In this episode of Mainframe Coven, Jessielaine Punongbayan (Product Manager, Dynatrace) and Richelle Anne Craw (Software Engineer, Beta Systems Software) chat with Lezlie Browder, a technologist devoted to lifelong learning. She shares her decades-long career as a mainframe mentor, instructor, and technologist. She reflects on inclusive tech culture, teaching across generations, volunteering, and offering grounded advice for women balancing caregiving, career growth, and lifelong learning.
Watch the Full Episode here:
Transcript:
[Intro Voice]: This is the Mainframe Connect podcast brought to you by the Linux Foundation’s Open Mainframe Project, sponsored by Phoenix Software International and Vicom Infinity, a Converge Company. Mainframe Connect includes the “I am a Mainframer” series, the riveting “Mainframe Voices” series, and other content exploring relevant topics with mainframe professionals and offering insights into the industry and technology. Today’s episode is from the 10-part “Mainframe Coven” mini-series honoring the past, present, and future women of IT.
Jessielaine (Jelly): Hello and welcome to Mainframe Coven, a podcast about real stories from the essential yet often unseen minds behind the machines. We are your hosts. My name is Jessielaine Punongbayan and I’m a Product Manager for Dynatrace.
Richelle: My name is Richelle Anne Craw and I’m a Software Engineer for Beta Systems Software. Welcome to a brand-new episode.
I’m very excited. We have a very special guest. We have Lezlie Browder with us today.
Lezlie is a technologist, chief solutionist, and IBM champion. She has decades of experience in mainframe technology, software development, and IT leadership. She has served as a mentor in the Open Mainframe Project’s Summer Mentorship 2023 program, and she actively participates in the IBM Z and LinuxONE communities, supporting and guiding younger technologists. Currently, she leads her own research and consulting brand, Eugene Alexander Research and Results.
Jelly: Welcome, Lezlie! Welcome to the Coven!
So let’s start off with our first question. My first question for you is: what do you remember about discovering programming in the 60s, and what drew you in?
Lezlie Browder: You know, the only connection I had to technology, first of all, it wasn’t called technology at that point. No, it was called data processing.
But my mother worked at a court reporting firm, and the court reporters sat in court all day long. At night they had to transcribe. My mother made extra money by transcribing for her colleagues, and we had an IBM Selectric typewriter in the kitchen. That’s how she did it.
It’s difficult to explain, but I sort of knew what it was about, this data processing.
But no, it was in the calculus class. They came in and said, “You, you, you, you. Come with us.”
That’s how I got into technology.
Richelle: So you started programming with Fortran, and then you transitioned to COBOL and CICS and MQ, and REXX. And now more recently you’ve transitioned to VS Code, Zowe, Python, and you’re also interested in IBM Watson and, as you mentioned, quantum.
Can you talk through those transitions in your career, and is there any shift that stood out more than the others?
Lezlie: Right now, it’s the quantum one, because I feel like we were here all along. What made us make the wrong turn?
That stands out to me because quantum frees us up to do more than left or right, ones and zeros. It frees you from that, and that is remarkable.
I remember struggling a lot with that. One of my software assignments was to get rid of the extra penny that happens with currency exchange. I had to do the translation because it was international. I had to calculate the value of money that day in that country. I had to do it in COBOL because the organization would not let me do it in Fortran.
COBOL would not give me the precise number I needed. I got to the point where I was guessing, taking the number out 16–17 digits past the point, trying to get closer. I rounded. I tried everything.
So now, with quantum, I’m very excited about what I want to spend my time on.
Jelly: Awesome. In one of our episodes, we talked about six women, you watched this episode, who reverse engineered the ENIAC because there was no manual.
In your experience, have you ever experienced something similar, and can you talk about that philosophy?
Lezlie: What? That there was no manual?
Jelly: Yeah, there’s no manual and you have to do it on your own.
Lezlie: Yes. And when there was a manual, it was so hard to understand. Who wrote this?
I don’t want to use the company, so let’s just say it was this company that I worked for that had error codes and condition codes, and you had to go through three books to get to the actual, “This is what happened”.
Sometimes you go, “What was I looking for?”
I was so happy when stickies came out. We used yellow stickies. Mine are blue now.
When they first came out, I was like, “This person is a genius.” You’d have to open this book, go to this page, look at that, okay, stop. You need something to hold there, then you have to go to them, then it would say go over here. Sometimes you’d have to get up and ask the physics teacher.
Richelle: It also sounds like you challenge yourself — with the marathons and then when you’re transitioning from different technologies. And then we also know that you’ve lived through major historical moments in tech like you were in a bunker for Y2K, then on 9/11 you were in NYC, and maybe several recession cycles.
So, I’m really curious about the lessons you carry forward with you through all of that, when you’re challenging yourself and then living through historical moments.
Lezlie: Just go for it. It seems like we’ve grown into this, where we listen to opinions online more so than the opinions in your mind. I don’t care now, I’m using the old saying, but do what you think you can do.
The only way you can do it is to do it.
You know what I did say, you gotta do it. You gotta get up and say I gotta get up.
When you’re marathon training in Georgia, you have to run at 2 o’clock in the morning. We had a coach who would do that. I would get up, drive way out to another neighborhood, and run back. And we did it.
I think women need to remember that we can dream too, and we can make accomplishments. Something uncontrollable about your sex cannot determine whether you’re going to be the winner. That is such a minute point.
Jelly: I hear what you’re saying. We just have to believe in ourselves. As women, we sometimes doubt ourselves, so believing in ourselves really helps.
You’ve mentioned that in the mainframe environment or at least in the programming environment, biases were not productive. What helped you stay confident to navigate this environment, especially being one of the few women in tech at the time?
Lezlie: I guess because that first experience, being with those ladies who gave up their whole life, taught me that every challenge that came along, this was something to do. It was not something to fear.
I didn’t realize I was supposed to fear things because I was female for a long time.
I had two sisters and one brother, and since he didn’t have another brother, we were his brothers. When he played with us, he forgot we were girls. He would punch us, and if we wanted to cry, he’d say, “Don’t be a softie.” He used that other word but I’m glad that I didn’t say it out loud.
We wanted to play so badly we’d say, “No, we’re not that. Go ahead.”
So forever I thought I could do it.
I tell my female mentees the same thing. I tried to tell them, “Come on, you can do this. You can face it.” When I saw your videos of the ladies from the very beginning, I sent them to all of them. I wanna say, “You’re not the first one. We’re just going through this. This is just a phase.”
You need to know the history. It’s just like any group that doesn’t know their history, they tend to cannibalize themselves.
Jelly: I like your confidence. You’re very tough in a way. You have this tunnel vision of a goal you want to do that everything around you doesn’t matter because this is who you are and this is what you want to do. You go toward that goal head on. I love that you’re so confident and tough.
Lezlie: I go into the tunnel, and that’s where I stay until I can see light coming out.
Richelle: It sounds like you don’t let biases get in the way of productivity.
Lezlie: No, because while a person is being biased, you have the opportunity to be strategic.
Richelle: You talked about early in your career, the environment you were in was very siloed. Now you’re a mentor and an instructor for students. Have you seen collaboration evolve or improve, not just in terms of the people involved but also the tools we use, approaches, or processes?
Lezlie: I think yes and no. In some instances I have seen it improve. In some instances I have not.
Sometimes I get excited and introduce a newer mentee to an executive, and he says the totally wrong thing. I realize he wasn’t ready.
The thing about technology is you have to learn the technology and develop finesse.
That’s my job as a mentor: I’m the finesse coach.
You’re paying the teacher to teach you. Don’t ask me to teach you hash codes. I can teach them, but that’s not the point of our relationship.
I’m teaching you finesse.
In the classroom, there’s always an answer, and it’s sanitized. In the real world, it won’t be like that. There won’t always be an answer. You might be told, “No, you can’t use Fortran because nobody else here knows Fortran. Go back and figure it out.”
Richelle: I can relate to your experience. My first experience in mainframe, I was in a very siloed environment. I didn’t know how to learn the other tools and processes within the company. When I moved into more open-source development, even the way I learned the technologies and tools changed because it was community based. So certainly, I can relate.
Lezlie: But the point is: it’s doable. You did it. Why are you thinking you can’t do it before you even try?
Jelly: Lezlie, I’m curious because you’ve been mentoring and teaching for a long time across different generations. How do you adjust to those different generations and bridge those generational gaps in terms of mentoring and teaching others?
Lezlie: I felt like I was mentored at a good time, so I copy what was given to me.
I remember being taken out in the hall by my teacher. I had the same teacher from kindergarten through eighth grade. She was like, “What is the matter?”
Because now I had my own opinions. She would call on me because she knew I already knew the answer, and sometimes I didn’t want her to. I would do things to avoid it.
But I learned from that. She learned not to expect anything from me, and I learned that you’re responsible for your own intelligence.
Jelly: So what I’m hearing is that normally what you do is you guide, but still, it’s a relationship between teacher and student. Students are responsible for their own learning, and you’re there to guide them.
Lezlie: Yes. I also taught adult literacy. I learned a lot from those students.
I taught literacy to people in Jersey City who had never been to Manhattan, even though you could walk across the water.
We would take group field trips on the train and bus to Manhattan.
I asked why they had never gone, and they said, “We can’t read the signs.” And I was like, “Oh, ok.” I couldn’t figure it out.
Richelle: That’s very interesting because what I want to talk about with you as well is: we know that you volunteer for Black Girls Code. I know your passion is not just within your professional life but also, you’re volunteering for Black Girls Code and as you mentioned now, the literacy program.
I want to know what drew you to volunteer, and if you can share moments with the students.
Lezlie: I have a big passion for volunteering. I was raised by volunteers. My parents even worked two jobs but still found time to volunteer.
My mother was in charge of the Girl Scouts. My sister was a lot to handle, so she said, “I’ll come. I know how to control her.” My parents were always involved in the school. My mother used her vacation days to go on field trips with my sister’s class. She helped with rounding troops and things like that.
I was raised with that example. My dad was always making signs and props on the back porch. I lived in an environment where helping out was just what you did.
Jelly: I also heard you volunteer for the Blind Service Association in Chicago. Is that correct?
Lezlie: Yes. Now we go to the brilliant people of the world. They are so brilliant they get on my nerves. One guy just got his PhD. I told him, “You get on my nerves.”
The blind services people are the most enlightening, determined, consistent group. One guy taught me how to handle lottery scratch cards. I didn’t know what the symbols meant until he told me. Some write books. Some are heavy on education.
I’m glad technology evolved, like text-to-speech. That saved me. I used to have to read books I didn’t want to read for two hours into a recorder. The machine had buttons that, if you hit the wrong one, would wipe everything out. Someone would come in, and I’d ask them to push the right button. Someone who couldn’t see would walk in and go click-click-click-click perfectly.
They introduced me to so much literature and sociology. Sometimes I didn’t agree with anything I read. We would go on field trips to museums. I’d have to describe the exhibits. It was wonderful.
Blind services teaches you that there is no excuse for not doing something. They eliminate excuses. They navigate the city, take trains from the suburbs, move independently.
Some of them are technologists. No, I didn’t have to teach them technology. They didn’t need me for that.
Jelly: We saw in your LinkedIn bio that you supported aging and ill family members while continuing to teach, volunteer, and advance your skills. What helped you stay centered during those seasons?
Lezlie: Eugene Alexander: those are my grandfathers’ first names. Both had stories. One was orphaned at five. He and his 15-year-old brother came to Chicago. When they died, they owned property all over the city. I didn’t live in a building my family didn’t own until I went to college in Texas.
We had bad habits. We destroyed one of my grandfather’s apartments because we didn’t know we weren’t supposed to put holes in the walls.
That’s why the brand is called Eugene Alexander. How could I not help my family? I owe them.
My mother had Alzheimer’s. She was already eccentric, so it took a while for people to believe me. Then after that, it got easier.
There’s no way I couldn’t help.
And I didn’t stop learning because life goes on. You might be 74 and still working or contributing. You have a choice: be sad about it or go for it. The literacy people, the blind people, they were the people I was hanging out with. They weren’t feeling sorry for themselves, so why would I?
Jelly: What message would you like to share with the next generation of technologists about building a career and making an impact?
Lezlie: First: don’t take yourself so seriously. You can make mistakes. Learn to laugh at yourself. Ask yourself, “What were you thinking?” I do that a lot.
Second: you don’t know what the world is going to be like. I grew up in the 50s. Nothing about today represents what I thought the world would become.
Stop thinking you can figure it all out already. Go step by step. You’re not going from here to 74 instantly. You have to survive this part.
Stay awake, be grateful, be helpful, and know when to challenge yourself.
Jelly: It’s like taking one step at a time. Don’t rush into things.
Thank you so much, Lezlie, for your time. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. I love your toughness. What I learned from you is that we need to face life head on, not just technology. Don’t entertain negative thoughts. If you have a goal, go for it. You have no excuse. Toughen up, and when you fail, stand up and keep going.
Richelle: Thank you so much, Lezlie. It has been such a delight hearing your stories and how you’ve made an impact not only professionally but through volunteering. It’s very inspiring, and I’m really happy we got to speak with you.
Lezlie: Well, all right. Thank you for your time.
Jelly: Thank you, Lezlie, and thank you everyone for joining us in this episode.
Richelle: You will find links and resources from today’s episode in the show notes.
Jelly: Follow, rate, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
[Outro Voice]: Thank you for tuning in to the Mainframe Connect Podcast. This episode is part of the Mainframe Coven 10-part miniseries, sponsored by Phoenix Software International and Vicom Infinity, a Converge Company. Like what you heard? Subscribe to get every episode or watch us online at openmainframeproject.org. Until next time, this is the Mainframe Connect Podcast.
Links and Resources Mentioned in the Episode:
- Open Mainframe Project Mentorship Program
- IBM TechXchange Community
- Black Girls Code
- Blind Service Chicago
- Source: Isha Jain, “Care responsibilities impact career choices for 40% of women in tech,” Data Centre & Network News, Tech Talent Charter survey, retrieved from dcnnmagazine.com
