Since you can only change yourself, you must start there as an accountable person seeking change. When you want to see change, you don’t wait for other people to accomplish it; instead, you think about what you need to change in yourself. You study your thoughts to understand how they prevent you from taking action. Kirk Law, the chief development officer at Cohesity, understood from an early age what it meant to be seen as accountable for something bigger than oneself and to be flexible enough to accept new directions.
Inspired by Parents and Mentors
Kirk Law had dreamed of becoming a doctor like his father while growing up in Roanoke, Virginia, where his father was the only doctor of color in the area for most of his early years. His parents instilled in him the desire to be the best version of himself that he could be at an early age, regardless of whether he decided to be a street sweeper or an astronaut. He has always been anchored by the pillars of kindness, hard work, and helping others, guided by the inspiration of his parents. For Kirk, it has always been crucial to look for chances to disrupt and change while acting professionally.
They were a group of coaches and mentors Kirk Law looked up to as he navigated his professional and personal life, and they helped him find a career in technology. He found himself moving along the managerial route as chances opened up and soon recognized how well it complemented his personality and strengths.
Life before becoming a CDO
Kirk graduated from Purdue University with both a BSEE and an MSEE. He worked for more than 12 years in various engineering leadership positions at NetApp and more than 14 years at Silicon Graphics. At SanDisk, he served as vice president of engineering. Later, he rose to the position of Senior Vice President of Engineering at Primary Data, where he worked on the creation of intelligent automation software for large-scale data administration. Kirk has over 30 years of expertise and has managed development teams for both startups and established businesses. Kirk served as Senior Vice President of Development at Tableau Software prior to joining Cohesity, where he assisted users in seeing and comprehending their data. He then became the chief development officer for Cohesity.
Kirk is a member of the Executive Leadership Council, Sigma Pi Phi fraternity, the National Society of Black Engineers, and Eta Kappa Nu, the Purdue EE Honor Society. He also serves on the board of directors for the national nonprofit organization Raising a Reader.
Since its founding in 2013, Cohesity has developed into a prosperous, experienced startup. Mohit Aron founded Cohesity, which has grown significantly since then and today has more than 2,000 staff and 3,500 clients. It is a pioneer in the field of data management as a service and consistently wins praise for its unique products. Across the data center, edge, and cloud, Cohesity makes it simple to safeguard, manage, and capitalize on data. Providing a broad range of services integrated on a single multicloud data platform, including backup and recovery, disaster recovery, file and object services, dev/test, and data compliance, security, and analytics, reduces complexity and gets rid of enormous data fragmentation. Cohesity keeps data management and protection up-to-date as business concerns have changed and become more complex. We are currently witnessing a surge in cyber threats and malicious actors coming to the top of businesses’ worries, while a natural disaster like a fire or flood may have been one of the major hurdles to corporate data safety. In the case of a cyberattack, Cohesity offers business continuity and real-time visibility into suspicious behavior and the threat of ransomware.
Revolutionizing the Tech Industry
Cohesity was founded at a time when cloud-scale advances, led by Google as an example, were rapidly changing computer system architecture. Mohit Aron, the company’s founder, was inspired to create a flexible but straightforward compute system platform that was based on “scale out vs scale up” ideas. The Cohesity vision offers a way to give data protection, security, mobility, access, and insight capabilities on a single platform at a time when the majority of products in the area have a designated limit to performance and scale. Initial products enabled companies to scale out improvements in data management and ransomware prevention while meeting a variety of other data demands.
Thanks to the platform, companies can work together with cutting-edge third-party apps, such as data classification and masking. It goes above and beyond merely offering backup platform capabilities and gives businesses the chance to tap into the potential value of their data ecosystem.
Strives to Meet Client Expectations
When a customer makes a purchase of a good or service from a company or brand, they may have a variety of ideas, aspirations, and expectations in mind both before and after the transaction. Kirk Law believes that the secret to meeting client expectations is to keep modesty. He urges that simply finding a solution to your customer’s issue is not sufficient; you must strive for customer delight rather than contentment. Build a relationship based on trust by anticipating their needs and being open and upfront when you can’t fulfill them. According to Mr. Law, a key component of this is paying close attention when listening as well as being flexible and responsive as needs and goals change. Customers need to see you as a partner who can be a strategic advisor on their trip and who knows where they’re heading.
Philosophical and Methodical Management
Kirk’s management style involves humbling himself in front of the team. For instance, he is adamant that setting a good example and being open about his own vulnerabilities will help him build a more dependable and trusting relationship with his teammates. He believes that without a foundation of trust, it is easy for people to get trapped by conflict anxiety, which can result in a lack of accountability and commitment. Kirk Law encourages his teams to express their opinions and invites spirited debate in order to avoid this. He believes that he carries this innate desire to work with the team and develop them into his management jobs.
Data-driven decisions
Kirk believes that too many businesses focus on making judgments with outdated or incomplete data and not enough prioritize timely data-driven decisions in the sector today. He thinks enterprise decision-making today should routinely incorporate ideas from data analysis. Companies frequently have a plethora of pertinent data sitting idle in their data ecosystems, but instead of relying on the insights contained therein, they go in other directions for answers. Mr. Law thinks that in the future, they might assist in bridging the gap between organizational difficulties and data insights so that executives and businesses can more easily use the data at their disposal to make wiser decisions.
People of Color
Kirk has seen that there aren’t many people of color in leadership roles at his level during his career. For people of color to have mentors and role models to look up to as they explore their early careers, he would love to see this gap closed and more role models emerge. According to him, part of this requires businesses to make sure they create the proper network of support for people of color to rely on.
as an example, were rapidly changing computer system architecture. Mohit Aron, the company’s founder, was inspired to create a flexible but straightforward compute system platform that was based on “scale out vs scale up” ideas. The Cohesity vision offers a way to give data protection, security, mobility, access, and insight capabilities on a single platform at a time when the majority of products in the area have a designated limit to performance and scale. Initial products enabled companies to scale out improvements in data management and ransomware prevention while meeting a variety of other data demands.
Thanks to the platform, companies can work together with cutting-edge third-party apps, such as data classification and masking. It goes above and beyond merely offering backup platform capabilities and gives businesses the chance to tap into the potential value of their data ecosystem.
Data-driven decisions
Kirk believes that too many businesses focus on making judgments with outdated or incomplete data and not enough prioritize timely data-driven decisions in the sector today. He thinks enterprise decision-making today should routinely incorporate ideas from data analysis. Companies frequently have a plethora of pertinent data sitting idle in their data ecosystems, but instead of relying on the insights contained therein, they go in other directions for answers. Mr. Law thinks that in the future, they might assist in bridging the gap between organizational difficulties and data insights so that executives and businesses can more easily use the data at their disposal to make wiser decisions.
Risk-taking yields Success
Mr. Law contends that maintaining focus on the team at all times and taking calculated risks are crucial to effective leadership. He was fortunate in that his biggest risk was one that was both personally and professionally advantageous. He made the bold decision to relocate across the nation to the Bay Area, a center for technology, in search of a new job. He went with his gut, sold his condo, and left his east coast family behind. In the end, he met his wife through this decision, and he also took a significant stride forward in his IT career. Losing sight of this and focusing solely on oneself may result in success in the short term, but long-term success won’t be possible. As a longtime supporter and season ticket holder, Kirk draws inspiration from the Golden State Warriors’ culture.
Kirk adds, “The biggest star on the court is also the most humble, and I think the same can be modeled in the professional corporate world as well.”
Future view
Kirk Law expects that Cohesity’s platform will continue to develop over the next five years into a platform with a wide range of answers to problems requiring trusted data insights. When it comes to data transformation, Cohesity is resolving some of the most pressing issues facing today’s businesses, and, according to him, data will only continue to grow in importance for businesses’ success in the near future. Because Cohesity was developed as a data backup solution with natural disasters in mind, you could rely on it if a fire damaged your data storage and you needed to ensure business continuity. Kirk believes that data backup is resolving not only natural disaster concerns, but also ensuring that the firm can recover business continuity with a far more advanced timeframe than previously.
Quote: “Growing up, I played right guard on my high school’s football team, and I always knew that I’d prefer that team dynamic over being a long-distance individual runner any day.”
Written by Steve Sanchez.
