Janice Chaffin, the group president of Symantec‘s (Nasdaq: SYMC) consumer business unit, makes our list representing the retail channel.
Chaffin, who graduated from the University of California, San Diego and earned her master’s degree in business administration from the University of California, Los Angeles, has helped to make the Norton brand one of the most recognized products in IT. Chaffin is ultimately responsible for the success of Norton in Canada and all parts of the world.
Chaffin has worked in the IT industry for 29 years.
While she was first hired as a programmer at HP (NYSE: HPQ) and worked on programming interfaces, Chaffin said her roles within the organization changed over the years. During her time at HP, Chaffin also held marketing and general management work over the course of 21 years but then decided it was time to “move onto other things.”
Chaffin eventually moved from HP to Symantec, when she was hired on as the company’s first-ever chief marketing officer (CMO). Chaffin has been working at Symantec for seven years, and held the CMO role for four years before being named group president of the company’s consumer business unit.
Within this unit, Chaffin is in charge of profit and loss, engineering and product development, product management, customer service and support duties, and more. Chaffin says that out of a total of 17,000 Symantec employees around the world, there are 1,500 employees who work in Symantec’s consumer business.
On her advice to others, Chaffin says “You’re in charge of your own career and path. While mentors can help you, if you don’t take charge of your own career, you probably won’t go as far.”
