OL Reign Legend: Gerri Martin-Flickinger – Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer for Starbucks
The Legends Campaign, a partnership between OL Reign and Starbucks, honors women for their extraordinary contributions to our community in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Prior to our August 29 match against Portland Thorns FC, OL Reign recognized Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer for Starbucks, Gerri Martin-Flickinger, for her incredible contributions to the community.
A Seattle native, Martin-Flickinger is the youngest of six kids. She attended grade school at West Woodland Elementary in Ballard, middle school on Lopez Island and then Anacortes High School.
“I loved math from an early age,” shared Martin-Flickinger. “When I’d completed all the math courses that Anacortes High School had to offer, my math teacher encouraged me to teach myself to program on a TRS-80 in the back of the classroom. I met my amazing husband at Anacortes High School – he was the first person to encourage me to go to college.”
“I took my husband’s advice and went to college at Washington State University where I majored in computer science – Go Cougs! While at WSU, I worked as a TA teaching programming to help pay my way through school,” said Martin-Flickinger.
After college, Martin-Flickinger moved to Silicon Valley to do AI work at Chevron. She spent three decades living and working in California. She served as the CIO for McAfee, VeriSign and Adobe Systems. Then, in 2015, she was contacted by Starbucks and her journey with the company began.
“Starbucks founder Howard Schultz and CEO Kevin Johnson (then the company’s president and chief operating officer) called me out of the blue. They asked me to consider coming back home to help rethink technology at Starbucks - and help usher in the next phase of growth and innovation. I started as the Starbucks CTO and EVP in October of 2015, and I’m proud of the world-class technology my team has put in place,” said Martin-Flickinger.
“My team of talented technologists develops, scales and continually iterates on industry-leading innovations including mobile order and pay; voice ordering and social gifting. Our technologists and our business can move at incredible speeds because of the ways in which we have re-architected parts of our tech stack. Our work continues to support and enable channel innovation — such as our recent launch of curbside delivery — and deepens our connection to our customers through work that grew Starbucks rewards membership from 16 million members in 2018 to 24.2 million today.”
Through the challenges she has faced, Martin-Flickinger credits her family as her motivation to push through and continue her hard work. “Support from my family is what keeps me going. My amazing husband of 36 years, and my twin daughters who continue to challenge me to think differently and always learn.”
Martin-Flickinger offered advice to young women pursuing dreams in a field where they are underrepresented.
“Do what you love. I'm fortunate that the work I love to do brought me to where I am today. I love sitting with technologists, I love helping with a crisis, and I love dreaming about the future. Those skills all came together for me in this career.”
She continued, “Be courageous. Pursuing your dreams takes courage, no matter what field you’re in. You need to take bold risks, pick yourself up after you make a mistake and persevere through life events. Navigating tough times helps build you for the future, so when you fail, embrace it, learn from it, and keep going! Surround yourself with people who believe in you. My husband and my family have always been my biggest cheerleaders – having a strong support network is everything.”
Lastly, Martin-Flickinger offered this advice, “Understand your customer. Spend time immersing in the 'tip of the spear' for the core business. Seek out mentors, ask questions and learn as much as you can. After all, you have to understand your customer to be successful. Deliver every day. Every day, our baristas deliver on the Starbucks promise.”
When asked what being honored as an OL Reign Legend meant to her, Martin-Flickinger said, “It’s such an honor to be recognized as an OL Reign Legend! The club is focused on being bold, navigating change and overcoming challenges on its path to greatness. I see the parallels between successful female technologists and a champion women’s professional soccer team. I’m very proud to be recognized by OL Reign and all that it stands for.”