Laura Herriott

I am the Associate Director for Research Consulting at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where I lead 60 experts across several teams who support research computing. Our teams provide domain expertise, advanced application and visualization consulting, technical support and training for academic, industry researchers, and other users of advanced research computing and data resources across NCSA, the Illinois campus, and the national and global research communities. I have 27 years of experience in technology, 23 of which have been at Illinois, where I am also a co-PI for the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) - Allocations - project and the new DeltaAI system funded by the National Science Foundation. I am also a co-lead for the Illinois Computes campus and system initiative.

After decades of climbing the career ladder and trying to prove myself, I have finally been able to pause and see myself and those around me with compassion. By focusing more on making a difference to my teams, team members, and colleagues than on immediate progress, I have seen how fulfilling it is to help others live up to their greatest potential through coaching, leading, mentoring, and managing. Some of the lessons I learned while going through MGRdev in 2017 are still important today: schedule your time, make trade-offs, set expectations, ask open-ended questions, listen, give others the opportunity to shine, and so much more. I'm looking forward to refining our management expertise together in the coming months!