Individually, they’ve celebrated 39, 38, 36, 35, 31, and 29 birthdays. Born between 1987 and 1995, the average age of The Cannata Report’s six workplace technology Young Influencers (YIs) this year is 34½. They speak about their inspiration, their management styles, and their influences.
More seasoned colleagues should not simply hand over the answers, one of our Young Influencers observes. Good mentors, she believes, “help you think more clearly, ask better questions, and see situations from a broader perspective.”
- One ’26 YI serves as an operations-passionate administrative vice president at a Colorado dealership;
- another is a second-generation sales vice president in Arkansas;
- a third, a regional president in Northern California for a mega-dealer, is fulfilled by helping the people around him succeed.
Young influencers represent dealers and partners
Back on the partner side, two YIs work in marketing—at an OEM and a software developer. (The CMO once set up stage lighting for major country music shows.) A third is an OEM channel exec who believes that “growth comes from taking on increasingly complex challenges, building credibility over time, and becoming someone whom the organization trusts to lead through important moments of change.”
Their passion is also evidenced in these Young Influencers’ hobbies and interests. Our personal AI caricatures of them, created in keeping with cybersecurity guidelines, reveal a bit about how each spends her and his time outside the workplace. Trust me, theirs are way more interesting than mine (see above)!
Who are they? From Capital Business Systems, Datamax Inc., and Flex Technology Group … to SalesChain, Toshiba, and Xerox, we extend our congratulations to Kyle Harvey, Nathan Kreikemeier, Cody Simon, Matthew Szczygiel, Katie Thomas, and Cherie Tucker-LaBuzetta.
Related read: In her latest “Outside the Box” column, Petra Diener points out that DOBs don’t matter when it comes to effective leadership.
