In this Employee Spotlight, we sat down with Julia Ostrowski to learn about her time at Cloudera, what she loves about her job, her experience on both sides of Cloudera’s mentorship program, and her impressive volunteer work.
Meet Julia Ostrowski
Julia is the Director of Enterprise Entitlement at Cloudera and has been with the company since 2019, joining via Hortonworks. Outside of her typical responsibilities, Julia is deeply involved in various philanthropic initiatives within Cloudera as well as in her own free time.
“Whenever there is an opportunity to do something good in the Santa Clara office for a couple of hours, I always sign up for it, no matter what it is,” Julia said. “There are so many rewarding initiatives that Cloudera puts together, from mentorships to taking care of animals or helping people in need. It’s a great part of Cloudera’s culture.”
Julia’s Cloudera Career Journey
When Julia first arrived at Cloudera, she worked in Support as the manager of the Support Product Management team, helping ensure Cloudera’s COEs and Support Managers were able to provide world-class technical support to our customers. In 2022 she was offered the opportunity to join the growing and dynamic IT department under Olivia Keenaghan as a part of Business Applications. Now, she’s responsible for managing a small team that reviews the entire entitlement business process, taking ownership of any parts of the lifecycle that were distributed and/or unowned.
This was quite the career shift, but she described switching to the IT department as “fantastic,” crediting an amazing manager, a great team, and rewarding responsibilities.
“Making the change was such a welcoming experience,” she said. “I still get to my laptop each day with a smile on my face. I like the challenge of never knowing exactly what each day will bring, and I get excited to solve complex problems to help Cloudera grow. I have always said that at Cloudera your career is in your hands. I’ve seen people go from one team to a completely different team with such success and grace, totally supported by their former and new managers. You just don’t see that at every company, unfortunately”
Julia’s team consisting of Ken McCarthy and Susy Mena-McCarthy tracks and manages all of Cloudera’s public cloud metering for billing purposes and consistently optimizes processes to support business needs. Their current big project is Project Lionheart: the replacement of a licensing server to allow for more flexibility and much more control over the insight gained into customer usage over their on-premises product.
While Julia has a real passion for solving problems and driving value during her day-to-day job, she is always eager to leverage Cloudera’s extensive giving and volunteering programs to volunteer her time to help others.
Mentoring and Volunteering at Cloudera
Cloudera offers a mentorship program to help employees improve and navigate their careers. They gain advice, set goals, and learn how to handle difficult situations at work, such as a project not going according to plan. Julia, who shared that she’s benefited from being a mentee herself both at Cloudera currently, and at previous organizations, volunteers to mentor up to four colleagues at a time and views this act as paying it forward.
“I really enjoy it,” she said. “I’ve gotten so much out of having a mentor that I feel obligated to be a mentor myself, but fortunately, I do love it. I appreciate being able to meet new people at Cloudera and do my best to help guide them in their careers.”
Julia says that a lot of the time, the key is to keep a good attitude, but the biggest piece of advice she offers is that uncertainty is not always a bad thing as long as you have a path forward.
“It’s okay not to know exactly where you will be in ten years, five years, or even two years,” she said. “Expecting to have your whole career path mapped out down to the last rock or pebble is a very old-school way of thinking, but you should always have your next goal in mind. It doesn’t have to be a new title or a particular salary, but it could be a new skill set that you want to add to your repertoire, for example. I always ask mentees, ‘What is your next goal?’ and work with them on finding a path there.”
Cloudera Cares Volunteer Program
Julia also lends her time to philanthropic initiatives like Cloudera’s Teen Accelerator Program, an initiative organized by Cloudera’s volunteer group, Cloudera Cares.
The Teen Accelerator Program is a partnership with the Boys & Girls Club of America in both Tennessee and the San Francisco Bay Area. This program offers students a six-week paid internship program at Cloudera and 1:1 employee mentorship, helping facilitate opportunities in corporate America for high school students in under-resourced communities.
At first, Julia explained, she was a little nervous to start working with the program because she had not had much interaction with teens. However, despite that initial nervousness, she dove right in and was hooked instantly as the program tapped into her passion for helping others.
“It was such a rewarding experience,” Julia said. “I asked myself, ‘What did I want to know about the world of business when I was 16 years old?’ The first time I was in an office in my early years, I didn’t know how to dress or what to do. And there are so many simple questions. I remember not knowing whether you have to raise your hand to go to the bathroom or what ‘CEO’ means. I put myself in those shoes, and I’m glad I did. It was honestly fantastic.”
During the teen mentorship, Julia partnered with Cy Jervis (Senior Manager, Support Knowledge Programs) to virtually guide the teen mentee through the ins and outs of Cloudera, introducing him to key departments, and allowing him to ask questions and engage with colleagues. By the end of the program, he left with a solid understanding of how modern tech companies operate.
“It was so interesting to hear all our colleagues go in-depth sharing what they do and what their department works on that I was even learning right along with him,” Julia said. “I wasn’t expecting to have so much fun, but he was so engaged, and it was just great.”
Julia also takes advantage of another Cloudera volunteer initiative by spending some of her time with Second Harvest, a food distribution group in her local area of San Jose, California. Through this volunteer program, a group of Cloudera employees (championed by Executive Briefing Program Manager Amanda Allen) assist the organization in distributing food to people in need.
“Cloudera has quite a few volunteer opportunities, and this one is one of my absolute favorites,” Julia said. “I take advantage of every opportunity to take part in it. Whether it’s sunny or raining out, it doesn’t matter. I get to go and spend time with other fantastic Clouderans who I wouldn’t normally see, and I truly enjoy it. This is a great organization that puts food in the hands of people who really need it, and I am so appreciative of Amanda’s strong advocacy in organizing these opportunities for Cloudera.”
Julia is truly passionate about her philanthropic efforts and helping those in need both through Cloudera and outside of work. She continues to foster dogs and cats for local animal rescues (and occasionally they find a permanent home with her!). She loves being able to make a difference in her role in Enterprise Entitlement and appreciates the flexibility Cloudera granted her to explore a new position in IT that she truly enjoys.
Read our last employee spotlight here.
