2023 Women Leaders in Technology: Debby Smith

Debby Smith is the national Principal of RSM's Managed Application Services team, based in Denver, Colorado. Her team provides services for all of Microsoft Dynamics and Oracle NetSuite products. They are focused on providing clients with a full portfolio of application services for maximizing ROI on their business systems.

Debby has more than 17 years of experience in the managed services space and has worked in enterprise resource planning her entire career. Debby started her career as a software developer, moving into technical implementation services, sales, and project management on technologies and business systems from a range of companies, including PeopleSoft, Microsoft, SAP and Oracle as well as being involved in 2 startup technology companies.

Debby believes in the client lifecycle journey. Her team brings technology an enabler for continuous innovation and optimization of a client's business. She wakes up in the morning thinking about how to bring new ideas, solutions and advancement to her clients. She values her long-term relationships with her clients, they become friends not just business partners.

What has been the biggest factor in your success so far?

People! I'm known for saying I am only as good as the people on my team. It is truly about team and not I in my world. I surround myself with positive, ambitious people who want to grow and thrive. We spend more time with the people we work with, than we do our families. It's always been important to me to have strong relationships with my teams to ensure we can all succeed and have fun while doing it.

What do you enjoy most about your career in the consulting industry?

I thrive on helping people and solving problems. Consulting provides a unique opportunity to do both while constantly being challenged. Each day I get to experience something new that helps me build my skills. I've been able to walk across many different industries, technologies, and business systems all while helping clients solve their unique challenges and drive their businesses to success. I also get the added bonus of being able to travel, which I love. I've been to every state in the U.S. and 10 different countries.

What is your proudest achievement to date?

My current team. There are many of us that have been together for 10+ years. We've built a great place to work, shared weddings, children, lives and remained friends as we built a team that is well known in the marketplace had has continued to evolve, innovated and stay ahead of the clients' needs. What's the best advice you've ever been given? Don't worry about what you cannot control. Focus your energy on what you can influence. This has saved me an enormous amount of stress and anxiety over the years and allowed me to focus on positive change and accomplishments.

What does this recognition mean to you?

I've always focused on doing the right thing for the right reason and not worried about being recognized for what I do. I bring that to my family, friends and job. I always trusted that those around me would know I did the best I could every day. This award would be an amazing honor to receive to cap off my career of doing things the right way.