Employee Spotlight: Masaki Yokoyama - SYSCOM GLOBAL SOLUTIONS

FEATURED EMPLOYEE

How Curiosity Leads Masaki Yokoyama and SYSCOM Into the Future

Role:	Technical Account Manager
Division:	NYSI 3
Location:	New York Office
Expertise:	Project Management
Experience:	5 years at SYSCOM
Hobbies:	Traveling abroad, Cooking, Watching soccer, pro wrestling and Cirque du Soleil

Role

Technical Account Manager

Division:

NYSI 3

Location:

New York Office

Expertise:

Project Management

Experience:

5 years at SYSCOM

Hobbies:

Traveling abroad, Cooking, Watching soccer, pro wrestling and Cirque du Soleil

Masaki Yokoyama, Technical Account Manager at SYSCOM GLOBAL SOLUTIONS’ New York office of five years, leads a curious life. Not that his life is strange—it’s fairly expected for a world-traveling jetsetter—but rather, it’s his curiosity that drives his life forward.

“Traveling is my passion. I have traveled to roughly 50 countries,” he says. “I’m enthusiastic to see architecture, try exotic foods, and join special festivals. Traveling inspires me to broaden my horizons.” He’s constantly seeking something new, and doing what he can to learn it for himself. “Cooking is important, too. When I cook new food, it’s like I have achieved a small success and it enables me to build self-esteem and self-confidence.”

So how did a country-hopping student of industrial automation from Japan end up in New York? After presenting his thesis on machine learning in Singapore, he was inspired to work abroad. “After getting my master’s degree, I worked as a project manager with a gigantic company for 7 and a half years in Japan. I requested a transfer to a foreign branch office every year.”

After a while, it was clear that the transfer wasn’t coming. “So, I quit my job and came to New York, where I started to work at SYSCOM.”

First of all, his initiative is commendable. Secondly, SYSCOM knew better than to stick him at a desk. He was sent out on jobs in other offices almost right away, learning their network needs and figuring out how to best maintain their setup to achieve their goals.

He believes immersion is the best way to learn a new culture, and that philosophy transfers over to his professional work, too. “Nowadays, everything is changing. I need to think about a company’s WFH needs and know their whole situation. It’s why I need to physically go to their office 2 or 3 times. It helps me communicate and make a better recommendation.”

Applying his life experience to his work is a theme for Masaki. “There’s always something more to learn,” he explains. “I try to cook new food and learn new recipes. I need to try new things as often as possible, then try it again with different steps. I’ll see if I can remove steps or save time.”

Similarly, he likes to figure out more aspects of his job than just the parts specific to his project management role. “When I was working in Japan, roles were subdivided. Projects had multiple stakeholders and many people had to join meetings.” He wondered: if one person could take on more than one field, would there be so many people in meetings? “At SYSCOM, I’ve cultivated both management and technical expertise. My goal is to pursue a variety of knowledge and experiences so I can bring more value to a project.”

There’s always something more to learn.

Masaki Yokoyama

Technical Account Manager

It’s rare that a project manager would have both management and technical skills, but with certifications for PMP and CCNA, his approach is paying off on paper and in practice. “Through discussions with engineers and my own research, I’ve been developing my networking skills and learning as much as I can. Now, I can often directly answer a customer without contacting engineers. I am doing my best to bring the value of more than just one role.” Not to say that he doesn’t reach out to the engineers, of course. “I’m lucky SYSCOM has our own engineers and doesn’t use any other company for infrastructure. I can talk to them and they’re very kind to me.”

When it comes to the networks he works on, he says security and resiliency are most important. “Companies implement new technologies to accelerate and improve their work, but as technologies evolve, threats have become more elaborate. Once systems are invaded and confidential information is leaked, it’s impossible to retrieve all of it—to say nothing of reputation damages.” It’s impossible to stop all the breaches, so setting up a strategy focusing on containment, mitigation, and recovery is paramount. “SYSCOM’s security operations center offers optimal industry cybersecurity solutions.”

He related it to how he responds when something goes wrong in his travels. “Sometimes a train is delayed, so I have to figure out Plan B. Next time, I’ll improve on that Plan B.” He’s done that so often that train delays or traffic snafus aren’t even a bump in the road to him. “Nowadays I have no issues, I’ve experienced those troubles and I know how to handle them.”

With a response strategy that expects the unexpected and has a plan for how to respond, your problems—whether they’re missed transit connections or technical issues—are quickly contained and moved on from. It’s true in travel and network infrastructure, and is especially useful when living a curious life.

“That’s the most difficult thing, needing to know more about new things. Now I focus on network service and current techniques, but networks are always evolving.” As much as it’s a lot to keep up with, there’s still benefit to be found in it, for him. “Being exposed to the more technical side of things means getting to learn about them,” he says.

When asked which of the SYSCOM values he uses most, Simple, Friendly, or Innovative, he paused for a moment.

“I can’t choose one over the others,” he said. “I should have all three of them. The combination of the three is very important.”

And what do they combine to become?

“Curiosity.”

In Japan, New York, and around the world, Masaki is leading SYSCOM in staying curious.