Tell me about your yourself, you job and what your main responsibilities are?
My name is Dani Oliver and I am a Senior Delivery Manager in Digital IT. I have been in arm for nearly 5 years. I have a software development background, but I joined the company as a Scrum master. Currently, I am a Senior Agile Delivery Manager and I help one of Arm’s Digital IT Domains move forward in their delivery commitments with a people-centric leadership style.
What do you enjoy the most about your job?
Being a truly Agile person, the best about my work has to be the relationship with my colleagues. You can think of me as something between a Project Manager and a Life coach, and what I enjoy the most is feeling that I truly help teams and individuals reach their true potential.
What made you decide to work for Arm?
The company reputation, the great benefits, and the fact I was offered a solid way forward to my career development.
How has Arm enabled you to learn and develop?
The Arm values are not just marketing assets: they are a reality. I have never felt better in my own skin, and I have thrived in my leadership skills and resourcefulness. I have always had a massive impostor syndrome throughout my life, but with Arm I do believe in my capabilities and can-do attitude. Most importantly, I am a good and valued leader to my teams thanks to the many opportunities for development I have had in this time.
What do you enjoy about Life at Arm?
The true sense of feeling at home and the camaraderie. Arm really cares about their employees.
What is your best memory during your career at Arm?
I do not think I can choose just one! From the delivery of the new Arm.com in 2017, to representing Arm in the very first Cambridge Pride Day… but it was being part of the Quarterly planning meetings we had before the pandemic. The energy was always so intense!
What does your day to day look like?
My life has changed a lot during the pandemic, and I’ve had to develop very strong routines to keep the sanity of my mental health. Normally I wake up early, I have breakfast while checking my emails, go for a refreshing walk, and by the time I am back I start my crazy day of meetings. I try to save time for admin tasks, do physical exercise, and finding a good balance between being productive and taking care of myself. My goal every day is to have my inbox empty, and all the errands for the day completed.
How does the work you do change the world or the Arm Ecosystem?
My role is key to enhance communications and good working practices across the teams I manage and others in Digital IT and beyond. I’m not always successful as it’s a very complex environment, but thanks to what I do, my people-centric approach (my motto is “People, not resources”), the incredible team of professionals helping each other in our area and the relentless will to deliver quality products, we have a strong and beautiful ecosystem of websites and back-end systems to deliver our customers their IP and licensing with a great user experience and strong security standards and compliance.
I also have the privilege to be one of the leads of the Pride @ Arm ERG. As a member of the LGBTQ community, it is my honor to contribute to the wellbeing of our queer employees and allies through education. I still remember when I was young and something like this felt impossible. It truly feels right at all levels, and because of that I am doing something good for the world and Arm at all levels.
What has been your favorite project?
This is like asking someone which one is their favorite child! I’ve worked through a lot of beautiful and challenging projects in the five years I’ve been part of Arm. All of them have had beautiful and painful moments, but most times they have been successful. Right now, I am in the middle of one of the most challenging ones but with a beautiful end goal: to transform all our IP Delivery systems to modernize and give our customers the best experience and security standards. I am just a small piece of a very big puzzle, but I do believe I am making a difference and I love it.
You are part of the Pride network what does LGBTIQ+ month mean to you?
This month to me stands for remembrance, evolution, and a moment where we review our past to assess and improve our future. Do you have any idea what I would have given, as a child and a teenager, to have even 10% of the information and exposure on LGBTQ issues we have nowadays?
It surely would have saved me so much pain and suffering and every company has a responsibility to educate, to enhance understanding of underrepresented groups and embrace our differences.
At Arm, we continue to build out the ERG groups to achieve this goal, working together to achieve common goals. The work that I do as part of the Pride network is to ensure we support one another to learn and grow to try and end any form of discrimination against the underrepresented groups
Only through envisioning a better world can we truly be free, like when I was a child and used my imagination to dream. Education for ourselves, for our families, our friends and our colleagues are key. Therefore, every year, I look forward to learning something new. To educate the adults, and to show children regardless of their sex, sexual orientation, race, or religion, that there is still light and hope in this world.