A 5:30am or 6am start is not unusual for Jordan, a self-described early bird, due to the various global teams that she works with. But whatever the time, there are two things that she always has to do: “I drink my morning coffee to wake up, and I write morning pages.”
Jordan says that journaling sets her up for the day ahead, and puts her in the right frame of mind for what may lay ahead.
“Fires are going to throughout the day, it’s about how we react to them,” she says. “Journaling helps me to remain calm and start on the right foot because when you manage teams you need to be positive and give other people direction.”
Despite her days being filled firefighting, Jordan says she assigns time each day to what she calls ‘whitespace’ – unallocated time to think, plan and strategise.
“If I’m always trying to manage the team, put out fires or work with my boss, then I’m not going to deliver strategic objectives,” she says. “So I protect that time. It’s on my calendar, I turn my emails off, and I just work on those strategic initiatives.”
Another part of her regular activities includes professional development through online webinars, online forums and virtual sessions. Jordan says that if she does not do this, she will become a person who only executes tasks.
“I’m not going to grow that way, and neither will the company,” she says.
Once her day’s tasks are completed, Jordan relishes in spending time with her 17-year-old son, doing little things with him, from ensuring that he does his homework and his college applications are progressing to just simply listening to him.
“He comes into my office. I want to listen to him and I want to be fully present, even if he wants to sit and talks about video games,” she says.
Jordan also loves to cook. Although she’s no Michelin-starred chef, she has been known to plan menus for her family’s evening dinner while catching up with her husband.
“Then I might write, or I come up with my social media posts and engage with some contacts. But then it’s bed by about 10pm to 10:30pm, because if I don’t get enough sleep, I cannot be productive at five in the morning,” she says.
Like so many in the industry, Jordan fell into telecoms and over time it became both “her passion and her career”. But she learned that her success in this space was driven by the fact that she does not place limits on herself.
“So many times, people have asked me how was I going to do it, saying ‘You’re a single parent, Eugina.’ To that I said, ‘Give me an opportunity to figure it out’,” she says. “Other times they would say, ‘You’re not an engineer, how are you’re going to do telecoms marketing?’ So I’d say, ‘Teach me. If you learned it, why can’t I learn it?’ The only person that can limit me is me.”
Jordan has been involved in a number of diversity and inclusion initiatives across telecoms. One focuses on improving gender diversity at events and conferences by eliminating what she calls “Manels” – all-male panels.
“I understand where it’s coming from, because we only have 12% of women in the C suite. We just need to focus on how we’re going to fix that,” she says. “We cannot make telecoms more diverse and inclusive, unless we show that there are different people in telecoms.”
Fyuz – an event formerly known as TIP Summit coming up at the end of October in Madrid – is Jordan’s immediate priority.
“It’s about making sure we successfully deliver this event to the industry and the participants, but also facilitating important conversations for the industry, which includes things like OpenRAN, TIP Insights and the metaverse,” she says.
Then the strategic priority for the industry organisation, which is helping to develop blueprints for future networks, is showing how TIP will deliver value to the industry through testing and deploying new solutions.
“It’s about creating a go-to market strategy for these organisations in partnership with TIP, as well as the industry itself. TIP has a unique role and we need to deliver on that promise.”
