Alumni Career Snapshots

Chuck Homola
 

Employer Name  

Cisco Systems, Inc.

Employer  Website

www.cisco.com

Job Title  

Senior Manager / Technical Leader

Major and Class Year BS Geology/Computer Science-1984

Briefly describe what you do   

I serve as both an architect on Cisco's call control application servers for Voice Over IP products, and manage a team of development engineers both here in the Dallas area as well as in Shanghai, China.

What other jobs have you had? Please include job  title and name of organization

  • Software Engineer - DSC Communications

  • Engineering Director - DSC Communications

  • Group Manager - IP Cell

What are the key skills, abilities, and personal qualities necessary to succeed in this type of work?  

Good communication skills, good team-working, strong software methodology training, strong programming skills, willingness to work in an aggressive and diverse environment.

What do you enjoy most about your current position?

Mentoring others, managing people and developing their careers, understanding and creating new cutting edge architectures.

Most important/valuable lesson or activity in college that impacted your career

Two things actually - interacting effectively with my peers, and taking the Software Engineering class in the CS department - it was very important to see how what we learned in the classroom was applied in the real world.

What advice for someone entering this field?

Get any work experience that you can prior to graduation.

Questions?
 

E-mail your questions to askalumni@trinity.edu
Put the name of the alumni you wish to contact in the subject line, then type your question.