Press the ‘Play’ button to experiment and innovate: Roy Sgan-Cohen
Press the ‘Play’ button to experiment and innovate: Roy Sgan-Cohen
In our series 'Passionate Leadership', we speak with Roy Sgan-Cohen, General Manager of the Platform Business Unit in Amdocs Technology, and learn about his journey through the realm of technology.
Roy, who lives in Kiryat Ono, Israel with his wife and 3 kids, loves music, plays the piano and used to work at a famous record store back when vinyl records were all the rage.
He is also an ardent runner. “It is my habit to wake up early every other morning to run with my team. Running for me is the time to catch up with friends, meditate during long runs and set new goals and challenges such as running a few marathons," says Roy.
Throughout his tech career, he has shown the same goal-setting attitude, competitive spirit, long-term planning, and determination as he does on the running track. He aims to cover a long-distance journey on the road to technological innovation.
Passionate about technology but even more passionate about people
When asked what he is passionate about, Roy says “I am passionate about turning industry-changing technologies into business drivers. But even more than that, I am passionate about people. In every step of my career whether, it was managing startups, building a security division, or rebuilding products to the cloud which led to the development of MS360 and CatalogONE right here in Amdocs - I was engaged in both creating and introducing new technology and the right teams, its culture and the individuals to lead it. In every company I was in, it was my focus and drive to see the people grow with the company, enable them to choose the career paths they were passionate about, and set the stage for them to make an impact.”
In every company I was in, it was my focus and drive to see the people grow with the company, enable them to choose the career paths they were passionate about, and set the stage for them to make an impact.
Amdocs is where my passion for technology and people intersects
Roy has always been driven by the desire to experiment and innovate. As a result of his urge to try new things, he is now a fellow graduate and the executive lead of Tech Path, a unique career-growth initiative at Amdocs.
Tech Path focuses on empowering, investing and ensuring that our tech people can make an impact, learn, grow, and have fruitful careers at Amdocs.
Talking about this he says, “In today's organizations, technology leadership is a must-pivot. At Amdocs, we already have a big pool of innovative, disruptive, out-of-the-box tech talent who should be continuously provided with the tools to thrive and become decision-makers shaping the market. For this, we need a career growth path through which they can grow, learn, and evolve to become long-term professionals within Amdocs. As mentors and leaders, we must let them experiment, fail, recover, and innovate. In general - push them towards the right technology. Keeping this in mind, we created 'Tech Path'.
Tech Path is a one-of-a-kind initiative
Talking about Amdocs’ latest initiative ‘Tech Path’, Roy says, “The Tech Path initiative is the result of the combination of people's efforts, not only mine. I have the privilege of leading this team of talented individuals from across Amdocs. Many successful initiatives at Amdocs have come from the bottom up, from people who are faced with challenges and trends in technology. Our tech talent population plays a vital role in our ability to increase our value as a company and gain a competitive edge. Knowledge-sharing is at the core of Tech Path, where we are developing relevant tech-skill channels with matching benchmarks and objectives for each step."
He adds, "In the coming days, Tech Path will continue to grow in scale. We are working on expanding the upskilling program to include more roles, improve learning opportunities targeted at the skills of the future, turn our recent hugely successful tech conference into an annual event and take this show on the road. We are also collaborating with the industry, start-ups and academic institutes like our recent partnership with the Tel-Aviv University Labs to work together on research for future technological aspects."
A lover of building race-car kits and a fan of the Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team, Roy adds, “I’ve been building car kits from a very young age, with my father and now I am privileged to continue building kits with my kids. It reminds me to keep learning, experiment, think outside of the box and focus in this world of endless ‘TikTok’ distractions.”
Before signing off, Roy adds “The only way to learn the secret of success is to hit the play button! Play, experiment, and innovate.”
