Videos of Keynote Technology Speaker Wylie Blanchard - Business Technology Analyst - Chicago Illinois

Walden University Alumni Voices features Wylie Blanchard

Wylie Blanchard — Sat, 16 May 2026 09:58:00 +0000

I was recently featured in Walden University’s Alumni Voices, reflecting on what I learned in the school’s Bachelor of Science in Business Administration program and how those lessons still influence my approach to leadership, business value, and technology strategy today. Here is the video and transcript from the interview, “Alumni Voices Featuring Wylie Blanchard, BSBA ’08.” ^1, 2

Wylie Blanchard, BSBA ‘08

Wylie Blanchard, is an executive technology advisor and the Founder of Reintivity Technology Solutions, helping organizations modernize, secure, and simplify their IT, especially in healthcare and financial services. With 20+ years leading large, cross-functional initiatives, he is the author of Zero-Downtime Care, an Amazon #1 bestseller focused on practical modernization for healthcare leaders. 

Transcript

Academic Guides: Archived Webinars: Alumni and employer voices. (n.d.). https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/careerservices/careerwebinars/employer-voices/#s-lg-content-84238368

Walden University Career Planning and Development. (2026, March 16). Alumni Voices featuring Wylie Blanchard, BSBA ‘08 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC-46BO5cqY

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Why Good Work Gets Overlooked, and How to Make Your Impact Easier to See

Wylie Blanchard — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0000

A lot of capable professionals do meaningful work every week and still struggle to get the recognition, support, or advancement they expected.

Usually, the issue is not effort. It is visibility.

I was reminded of that during a recent Walden University Alumni interview. The conversation touched a common problem in both careers and leadership: important work often gets described too vaguely, documented too late, or handed off without clear ownership.

When that happens, the value is harder to see. Good work starts to look like routine activity. Wins get forgotten. Leaders miss the business impact. And when decisions about promotions, budgets, or support need to be made, the proof is not easy to find.

That is a problem for individual contributors. It is also a problem for managers, executives, and business owners.

Good work gets overlooked when the impact is invisible.

The first mistake is describing work like a task instead of a result.

A lot of professionals say things like:

“I led the project.”
“I managed the implementation.”
“I supported the rollout.”

Those statements may be true, but they do not tell leadership what changed.

Leadership is usually listening for a few simple things:

What changed?
Why did it matter?
What outcome improved?

That is why outcome language lands differently.

Instead of:
“I managed the implementation.”

Try:
“We completed the implementation on schedule, reduced follow-up issues, and gave leadership a clearer view of risk.”

Instead of:
“I led the project.”

Try:
“We cut response time by 28% and reduced escalation risk.”

The second version gives people something they can understand and remember. It makes your contribution easier to use in a staffing conversation, a performance review, an interview, or a budget discussion.

This is not about making ordinary work sound dramatic. It is about describing the real value clearly.

Why strong work still gets forgotten

Even when people know they should speak in outcomes, many still run into the same problem:

They did not capture the proof while the work was happening.

That has real consequences.

Promotions get missed because examples are vague.
Interviews feel weaker than they should because the best wins are hard to recall.
Managers try to advocate for someone with only part of the story.
Teams complete meaningful work, but months later no one can point to the evidence.

In a lot of cases, professionals do not have a performance problem. They have a documentation problem.

One habit helps more than most people realize: keep a career receipts file.

This does not need to be polished. It does not need to look like a resume. It just needs to be a simple place where you capture evidence as it happens.

What to capture in your receipts file

Keep it simple. When something important happens, write down:

What changed
What outcome improved
What risk, cost, or delay was reduced
What part you owned
Any metric, deadline, or result that helps prove it

That may look like this:

Weak version:
“I supported the rollout.”

Stronger version:
“I helped complete the rollout on schedule, reduced follow-up issues, and gave leadership a clearer view of risk.”

Weak version:
“I worked on reporting improvements.”

Stronger version:
“I improved reporting turnaround, reduced manual rework, and gave leaders faster access to decision-ready information.”

You are not trying to write your annual review in real time. You are building a record that makes future conversations easier and more accurate.

That file can help with:

performance reviews
promotion discussions
job interviews
resume updates
team recognition
manager advocacy

Most people undersell themselves because they rely on memory. Memory is inconsistent. Evidence is much more useful.

Where leaders make this worse without realizing it

This issue does not sit only with employees.

Leaders often create the same problem when they fail to define what success looks like, what proof matters, and who owns the result.

That matters even more when outside support is involved.

You can hand off execution.
You cannot hand off accountability.

A consultant, vendor, agency, MSP, or implementation partner may own delivery tasks. They do not own your internal trade-offs, your business risk, or your final decisions.

That breakdown usually starts in a few predictable places:

Success criteria
Decision rights
Exception handling
Final sign-off

Once those areas get fuzzy, confusion turns into risk. The work may still get done, but the ownership story gets weaker. Teams start assuming someone else is tracking outcomes. Vendors assume the client will make the final call. Internal leaders assume the partner is carrying more accountability than they really are.

That is when good execution can still produce a disappointing result.

The strongest teams keep ownership visible, even when work is shared.

What good looks like in practice

Whether you are trying to grow your career or lead a team, the pattern is similar.

Good work becomes easier to support when you do four things consistently:

Track outcomes, not just effort
Do not stop at what was done. Capture what changed because it was done.
Translate work into business language
Speed, risk, cost, compliance, customer experience, staff efficiency, and revenue impact are easier for leadership to use than activity summaries.
Save the proof while it is happening
Do not wait until the annual review, the interview, or the board update to reconstruct the story.
Keep accountability visible
When work is shared, be clear about who defines success, who approves trade-offs, and who owns the final result.

These habits help at every level.

For professionals, they make your value clearer.
For managers, they make advocacy easier.
For executives, they improve decision quality.
For organizations, they reduce the gap between effort and recognition.

A simple question to ask yourself

Before your next review, interview, project update, or leadership meeting, ask:

If someone had to explain the value of my work in two sentences, would they have the proof to do it well?

That question gets to the heart of the issue.

Good work should not disappear because it was described like maintenance.
Good work should not be undervalued because nobody captured the outcome.
And good leadership should not assume accountability moved just because execution did.

When value is clear, support gets easier.
When proof is available, advocacy gets stronger.
When ownership stays visible, results hold up better.

That is true for careers. It is true for teams. And it is true for businesses trying to scale without losing clarity.

For more practical ideas on leadership, technology, and business execution, join my newsletter or explore more articles here on the site.

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Discussion with Traci Cox: The Value of Business Partnerships

Wylie Blanchard — Sun, 27 Dec 2020 11:01:00 +0000

I recently met with Traci Cox, President of Temple & Associates, on the value of business partnerships, managing partnership challenges and how partnerships enhance business opportunities.

Here’s the full interview:

Get the bonus Q&A with the audience by visiting GreatTechPros.com.

Here are a few video clips from the discussion:

Connect with Traci:

You can connect with Traci on Linkedin and by visiting Temple-IT.com.

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Discussion with Jason Patel: Moving from Individual Contributor to Business and Strategy Leader

Wylie Blanchard — Sun, 22 Nov 2020 06:48:00 +0000

I recently met with Jason Patel, the Chief Technology Officer for Ensighten, to discuss moving from being an individual contributor to overseeing, leading and guiding the work of others, new challenges that one faces and what he’s learned over his career.

Here’s the full interview:

Get the bonus Q&A with the audience by visiting GreatTechPros.com.

Here are a few video clips from the discussion:

You can connect with Jason on Linkedin, Facebook and Github.

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Discussion with Sean T. O’Kelly: Leveraging Technology for Revenue Growth

Wylie Blanchard — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 07:08:00 +0000

I recently met with Sean T. O’Kelly, Chief Technology Officer for Meetings & Events International (MEI), to explore how business leaders can utilize technology as a tool to drive customer and revenue growth.

Here’s the full interview:

Get the bonus Q&A with the audience by visiting GreatTechPros.com.

Useful Links:

You can connect with Sean on Linkedin.
Regulatory Compliance in the United States.

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Discussion with Eric Livergood: Smart Technology Road Mapping

Wylie Blanchard — Sat, 31 Oct 2020 08:05:00 +0000

I recently met with Eric Livergood, Chief Technology Officer for LeafLogix Technologies, to discuss how smart technology is guiding Leaflogix, and the cannabis industry.

Here’s the full interview:

Get the bonus Q&A with the audience by visiting GreatTechPros.com.

Here are a few video clips from the discussion:

Useful Links:

You can connect with Eric on Linkedin.
Cannabis industry history in the United States.

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Discussion with Teneika Askew: Empowering Decision Making with Data Visualization

Wylie Blanchard — Sun, 27 Sep 2020 19:58:00 +0000

I recently met with Teneika Askew, Head of People Analytics at Mozilla, to discuss how to utilize data for effective visualization and creating data stories that enable decision-makers to take action.

Here’s the full interview:

Get the bonus Q&A with the audience by visiting GreatTechPros.com.

Here are some short video clips of topics discussed:

Useful Links:

You can connect with Teneika on her website, Twitter and Linkedin.
Tools include PowerQuery, PowerBI, Tableau, Google Data Studio and SAP Tools.
Though it is important to implement a new platform/solution, it is equally as important to inform and educate end-users on how to utilize the new platform or solution.
Every career/job has a data component – Do make an effort to learn how to utilize data as a skill. Doing so will enhance your skill-set and help you enhance your career.
College students should look into scholarship, internship and other opportunities offered by their university like the Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF) and INROADS internships.
For those who are new to data visualizations, start with Microsoft Excel, work to graduate from a beginner Excel user to an advanced Excel user, then learn Microsoft Power BI and Tableau.
Microsoft currently offers free Power BI training, Tableau Prep & Tableau Desktop are not free unless you are a student, freeCodeCamp and SimpliLearn.

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Destroying the Glass Ceiling: Lotus Buckner panel discussion

Wylie Blanchard — Sat, 26 Sep 2020 17:24:00 +0000

I recently participated in Lotus Bucker’s #RealPeople #RealTalk – Virtual Roundtable on Destroying the Glass Ceiling.

In this discussion, we explored the challenges that prevent people from obtaining the career success that they’re working toward, the obstacles that are in place that lock people out of the sales cycle when working to close deals with their high-profile clients and what people and organizations can do to shatter through the glass ceiling so that they can find the career success that they are working toward.

Here’s the discussion.

Here’s the pre-event message that I created leading up to the event.

Useful Links:

You can find more events from Lotus Bucker on her website, Twitter and Linkedin.
During the talk, I advised that people should read Shattering the Glass Ceiling: How to Break Through Without Breaking Down by Gia Suggs and Hayward Suggs.

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Discussion with Sanford Hess: Government Information Technology Management and Change

Wylie Blanchard — Sun, 02 Aug 2020 19:33:00 +0000

I recently met with Sanford Hess, IT Director for the City of Urbana, to discuss Government Information Technology Management, change within government IT, enhancing the relationship between people and government, career opportunities and more.

Here’s the full interview:

Get the bonus Q&A with the audience by visiting GreatTechPros.com.

Here are some short video clips of topics discussed:

Useful Links

You can connect with Sanford on his website and Linkedin.
The Tectonic Speed of Government is the website where Sanford shares his thoughts on Government, IT, Change, Government IT Change … and Movies.
Sanford recommends that aspiring technology professional consider Google IT Support Professional Certificate.

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Discussion with Susanne Tedrick: Developing a Game Plan to Thrive as Technology Evolves

Wylie Blanchard — Sun, 14 Jun 2020 16:17:00 +0000

I recently met with Susanne Tedrick, Cloud Solution Specialist, to learn how women of color can jump-start, transition to or further evolve their career in technology, her new book Women of Color in Tech: A Blueprint for Inspiring and Mentoring the Next Generation of Technology Innovators, and how tech professionals can stay relevant in today’s rapidly evolving job market.

Here’s the full interview:

Get the bonus Q&A with the audience by visiting GreatTechPros.com.

Here are some short video clips of topics discussed:

Useful Links:

You can connect with Susanne on her website, Twitter and Linkedin.
You can get Susanne’s new book, Women of Color in Tech: A Blueprint for Inspiring and Mentoring the Next Generation of Technology Innovators, by visiting WeBelongInTech.com.

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and more.

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