Tom Soderstrom

“I cannot express how grateful I am to have had the opportunity to work with Tom Soderstrom. Tom is a technology visionary, and an incredible leader. He has a wonderful knack for finding ways to collaborate with anybody on anything. Tom is also such a fantastic example of how one should strive to stay informed about the latest trends, continually expand their knowledge and learn, work on new things, take intelligent risks, search high and low for opportunities for innovation, dream about what the future will hold, and then turn that dreamt future into a reality. Tom is also a phenomenal public speaker. Find any video presentation that Tom has given on the internet, and you'll see that he brings passion and presence to each talk he gives. He also has a gift of making the content easily understandable (and engaging) by any audience. Most importantly, Tom is an incredible human being, and he extends his passion and presence to his personal life and relationships. I've seen over and over that Tom cares deeply about the people around him, and he's always willing to mentor (and learn from) anyone. It has been a true pleasure to work with Tom in every single interaction that we have had, both in professional experiences and personal ones. My life has been so deeply enriched for having had Tom Soderstrom in it.”

“Tom is a true IT visionary and IT leader. This shows in how he has lead IT to the next level at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and in how he has lead his team to do absolutely amazing things. He has lead the way at JPL to work with cloud computing, Internet of Things, serverless computing and other leading edge IT innovations. In addition to working with these forward thinking technologies, Tom has transformed his team to follow Lean-Agile principles. This has lead to rapid development of IT projects, while reducing the time wasted on projects that don't add value to the needs of the JPL community. I have had the absolute pleasure of working with Tom for a number of years, and while I did not work directly for Tom, I was lucky enough to be a member of his team as a sub-contractor for JPL. He is a great leader, and truly cares not only about improving IT at JPL, but at improving the knowledge and skills of his team. I have seen for myself, though attending his team meetings, how he cares not only for the team, but the individual. He never misses an opportunity to praise his team, or individuals for their work. When it's necessary to give criticism he does so in a way to ensure his team, or individuals, learn and improve their skills in the process, knowing that he is there to support them in any way possible. In addition to all the above, Tom is an excellent communicator. Just search YouTube for Tom's name and enjoy watching any of the many talks he has given on Technology. He has been asked to give talks all over the world and watching him speak, you will know why. He has given talks at AWS re:Invent, the Red Hat Summit, TEDxCCP, and many more events. He brings life to his presentations and makes sure that the message he is trying to get across is always clear, concise, and entertaining. It has been an absolute pleasure working with Tom and I consider the time I have had working and meeting with him a true privilege.”