SheTech Interns Interview Kim Wittman

We had the privilege of interviewing Kim Wittman, Senior Vice President of People and Culture at Vivint and 2023 Women Tech Award honoree in the Organizational Leadership category.

At Vivint, Kim is responsible for safety, corporate communications, and HR. Her team handles everything from identifying strong candidates to joining the organization to the end of a Vivint employee's career. Vivint’s People and Culture team also strongly focuses on leadership development. In the professional world, it makes a difference to know that the people you are working for truly care about you and have your best interest in mind. Focusing on developing and nurturing strong leaders is crucial in strengthening any organization.

Kim was taught from a young age that great leaders are empathetic, good listeners, and community builders. This is what Kim strives to create in leadership development at Vivint. Kim has always found success in helping a person recognize their growth and potential and then turning them into leaders.

Kim highlights the fun culture at Vivint. She loves how relational her work community is. It is quite clear that there is a lot of caring happening towards each other and connection occurring as teams. Doing small things like checking in with one another at the beginning of calls goes a long way to creating and maintaining the positive work environment that Kim loves. Vivint focuses not just on individual development but rather on growing as a team. With two million customers today, Vivint needs constant innovation and new ways of thinking. To ensure innovation is happening, Kim and her team must find people who are curious and go out of their way to find new and efficient ways of doing things.

Team development is not the only thing Kim prioritizes, she strongly promotes connection which is foundational to creating an atmosphere of commitment and effort. Kim makes it a point to ensure that everybody feels welcomed and heard. She's always getting people involved in the conversation or asking a bunch of seemingly random questions all to further know and understand her colleagues.

The purpose of Kim’s job is to make other people’s lives and careers better and one way she fulfills this purpose is by ensuring that everyone knows they have a friend in her. By creating these deep connections, Kim helps to create a community where everyone is in it together and working towards the same goal.

Community and connection aren't just important to Kim in the business world but have had a strong meaning to her since childhood. Growing up in Malad, a small Idaho town, with a graduating class of only 89 students, community quickly became important to Kim. Living in an environment where everyone knew everyone and everybody helped everybody, gave Kim a testimony of how impactful relationships can be. And since then she has always strived to have a life full of meaningful connection.

Kim was blessed to grow up surrounded by strong women who provided her with a support system that taught her how to be a great leader and a great woman. Instead of putting their heads down and working on their issues, these strong women looked across the community for problems to solve and people to help. From their example, Kim emulates this principle of service in her daily life and advises us to search for ways to help in our community.

As SheTech Media Interns and active members of the SheTech community, we have a strong interest in STEM. Yet this interest can be intimidating at times because of the common misconception that STEM is an uncreative and limited field. On this point, Kim taught us how broad STEM can be. There are so many opportunities in STEM and it can be applied to any passion you have. It is comforting to know that if we try a specific field in STEM and it's not the right fit, we still have the opportunity to try something different and explore new opportunities. To say you are in STEM could mean you are a software engineer, industrial designer, program manager, and so many other things that can expand your creativity.

A big part of exploring different opportunities is failure. Not everything you do will succeed and Kim knows this principle well. In the past, Kim has had experiences where she has been peer pressured into making career decisions that were not what she wanted for herself. If she had listened to herself and her intuition, Kim would have avoided much of the heartache that came from her failure. One of the ways Kim got through this failure and constantly goes through change in her life is by gathering her community and rallying her people. Through these support systems, she can utilize her resilience and pave the way through the uncertainty of life.

Kim is a testament to the importance of connection in your career. She’s taught us that life is more enriching if you have a personal connection to people. Your life will certainly not turn out the way you imagine it now but through perseverance and community, you can create a beautiful life. We are so grateful to Kim for helping us further understand these crucial life lessons.

TechBuzz welcomes again the contributions of SheTech media interns, Ava and Kira, who are high school seniors attending Karl G. Maeser Preparatory Academy in Utah County. At Maeser, Ava and Kira are involved in many STEM activities such as learning IT and coding skills, serving as SheTech ambassadors, and attending Women Tech Council events. As part of the SheTech media internship, Ava and Kira connect with Utah tech leaders, including many 2023 Women Tech Award finalists and awardees.

Ava and Kira invite all high school girls in the state that are interested in STEM to join them at the premiere STEM event in the year for girls, SheTech Explorer Day. It will take place on March 14, from 9:00am to 1:15pm, at the Mountain America Expo Center in Sandy. For more information click here.

SheTech welcomes volunteers to assist with Explorer Day. Many tech companies in Utah offer generous volunteer hours to their employees high-impact, worthwhile events. Explorer Day is the perfect event for such volunteering! Click here to volunteer at Explorer Day.