Partner Profiles:
Simone Waugh, Marketing Manager, Citadel Edge
Meet Simone Waugh, Marketing Manager at Citadel Edge, a Cloudera Australia partner. Armed with a background spanning international relations, media, and brand strategy, Simone has built her B2B technology career around a simple belief: technology only matters if it makes life better for the people who use it.
Beyond Gadgets and Software
Simone’s path into technology was not linear. Transitioning from customer-facing roles into media and marketing, her defining moment came when she realized that technology is less about the product than about what changes for the people using it.
While many get caught up in the allure of gadgets and software, Simone zeroes in on removing friction. For her, the right solution solves the issues keeping people up at night, helps them do their best work, and enables organisations to grow. Her work is driven by making complex technology meaningful to the businesses and people it serves.
Transforming Routine Collaborations
When it comes to building high-impact tech partnerships, Simone’s approach starts by shifting the focus away from what either organisation wants to sell and towards what the customer genuinely needs to achieve.
She believes that the best partnerships reduce complexity for customers while creating meaningful outcomes for everyone involved. The practical pieces certainly matter, yet the strongest alliances are rooted in trust: staying connected, maintaining candor about priorities, following through, and publicly recognizing each other’s contributions to deliver outcomes neither could achieve alone.
Keeping AI Accountable
As AI becomes increasingly embedded in business decision-making, and responsibility is dispersed across systems and suppliers, harmful outcomes can become difficult to challenge or correct. Simone advocates for ensuring governance keeps pace with adoption, and accountability cannot be delegated entirely to algorithms, vendors, or systems. Human oversight must remain visible, testable, and enforceable from the outset.
Making Progress Unremarkable
Simone envisions women shaping the future of technology at every level, as the expectation rather than the exception, establishing a self-sustaining cycle of progress in which leaders use their influence to open doors for the next generation.
Her advice to young women entering the field is a powerful call to action: do the work, build credibility, but never wait for perfect confidence or someone else’s permission to step forward. Technology rewards agility, and you don't need to know everything before you contribute.
A Bridge-Building Superpower
While her strategic vision provides her professional foundation, Simone has an unexpected superpower that colleagues discover once they work closely with her: a potent combination of a bias for action and an instinct for building bridges.
Her background in media taught her to roll up her sleeves and create momentum even when the path isn't clear. After stepping across to work for a global IT solutions provider, she learned to listen more deeply for the unspoken "so what" in a conversation.
Simone translates between technical complexity and business outcomes, helping people connect technology decisions to the results that matter most. She connects the dots across disparate teams, transforming competing priorities into a shared, actionable plan.
Connecting with Simone
Simone's career demonstrates that the biggest impact in technology often comes not from the technology itself, but from understanding the people it serves.
She is always happy to chat about building high-value B2B partnerships, human-centered tech marketing, and advocating for women in leadership.
Start a conversation on LinkedIn
If you want to discuss being a woman or ally in the technology sector or attending future WLIT events, check out the LinkedIn community.
