Mastering the Tech Ladder to IBM VP
Based on an episode with Nicholas Fuller 🇹🇹
Welcome to Latinx in Power, a podcast aiming to help to demystify tech, the way we do that is by interviewing Latinx and Caribbean leaders all over the world to hear their perspective and insights.
We talked with Nicholas Fuller (he/him), the VP of AI and Automation at IBM Research, leading global teams in AI-based innovation for enterprise automation. With expertise in AI software, modernization, edge computing and semiconductor tech, he’s an advocate for diversity and the author of “Struggle and Progress.”
In this podcast, Nicholas discussed his career journey, innovation with ethics, and leaving a tech and diversity legacy. He also shared advice for aspiring tech professionals, drawing from his book, “Struggle and Progress,” which highlights the transformative power of embracing challenges in tech.
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How do you feel connected with Latin America culture?
For me, there are three touch points. So again, just thank you for having me. Fantastic to be here. Looking forward to this episode with you.
Interestingly, as isn’t a surprise to many, the English-speaking Caribbean communities share many synergies with Latin America as a whole, from a historical point of view, culture, music, food, and of course, geographical proximity.
I remember growing up and as a child, the older folks in our communities, when asked, “How are you doing?” They would say, “poco a poco”. And I was like, “What is poco a poco?” But it was a translation essentially of “poco a poco”, little by little.
In the speech, there are many things that have survived that way. Of course, commonality in food, rice and beans, quite common in many English-speaking Caribbean cultures. So, I definitely feel connected from that point of view.
Of course, Trinidad and Tobago was colonized by the Spanish prior to the arrival of the British, so hence the derivation of some of those phrases, the names of towns and what have you.
The other piece that is really interesting and not necessarily that typical in terms of where I hail from — my maternal grandmother was actually born in Tucupita, Venezuela. I speak some Spanish after having done seven years of Spanish in high school and in college here in the US.
So my background, of course, is black with West African background, Indian background, Venezuelan background, and native Trinidadian background as well. So quite unique in terms of the makeup of Trinidad and Tobago and other countries as well in the region for that matter to some degree.
All of those touch points from culture to proximity to my own history give me those connections, so to speak, with the Latin American community.
Some distance away from Latin America as a whole, but then you get to bring that melting pot that’s there too in terms of South America, Central America, and live that experience that you’re having there too.
Can you share the story of how you got started in the tech industry and your path to becoming VP at IBM research?
Three defining phases, if you will. That first phase really coming out of high school and having an inclination, a love so to speak for science and technology led me to pursue a bachelor’s degree in physics and math. Of course, these were the early days of computer science, so while having some interest in that, I was very much deeply technically oriented in these specific domains.
I majored in those two at Morehouse College as part of my bachelor’s degree from the period of 1993 to 1997. Then I went to Columbia University, New York, where I did my PhD in Applied Physics and was really intrigued. This was the era where companies were all aiming to shrink devices to get faster and faster processing.
As semiconductor companies focused on shrinking devices for a range of applications, I was naturally drawn to that and spent the better part, not only of my PhD at Columbia but also once I joined IBM. I was intrigued to join IBM because of the many things that IBM did at the time and continued to do, so I really majored in that space.
Along the way, something interesting happened to me. As I was matriculating through the IBM experience post-PhD from Columbia, there was this huge growth in data that we’re all very familiar with today. There was the growth in the cloud, the emergence of the early era of AI, from machine learning to deep learning and so on.
Roughly 12 years ago or so, I made that transition from semiconductor technology innovation for IBM systems, IBM microprocessors, into the area of data analytics and cloud.
I’m the type of individual, as challenges arise, as opportunities arise, I gravitate towards them. I’m a problem solver. I love tackling new domains. I love working with people. I’m very much people-oriented, which ultimately led me into management.
We have these career trajectories if you look at IBM research as a whole, and IBM for that matter, no different from many other technology providers, where you can progress around a purely technical track, and then you can progress along a technical business track, so to speak.
I opted for the latter given the fact that I enjoy working with people and really gravitate to the emerging trends of the day. So today, I now lead this team. I have the privilege of working with this global team in the areas of AI and automation, which is all about taking large language models, generative AI, a hot topic today in AI, as you and all of your viewers are quite aware, and infusing, applying those generative AI capabilities to the IBM software portfolio, the blend of automation products that we produce.
For me, that’s quite exciting. There’s excitement every day in terms of the challenges that we face, in terms of the products that we’re ultimately innovating on, and then seeing how customers are adopting those technologies and using them for their business to drive value.
Can you highlight some of the most significant challenges you encounter when leading innovation, and what strategies have you employed to address them?
In any technological domain, certainly, GenAI is no exception to that. Be it new accelerators, be it cloud technologies, what have you. Whatever domain you look at, competition is very severe, very stiff. And the rate and pace of new technologies are really unprecedented.
If you look at the human history of introducing technology, going back to the earlier ages of the dawn of the industrial age and so on, that competitive rate and pace of new innovation for me is a challenge from the point of view of ensuring that I build, as a leader, strong and balanced teams with a healthy work ethic, applying discipline, ensuring we have discipline, both in the discovery process and execution.
Many think of discipline as only applying to execution. It also applies to discovery. Yes, you leave room for discovery, you leave opportunities for discovery. But discovery when time-bound actually creates some interesting scenarios as you go through discovery processes to think of new ways of doing things. Many examples fall into that category.
The other interesting thing I would say in terms of challenges, as you look at generative AI, GenAI as a space is internal alignment. I think obviously a lot has happened with the emergence of ChatGPT. Many companies, including ourselves, have released our own data and AI platform, WatsonX. What you see as you look at these domains is the need for incredible synergy and precision from an internal alignment point of view.
I’m a huge fan of this book. I’m sure you’re familiar with Patrick Lencioni’s book on “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.” It emphasizes the need for clarity. And oftentimes, that internal alignment tends to go awry, so to speak, when there’s a lack of clarity, when there are challenging personalities and so on. It really calls out for strong leadership, and it’s something that we have emphasized, double down on, triple down on within IBM as a whole in this era.
Last but not least, I’ll highlight this other piece, the need for rapid end-market validation. As I shared with you at the beginning, as you shared in your introduction, I started my career with my PhD in physics, doing Bachelor’s, followed by that PhD and joining IBM, innovating in microprocessors.
That microprocessor innovation timeline every 18 months or so, as you go back to Moore’s Law, is when you introduce a new transistor technology and you’d then test that into the market as you build the product. That’s very different from a software point of view. And even hardware has changed from that point of view as well. With rapid innovation cycles, with new features dropping every few weeks or so, the need for in-market validation with users to gain market share, to gain feedback on how to iterate, is absolutely critical.
I’ll summarize in those three ways, in terms of challenges: the rate and pace of competition, how we address that, how we ultimately have to focus on that as leaders, is a key thing for me. Secondly, that internal alignment piece that I touched on. And lastly, iterative learning and market validation with the agile methodology put into practice with clients.
Working with things that were never done before and I feel especially with AI, so there’s this need of launching something fast, having validation from your users, but at the same time, what is the balance between those two, how do we make sure that you’re covering everything that needs to be covered?
In fact, if you look at it, we announced last week or so a new product family, Watson Code Assistant, for various programming languages for IBM platforms. The goal is to modernize COBOL language on IBM mainframes into Java, optimizing for performance on IBM mainframes, as opposed to moving it off the mainframe onto the cloud, where the performance degrades with that pure translation technology.
Similarly, we announced Watson Code Assistant for Ansible IT infrastructure programming languages. In these various efforts that we pressed ahead with, we moved quickly to get these out to the market. One of the things that we have been examining as a team, as a company, is ultimately how to step back appropriately and develop that space for additional discovery.
Code is very different, of course, from language, but many people are treating code as a new data modality. Yes, it is, but code is executable. So tokenizing code has a different context than it does for language, than it does for IT events, security events, or some other modality like time series data, etc. As a result, we are spending a tremendous amount of time ensuring that we have that balance. This need for balance applies across any domain, whether it’s the one I just mentioned as an example or others.
The other thing is about having teams that always completely agree. We don’t live in echo chambers. Part of having a growth mindset is all about ensuring that we entertain different ideas from members of a team. That’s the mark, if you will, of a fully functioning team — taking in those different inputs and ultimately coming to a consensus. You may still disagree, by the way, on the approach that you take, but understand why you’re taking that approach for one or more reasons, typically some business reason or what have you.
What do you hope to be your legacy in the world of technology, automation, innovation and overall?
It’s an amazing question, actually. I want to share something personal. I was waking up a few weekends ago, taking my morning stroll. The weather was still nice, and it still is nice right here in the Northeast. I got a voice note from a family friend whose two sons I mentor. She’s based in Trinidad. Her two sons, one’s at Harvard, one just finished at the University of Miami. She made the point to me that I have been a legacy and an inspiration even before consciously setting about having that agenda. It was very humbling for me to get that voice note. She’s a good family friend. I’ve known her for many years, since I was a teenager. And to hear that story was just remarkable.
So the answer to your question is really twofold. There’s a tech hat I wear, but then there’s obviously the human hat first. We’re all individuals. We’re all people. I really seek to leverage my story, captured in struggle and progress, as a means of inspiring others. Your struggle doesn’t have to be mine. Any struggle is a struggle, period, whatever that might be.
Invariably, even if seemingly folks are born with all the tools required for success, there may be some other struggle you face, some teacher you had that you didn’t align with, or some disease that you had to confront. There are many people I’ve taken that example from as a child growing up and now as an adult who’ve inspired me, actually. And so that’s really first and foremost what I’m about.
My book didn’t start that way. It began as a thank you to my mother, who raised us as a single-parent mother. But it evolved into that, plus the legacy that I pass on for my kids, for others who seek to be inspired. Then from a tech point of view, I’m really intrigued by the intersection of technology and business.
I want to leave that mark in — B to C is clear to many people. B to B is probably less clear when you think of “Oh, wow, 95% of all credit card transactions run on IBMZ,” and there’s AI running in those transactions to help figure out if fraud is happening as part of that transaction. The average user of a credit card isn’t thinking about that, but that’s the legacy I aim to leave in the space that I work in in automation and with this intersection of GenAI and tech, and doing that really critically in a responsible way.
I don’t think about myself in the third person, so I certainly hadn’t had that thought before she said it. As a person approaching the 50-year mark in life, I’m very much conscious about what I leave for my sons and my loved ones, and how that history is written at the end. There should be a whole lot more than “this individual went to good schools,” etc. It really is about impacting future generations. My life philosophy is, how do we leave this planet that we’ve inherited in a better place than the one we were born into? So I try to live my life that way.
I wouldn’t say perseverance, but I certainly spend quite a bit of time reevaluating, am I doing what I want to do and from the lens of how I view my life philosophy. That’s spending time with loved ones, that’s helping loved ones, that’s the legacy I aim to leave, etc., etc. And invariably, it brings you to folks, and then you make a decision based on those folks that are available to you.
How do you balance the need for innovation and advancement in technology with concerns about ethical considerations, and petitions, societal impacts?
Trustworthiness and governance in AI are critical to me, first and foremost as an individual. It’s critical secondly to me as a Vice President, AI and Automation at IBM Research. I’m really thrilled at what we’re doing.
We, of course, announced an indemnification strategy, which was published in many places, including in the New York Times fairly recently, so that our customers understand that we can ease their qualms about using GenAI. We assume those risks from the AI systems, publishing technology underlying data, etc. And that has really resonated with our clients. So that’s certainly one piece of it.
We’re thrilled as well with what President Biden recently signed — his executive order aimed at tackling a safe, secure, and trustworthy use of AI by tech providers. We think this is an era. You see many examples of this already. You don’t have to go too far. You turn on any form of media, there’s a lot of fear out there, reasonably so, in terms of how it can be utilized in a negative way. This probably can and will rival the threat of cyber.
Cybersecurity has been a huge issue, of course, with the advent of modern technology. These are some of the biggest threats we will face, coupled with geopolitical matters, coupled with zoonotic diseases like the pandemic we recently have come out of, and so on and so forth.
Humanity has, together with leaders from a tech point of view, leaders from a government point of view, federal point of view, across the planet, come together to drive this type of conscientiousness so that this happens in a safe and trustworthy manner.
Now, will there be malicious actors and malicious players? Absolutely. So the guardrails are really critical, and that’s a key part of what we’re doing at IBM. It’s critical to me as an individual but also as an IBM exec.
How embracing struggle can lead to progress, especially in the tech industry?
When one of my sons struggles with match, one plays tennis, one plays soccer, and if they have a bad game or they lose a match, whatever. They internalize things. The key for me, and you don’t realize this as a child, but reminding them that you don’t understand what success is until you’ve had failure.
Failure absolutely helps you to determine not only the path but coping skills, mechanisms, support networks, etc. And for me, that happened really very early, being born into a single-parent household. There were individuals in our extended family who made poor decisions driven by economics in many ways, but led to various criminal elements as well. While that wasn’t happening in our nuclear family, it simply had impacts on us.
Likewise, the absence of my biological father from my life is something I struggled with on a regular basis. I internalized that so much. It’s interesting. Many don’t — Well, maybe they did, but I don’t think many recognize this. I had many close friends who I grew up with in high school, etc. I would look at their dads. I would look at how their dads were fathering them and begin to steal and adopt pieces that I thought were valuable from each of them.
From my maternal uncles, the brothers of my mother as well, and stitching together almost in an algorithmic fashion, my vision of what a father should be. Of course, there was a lot of emotional turmoil that went along with that. I captured that in the book and how it ultimately allowed me to progress.
Somewhere around age 30 or so, the thought of myself being in a place where I was “ready to be a father.” I remind my kids on a regular basis when I make mistakes, say, “Hey, I’ll make mistakes. My job is to figure out those mistakes with you, to apologize when I do and ultimately go forward.” So there were a lot of coping skills that came into that. My wife, very helpful. My mother, very helpful throughout those entire journeys. Friends were very helpful, very close friends, my college roommate, very close friends, all helped in that journey. And that’s the other thing.
I want to touch on this for five seconds. When we talk about Caribbean, Latin American cultures, there’s a certain machismo that we associate with it. We can cry. It’s okay as men. There’s that fear because we have to show a certain sense of bravado. And yes, of course, there’s a sense of being together. We all need to have that. But mental health is a very important factor and facet of all our lives, including for our cultures that we need to be paying attention to. So having done that was tremendous for me. I continue to take coaching offered through IBM and other avenues to help me, in my view, be a better individual. And guess what? That translates to tech.
In tech, it’s interesting because you can’t be your whole self to whatever your career path is, whatever you do. If you as an individual yourself don’t have that good mental pulse, which is what I just touched on. So that’s point number one. But point number two, you’re working in a broader community. We are typically not at parity in that community. That’s no surprise to any one of us, and much less so, for that matter, as you get to the executive levels. So that’s a very important thing to me too, ensuring that I drive programs that are focused on promotability, retention, recruitment of diverse communities. That’s point number one.
Point number two, we know of these subcurrents, we know of these microaggressions, status denial, things that happen that almost seem insignificant until you’ve lived it. These are very important things, isolation because of our numbers. And so a good buddy of mine who’s a professor in Texas has written on these things. He’s a sociologist. I’ve read quite a bit of his work. From that, I’ve been able to glean, “Okay, coping skills, coping mechanisms.”
We have our network. So I advocate to anyone, “You need not necessarily be part of our demographic. You can be part of any demographic facing any of these challenges, microaggression, status denial, isolation,” etc. How to handle them, how to manage them, not to fly off the handle when they happen, for example. Coping skills and support networks, all of these things matter in helping you to progress.
I’ll add really quickly, it really aligns with what a growth mindset is because from the point of view of not only an individual but that of an organization, a corporation, etc., if you understand that, yes, failure is a part of that “daily process” as it relates to progressing towards a destination, a target, a journey, then with that growth mindset, you figure out, you course-correct, you iterate, etc. It applies to parenting. It applies to relationships. It applies to social curricula, extracurricular activities, and so on and so forth. So embracing it really as a fundamental principle upon which you live, for me, is absolutely critical.
We, as black executives, got together fairly recently to discuss the year where things are going for us as a community. We invited some future executives from our constituency and so on, brought up topics around the SCOTUS recent decision, etc., and ultimately how we progress.
Many times, we put that lens upon ourselves as it relates to, “Yes, can I really fail?” Sponsorship becomes a key part of that, which is why where we do have ourselves in represented positions, yes, it’s not at parity, but ensure that you’re pulling, ensure that you’re promoting, and being a sponsor for that next leader so that we grow that ecosystem ultimately.
And guess what? Sometimes, those sponsors in a culture, in an organization that’s progressive lie outside of that constituency. And that’s what you need. You need Allyship as well. Allyship is often not talked about as much as sponsorship from within constituencies. Clearly, you need that. That’s a necessary but not sufficient condition. Allyship, given the broader spectrum of the folks that make up and comprise those organizations, is absolutely critical as well. So certainly within IBM, we strive for that. We aim for that. I aim for that as well because if I have allyship, I can just succeed in getting that much more sponsorship.
Which resource helped you in your journey? Is there anything you wanted to highlight?
I went from an individual who watched a lot of movies, read quite a bit in college to reading more technically when I went to grad school. I’m somewhere in a blend of the two now. I watch a lot of documentaries. There are many things that I’ve pieced together. I want to touch on a few, a few that have been really helpful for me.
Clearly, what I’ve written is a manifestation and a culmination, the struggle and progress of my journey, which has helped me as well. Going back and rereading it from time to time, which I do, is just amazing to me how I internalize things and what it has done for me. So that’s one.
I want to touch on a few others. When it comes to things like basic human rights, nation-building, I met Nelson Mandela at Columbia. He spoke to an audience of many of us, students at Columbia when I was in graduate school. This must have been in 2001 or 2000, that period or so before I graduated. It was inspirational to hear him speak. Of course, I enjoyed the movie made bearing his life, “Long Walk to Freedom,” and what he has done, what he did, and of course, the impact he’s had on society, just tremendous for me as a life lesson on how to be forgiving while still pursuing a greater goal.
From a nation-building point of view, Eric Williams stands out, former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago; his book, “From Columbus to Castro,” was pivotal for me. I really enjoyed “Birth of a Legend,” the movie that celebrates Pelé and his whole life story. Any story, documentary, movie, what have you, that depicts a struggle and achieving against all odds and then maintaining, adopting a human view really stands out for me. Not the individual who, “Okay, yes, I did this. I have this chip on my shoulder,” etc. You’ve now lost a sense of what it means to be a human being. We all bleed. We will all pass. And so the work that he did post-retirement, etc, traveling the world, helping impoverished communities, just really, really major.
Within tech, there’s a lot of people. I was trying to think about this when you shared this with me offline as well. A few stand out. I’ll give you a couple. It doesn’t mean that others aren’t significant, but there are so many that stand out, given my interest span, all of technology and science. The story of Vivien Thomas, who played a significant role in open-heart surgery, didn’t have an MD and transformed an area as a black man in the US years ago, decades ago. Just absolutely amazing. I remember seeing that movie on a flight. I was like, “Wow, I didn’t know of this guy. This is an incredible story.”
When I was in high school, actually, I remember reading, doing calculus, Euler’s method, and so on, and then reading his life story. This guy went blind, and his last 17 years of his life after going blind were more prolific than before he was blind. When you think of that struggle and the progress he was able to make, just miraculous. So for me, I gravitate to these types of stories, “rags to riches.” I’m using rags to riches as a metaphor here, not in terms of finance. Just really fascinating to me. The human spirit, what the human spirit can achieve when seemingly against all odds in terms of obstacles placed in their way.
Anything you want to share and also where people can find you?
So first and foremost, I want to thank you for being an advocate for the Latinx community and the broader community who tunes into your podcast. I want to commend you on opening this up to audio plus-plus. Well done to you. I’m really thrilled to have met you, and keep doing what you’re doing. It’s really awesome. We need more voices like this that are out there that share and spread the good word, and ultimately just help uplift and connect people. So that’s point number one. I want to commend you on that.
Anyone can find me on LinkedIn, really easy. You can also find me on Twitter. I’m a more avid LinkedIn user.
From my perspective, closing words. I personally would be happy as we continue to grow and address the challenges the planet faces. I touched on them before. They’re tech challenges. Cyber GenAI, while very promising, has its challenges as well.
We touched on that before. But then the other challenges, where leaders are needed, who span not only expertise in tech but expertise in bringing folks together to solve the problems that are in front of us, are absolutely pivotal to ensuring that we make this place and leave this place in a better way than the way we met it.
I hope you enjoyed the podcast. We will have more interviews with amazing Latinx leaders the first Tuesday of every month. Check out our website Latinx In Power to hear more. Don’t forget to share comments and feedback, always with kindness. See you soon.
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