74 | theceomagazine.comLIMITS
Much like her idol, Bill Gates, Avanade’s Anna Di Silverio
breaks new ground as President of Growth Markets.WORDS ADRIAN FLORES • IMAGES YEW KWANGPushing
A
ll her career, Anna Di Silverio has been stretching herself. After a few years
as a software developer, coding in Visual Basic and C++, she moved from
a technical role and stepped up into management and leadership. First, with
Microsoft Consulting as services director, Public Sector Lead, and then with
Hewlett Packard as technology services country manager. Avanade’s senior
management then decided Anna was ready for a new challenge. “I really like
pushing boundaries,” she says. Joining the IT consulting and services firm in 2010 as the general
manager of Italy, she managed to transform “a team of technology experts into strong consultants
focused on delivering client business value”.
Anna relocated to Singapore in 2015 to become the COO of Growth Markets, responsible for
Asia–Pacific, South Africa and Brazil. “In my first year in Growth Markets, I spent time learning
about the business, different markets in all the different countries, and how to make them more
efficient and productive,” she recalls. Not long after that, in September 2016, she became President
of Growth Markets. On top of encountering new business models, the role exposes Anna to a
broad range of cultures. “I enjoy the beauty and colour of diversity. Despite different cultures and
economic maturity, clients are all going through a common journey – and that is of digital
transformation. Some will even leapfrog the rest of the world,” she says. “This is something I find
particularly exciting.”
Anna takes a different approach to emerging markets than she would to a more established
market. For her, it’s essentially a strategy of “creating strong local capabilities”. “We spend more
time in building the foundations to ensure we create a backbone and have the core capabilities
that make us successful in delivering our services, helping clients unlock data value, agile
infrastructure and innovation. We are a global company, but we also want to flex and specialise
locally, leveraging local knowledge and developing the skills of local talent to connect globally,”
Anna explains.
Well aware of the IT industry’s rapidly changing nature, Anna understands the importance
of adapting to the times and making sure employees are appropriately equipped to take on the
resulting new challenges. In recent years, she has noticed a dramatic shift to moving systems into
the cloud. Providing cloud-scale architecture has been crucial for Avanade’s business, as well as
scales that are related to artificial intelligence such as robotics process automation and advanced
analytics. “All of this requires not only new skills but also new professions such as data scientists
and cybersecurity specialists needing knowledge that is deep and multifaceted,” Anna says. Another
part of adapting, according to Anna, is realising that in some cases you might need to throw outINNOVATE | Interview