales development, customer-facing, or leadership role, Rudnicki was always at the forefront of the technology evolution.

This grasp on the technology not only allowed her to understand her customers better, but she developed a keen interest in identifying the role that technology would play in helping those customers with the mission at hand.

After IBM and prior to joining the NetApp team, Michelle Rudnicki was Vice President of Public Sector at Virtustream, where she worked with customers transitioning enterprise applications to the cloud and focused on ensuring that cloud services met the security and compliance needs of public sector organizations.  Through this experience, Rudnicki gained deeper insights into helping these customers navigate their cloud journey.

Michelle Rudnicki, Vice President of the U.S. Public Sector team at NetApp

Rudnicki is passionate about helping public sector customers find technology solutions to manage their data needs. “Public sector customers have a higher mission to protect and serve the nation and its citizens,” Rudnicki said. “Yet as you dig deeper into each customer’s requirement, there are more diverse missions at hand. I believe NetApp is uniquely positioned to help them achieve that mission by accelerating their digital transformation initiatives.”

In her new leadership role at NetApp, helping public sector customers fulfill their mission will continue to stay at the core, as Rudnicki helps her team define and navigate the public sector go-to-market strategy and structure.

“Current government IT priorities are focused on the mission of digital transformation and modernization,” Rudnicki said. “Our customers are implementing programs to modernize and consolidate data centers and identify opportunities to expand into cloud. That’s where we come in. NetApp can help them to build out their data fabric and can give them a roadmap for a hybrid, flexible journey to the cloud.”

A flexible and agile experience is one that public sector customers require, especially today. On the federal side of the business, Rudnicki noted that “it has been a very active quoting season.” As the federal fiscal buying season comes to a close, activity has picked up. In some cases, it’s due to the additional budget dollars made available in Q4 for IT modernization and IT projects, in other cases projects that were put on hold due to COVID are now back on the front burner. Even still, digital transformation has stayed top-of-mind, as workforces and learning environments across the public sector have shifted to a virtual or hybrid model.

Not only is Rudnicki familiar with the shift to virtual or hybrid environments her customers are facing, she is experiencing it right alongside of them as she started her new position with NetApp amid a pandemic.

Navigating a complex global organization like NetApp can be a challenge to any newcomer, but during a pandemic, it became clear that communication and connecting remotely with her team would be critical. Rudnicki noted that she was grateful to have a strong leadership team in place to help her acclimate. Now, she is focusing her energy and her public sector experience on driving growth and transformation alongside her public sector customers.