Everything Jason Mills does is with intention.

Counter to the calendar invite that mentioned no need to be “camera ready” for the interview, the Vice President of Sales Engineering at Snowflake appears on screen–early, well-lit and dressed in a smokey gray, monochromatic ensemble. His “ready for anything” demeanor is a mere glimpse into his methodical approach to his highlight reel of a career where he currently leads Snowflake’s North American Sales Engineering organization, overseeing a team of over 200 employees and 350+ major accounts across six industries.

“The intention was always to go from behind the scenes to customer-facing. Identifying how I could be front and center, driving technology as a business.”

Since his early days as a 18-year old engineering intern at IBM, Jason has racked up decades of leadership experience at multi-billion dollar organizations, joined several tech advisory boards and has paved the way for marginalized groups as an angel investor with the Black Angel Group (BAG) and as a co-founder of BLISTS at Syracuse University, his alma mater.

His driving factor? Passion.

“I can’t do anything without passion. For me, passion is the DNA of how we all live and why we’re here. Period. My purpose is to be of service, whether it’s personally, privately, publicly, professionally–bringing passion is part of who I am. And I look for that in both my leaders and my team.”

Not only does Jason have all the right technical and interpersonal chops, he knows what it takes to create a ceiling-less career. Guided by an internal “career GPS,” Jason talks about resilience, overcoming self-doubt, and embracing your differences to claim power over your career.

What sparked your interest in technology at such a young age, and what was your experience like starting out?

My grandfather was one of the first Black accountants on Wall Street. He was the first to buy a computer for me. Back in those days all you could do was keystrokes. I enjoyed a lot of those early days just getting involved and being curious about solving problems.

The next phase of influence was an organization called INROADS. Through it, I got an opportunity out of high school to work at IBM, who was my sponsoring company. I was a network technology engineer, writing code and doing support for the early days of the Internet. I remember my first two weeks on the job, going into a massive network operation center and sitting next to someone, asking, “Can you help me? I want to learn about this.” He turned and said, “I'm not teaching you anything, because you're here to take my job.”

It was at that point where I learned, nothing's going to be given to you. Nothing comes easy. You’ve got to find your way around obstacles and figure out how to get stuff done. I had to earn numerous certifications and technology skills, but I also had to spend time learning how to communicate and speak to people.

The next phase was going into the world and building relationships with senior leaders who had an interest in someone like myself. There weren't very many of me in any corporation, at least in the engineering department, and so I was always the odd one out. I embraced that and I would often approach very senior leaders to ask, “What's your formula for success? How did you get to where you are?” And for the most part everyone was always willing to share, and some brought me into rooms that I would not have been openly invited into. And that's how I learned. That's how I grew.

You’re very intentional about your career and that takes discipline. What led you to Sales Engineering?

One of the things that I always was really passionate about is, how do I get from the back office to the front office? Throughout my career, it was always micro steps in different directions, but I always had a “career GPS.” It guided me through all of the detours, the highways, and being in the room with the right people at the right time, so that I can demonstrate my value and where I would like to go in my career.

I spent 20 years of my career on the buy-side of technology at Citi and JP Morgan Chase. But I also had an opinion on who I wanted to do business with and what technology solutions I wanted to buy. My opportunity came when I spoke at Google Cloud Headquarters in 2017 about the importance of diversity in AI. They [Google] were like, “Hey, we would love to talk to you about opportunities [at Google]. We're building a cloud business, and we need people with industry background who understand how to deliver technology to the enterprise.” Google, by that time, was pretty much a consumer tech company and they needed me in sales engineering. I realized there's so much more opportunity to go from a specific vertical to managing a vendor, like Google and then eventually Snowflake, that was across all verticals and selling technology solutions to help solve massive problems.

The intention was always identifying how I could be front and center at driving technology as a business, and designing ways that the customer could understand the value of the technology. It was more than technology for technology's sake. It was technology that actually made a difference in their bottom line and top line. My intention is to continue – I enjoy being where I’m at.

What led you to become an angel investor with the Black Angel Group (BAG)? That’s a big deal to invest your money into someone else’s vision.

[At Google] I was able to meet other people like myself who had a vested interest in seeing more representation in the technology industry. I was invited to sit on the advisory board of Capital G, Google’s growth equity arm. I engaged with the CEOs and C-Suite of their portfolio companies and helped them through challenging environments. In 2020, we’re talking COVID-19, George Floyd – a lot of things shifting the global world in terms of how companies thought about their interactions with people and diversity and inclusion. Given the work that I was doing. I was enabled by both Sundar [Pichai] and Thomas Kurian, CEO of GCP at the time, to run what effectively became a program to assist underrepresented communities with Google technology. A part of that was a financial investment arm, and that investment arm eventually snowballed into what became the Black Angel Group.

The Black Angel Group is a group of current and former Black Google executives that have the means to invest in early stage ventures. We go after a lot of different ventures. They're not only Black-owned ventures, but diverse portfolios. It enables us to build wealth and invest in things that we may not have gotten an opportunity to invest in, because venture capital tends to be a primarily white-male dominated world. And you think more about the value being created by those tech companies than just the technology as an operation.

As a Sales Engineering leader and technology investor, what are some barriers to entry for people of color looking to get into tech?

I think the first barrier that any underrepresented community has to conquer is the barrier within themselves. Go out there, irrespective of the numbers, to be a part of something whether it's been done before or not. Move beyond the comfort of having people only like you all around you. All of my career I've operated with people that I have relatively no background or experience or similarities to. I've loved it. It’s an opportunity to learn.

The second is being able to communicate effectively. Don’t take offense when people make mistakes. It shapes human nature whether we like them or not, whether it’s politically correct or not. It’s a dialogue and we can have that dialogue.

The third piece is calling out barriers as they exist. But you can’t just be a shouter of problems. You’ve got to have solutions.

When I was in college, I launched an organization that helps Black and Latino students stay within the Information Science/Technology field [BLISTS], and it's still in existence today at Syracuse University, my alma mater. I try to really help underrepresented people from all demographics understand the power of being underrepresented.

There is value in your thoughts, your ideas, because there's not a lot of you out there. You have power because you're the only one. So we flip the script a little bit. That has helped me and many others that I've talked to understand how to embrace their differences – not to use it as a crutch, but use it as a strength.

February is Black History Month. When you think about Black history and overcoming adversity, what stands out to you while reflecting on this time?

I really try to lean in and focus on accomplishments. I know we all have a ways to go. Equality in the world is never going to be perfect. That’s heavy. Oftentimes that’s too heavy for one person to solve alone. So when I think about Black History Month, I think about the magnitude of collaboration that helped get out of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination, and segregation. I realize I have some heavy shoulders to stand on top of that helped me get to where I am today. My responsibility is to take those positive outcomes and multiply them.

I have three sons and I’m so proud of them, because they’re all software engineers doing fantastic in their respective areas of expertise. I want them to be more successful than I’ve been. That’s how we multiply for all those around us.

I do a lot of mentoring and coaching of young students and helping them identify what their personal passion is. For about five years, I’ve mentored the Chinese Student Association at Syracuse University.

It's a fantastic experience. I got to eat hot pot for the first time. Having this dialogue about what it means to be different, and how we can embrace that difference – growing from that blew my mind.

I even bring that mentality to the workplace and find a way to work with Black employees here at Snowflake about mentoring, leadership development, and thinking positive. That's what I try to bring to the table as part of my value add, beyond my day job.

So, what’s next for you and the Sales Engineering team?

The next big thing for me and the team is Sales Kickoff (SKO). SKO which will be in Vegas in February. I'm actually doing a fireside chat with John Sapone.

Fun fact–John Sapone, who’s the co-leader of the industry verticals on the sales side, we were at Syracuse together. We went to school together at the same time. Long story short–lot of synergies here for me at Snowflake. I lived in Amsterdam, so I speak Dutch. So when I got here I pinged Frank [Slootman], and you know, threw a little Dutch words in there, and he was happy to respond.

I've had a fantastic journey and experience. So anything Snowflake related, I'm going to be a part of it wherever I can.