Sylvie Houlière Mayca

As the Head of Sales for AWS France, Sylvie Houlière Mayca's mission is to capture untapped business opportunities in France by partnering with customers to harness the capabilities of AWS cloud in order to achieve their business and IT strategy initiatives.

Throughout her career, which has spanned more than 30 years in various leadership roles at some of the world’s most successful and recognisable tech companies, Sylvie has demonstrated an extensive experience in sales, innovation, operational performance, business development and transformation in the IT, telecom and engineering markets.

And throughout that time Sylvie has stayed true to the principle that businesses should not overlook one of the richest sources of leaders in their transformational journey – the people they already have. Organizations that address the ever-widening skills gap in the digital workforce, a subject detailed in her article on supercharging skills for cloud success, are best able to build the collaboration, teamwork and transparency required to break down silos and develop the much sought-after agility needed to complete the cloud journey.

This commitment to people was evident in Sylvie’s 13-year stint with the Cisco group, which she joined in 2000 as a sales leader in France and included a two-year period as Chief Diversity Officer with the mission of developing the company's CSR strategy. In this role, Sylvie defined the diversity and corporate social responsibility strategy for Cisco Europe, including the creation of the “Cisco Connected Women" group in Europe. Managerially, she led a Pan-European committee of 10 Executive VP / VP & Directors across Cisco EMEA, as well as the cross-functional management of a multicultural team in charge of transformation plans for each of Cisco's subsidiaries. In 2008, due to her particular concern for training new generations, Sylvie created the “Cisco Sales Academy” at Cisco to promote sales and marketing talent. Sylvie has always been committed to professional equality between women and men, and served on the board of the PWN (Professional Women Network) as Vice-President of Mentoring programmes from 2013 to 2017.

Certified Executive Coach from HEC CESA (Certificate in Higher Business Education) in 2013, Sylvie created the OSANCE coaching and consulting firm to support managers and their executive committee in business and organizational transformation projects.

Sylvie then joined Assystem’s Energy and Infrastructure Division as Senior Vice-President Systems in 2017. She became just the second woman to join the Executive Committee and was in charge of the critical control and security systems business. As she describes, her role "further supported the company’s ambition to become the leader in the world of industrial digital. Our business revolved around consulting, systems integration, and managing the operational maintenance of critical facilities. This means dedicating our security culture and our 50 years of experience in cutting-edge sectors to ensure the sustainability of industrial infrastructure and systems.”

Her role as SVP also included leading a team of 400 people, responsible for sales enablement, organic and external growth strategy, business development & restructuring, and partnership development, producing turnover of +€50m. Sylvie’s achievements comprise the building and roll out of a business transformation which garnered 15% growth, +30% new name customers, and a 10% reduction in employee attrition.