Anahit Hovhannisyan has spent more than a decade at Microsoft headquarters doing work that few people see, but nearly everyone depends on here in Microsoft Digital, the company’s internal IT organization.
As a group program manager in Microsoft Digital, she oversees strategic areas of our license management, key third-party software, and suppliers for our AI models. She is also helping lead our organization into the AI era, all while quietly building a reputation as a sought-after mentor in the IT space. Her approach is rigorous, direct, and deeply human.
Hovhannisyan came to the United States from Armenia as a graduate student in 1997 with no family and no financial safety net. She credits the experience with instilling her with the tenacity, grit, and self-advocacy that define her career.
Building a career from the ground up
Hovhannisyan’s path to Microsoft began at Texas Tech University, where she earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering. She graduated in 1999 just as the software industry began to boom, and she was hired directly into a support engineer role at Microsoft.
“You have to self-advocate, perform at the highest level, and line up mentors to help drive your career forward. That is the recipe.”
Anahit Hovhannisyan, principal group product manager, Microsoft Digital
For her first seven years at Microsoft, Hovhannisyan remained in that same role by necessity. As a foreign national awaiting her green card, switching jobs would have reset the immigration process. She used that time to broaden her technical expertise across multiple disciplines within the developer support space.
“You have to self-advocate, perform at the highest level, and line up mentors to drive your career forward,” Hovhannisyan says. “That is the recipe.”
After she received her green card, Hovhannisyan moved through a series of field-based roles in the Microsoft Dallas office. In 2013, she relocated her family to the Seattle area for an IT-specific role at Microsoft headquarters.
IT was new territory for her, but her appetite for calculated risk is something she now sees as central to her identity as a leader.
From one partnership to an enterprise function
Within Microsoft Digital, Hovhannisyan is best known as the general contractor and product management lead for the company’s long-term strategic relationship with ServiceNow. Over the past few years, her team delivered solutions on the Service Now platform that helped multiple organizations within Microsoft with Service Desk, Help Desk, and operational needs.
“My previous mentor always said, ‘What got you here won’t get you there.’ Things change at a rapid pace. Learn, adapt, and pivot—those are the three things that have moved my career forward, and they matter more than ever in the AI era.”
Anahit Hovhannisyan, principal group product manager, Microsoft Digital
More recently, Hovhannisyan’s responsibilities expanded to include managing a portfolio of 18 third-party software suppliers, in addition to the Service Now product ownership
Today, her team is both building and deploying AI agents; contributing to IntelliLicense, an AI-powered software licensing platform; and rolling out ServiceNow’s NowAssist to drive AI-powered case summarization across the business. Microsoft Digital was an early adopter of these capabilities, and Hovhannisyan’s organization now shares what it learned with external customers seeking to understand how enterprise IT can evolve.
“My previous mentor always said, ‘What got you here won’t get you there,’” Hovhannisyan says. “Things change at a rapid pace. Learn, adapt, and pivot—those are the three things that have moved my career forward, and they matter more than ever in the AI era.”
A mentor who makes the path visible
The importance of building the right network of support is a theme that runs through Hovhannisyan’s career, and she’s precise about who that network should include. She distinguishes between a mentor, a coach, and a sponsor, insisting all three are essential.
“A mentor gives direction and shares experience. A coach asks open-ended questions and helps you find your own answers. A sponsor advocates for you behind closed doors,” Hovhannisyan says. “All three are absolute must-haves.”
“Anahit helped me understand how to build a strategy, gain visibility beyond my core group, and develop relationships with people who will be in rooms I’m not in.”
Katina Reece, principal technical program manager, Infrastructure, Network and Tenant group at Microsoft
Katina Reece, a principal technical program manager in the Infrastructure, Network and Tenant group at Microsoft, has been working with Hovhannisyan as a mentee for nearly eight years. When they met, Reece had been at Microsoft for three years and was watching colleagues advance around her. Hovhannisyan helped her reframe her obstacles, showing her that visibility, relationship-building, and strategic positioning were just as important as performing well at her job.
“Anahit helped me understand how to build a strategy, gain visibility beyond my core group, and develop relationships with people who will be in rooms I’m not in,” Reece says.
“Anahit is very thoughtful about understanding what gives people energy and finding the right places to leverage those strengths. The strongest leaders recognize that different people bring different talents, and Anahit does that well.”
Dawn Lee, principal product manager, Microsoft Digital
For Dawn Lee, a principal product manager who has worked directly with Hovhannisyan for more than two years, the impact has been just as concrete.
“Anahit is very thoughtful about understanding what gives people energy and finding the right places to leverage those strengths,” Lee says. “The strongest leaders recognize that different people bring different talents, and Anahit does that well.”
Why IT is the place to be
Hovhannisyan pushes back on the perception that IT is a less exciting path than working on products.
“IT is an amazing place to learn fast,” Hovhannisyan says. “You have a broader purview across multiple product groups, your knowledge grows dramatically, and you have more opportunity to observe and adapt your career than you would in a narrower role.”
“If I, as a foreign student with nothing, could make that kind of progress, I feel like everybody can do it. The keys are tenacity, grit, and self-advocacy. If you don’t have a mentor, get one. If you don’t have a sponsor, find one. These are not optional.”
Anahit Hovhannisyan, principal group product manager, Microsoft Digital
Looking ahead, Hovhannisyan aspires to eventually lead both program management and software engineering functions within Microsoft Digital.
She continues to mentor a wide network of over 20 employees across the company, understanding that the path she navigated from immigrant student to senior leader is one worth sharing.
“If I, as a foreign student with nothing, could make that kind of progress, I feel like everybody can do it,” Hovhannisyan says. “The keys are tenacity, grit, and self-advocacy. If you don’t have a mentor, get one. If you don’t have a sponsor, find one. These are not optional.”
Meanwhile, she’ll keep showing up the way she always has: Advocating for her team, coaching the next generation, and doing the consequential work that makes the whole enterprise run.
Key takeaways
Here’s what you can learn from Anahit Hovhannisyan’s career:
- Build your support network intentionally. A mentor shares experience and direction; a coach asks the questions that help you find your own path, and a sponsor advocates you when you’re not in the room. Seek out all three.
- Self-advocacy is a career skill. Performing well is the baseline. Actively communicating your aspirations to leadership, courting feedback, and ensuring the right people know your goals is what moves the dial.
- Lead change by helping people understand “What’s in it for me?” When driving organizational change, paint a clear vision, answer what team members gain from it, then back your words with visible action so trust builds over time.
- Good mentors see what mentees can’t yet see in themselves. Spotting someone’s potential before they recognize it—and giving them a specific opportunity to prove it—is one of the most high-impact things a mentor or leader can do.
Related links
- Who else works in Microsoft Digital? Read about Olutunde Makinde, a senior service engineer.
- Considering a career at Microsoft? See current openings in the Microsoft Careers portal.
- Read about a day in the life of a Microsoft employee using Copilot.
- Discover how Microsoft employees use the Total Rewards Portal to understand their value.
- Learn how Microsoft HR is using Viva and Microsoft 365 Copilot to empower our employees.
- Find out how the Microsoft Power Platform at Microsoft empowers employees.
- Connect with regional employees more effectively at Microsoft with Viva Amplify.
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