As vice president of global professional services, Kristina Lengyel is responsible for driving the strategy to deliver exceptional services to the growing Kronos customer base, while driving high customer satisfaction and loyalty world-wide. She has been a key driver of Kronos’ accelerated time-to-value deployment supporting traditional on-premise workforce management customers through cloud transformation while managing a staff of 1,100+ professionals globally.

Lengyel has been with Kronos since August 2010, and during the first three years she was vice president of engineering responsible for more than 300 engineers across the world. She carried responsibility for selective Kronos’ product line engineering and product management.

Prior to joining Kronos, Lengyel was the senior vice president of global technical services at Open Solutions and managed more than 300 on-shore and off-shore technical and operations professionals focused on product quality in support of the organization’s audacious growth plan. She held several key executive roles at Concerto (now Aspect) Software, the world’s largest company solely focused on the contact center industry. Prior to Concerto, Lengyel served as a senior vice president of technical operations and chief technology officer at INSCI Corp.

Lengyel holds a master’s degree in business administration from Northeastern University, and a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada. She was born and raised in Hungary and now lives in Massachusetts with her husband, Geza, and daughter, Aspen.

Kronos offers the industry’s most powerful suite of tools and services to manage and engage your entire workforce. Guided by decades of experience and innovation, Kronos® offers the industry’s most powerful suite of tools and services to manage and engage your entire workforce from pre-hire to retire. And because workforce needs are constantly changing, Kronos solutions are designed to evolve with you to help meet the challenges you face every day — regardless of your industry or where you do business.

I have been in the software industry for over 25 years. By trade, I am an engineer in computer hardware and got into the industry by accident. I was working with a low level computing company and they were emphasizing software and I enjoyed it so much that I shifted my focus to software.

I received my MBA from Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business and my B.S. in Computer Engineering from Sault College. I also am a perpetual student and take continuing education courses at Harvard University.

My biggest challenge has been maintaining my self-esteem. Women are often faced with self-doubt and I had to learn to rely on and trust my expertise. This drives me to work towards perfection, but it keeps me up at night.

My greatest strengths are my ability to prioritize and put things in perspective and assume and mitigate risks. I address issues that are fixable and have a complete lack of fear.

My greatest accomplishment is my daughter, Aspen.

This year I turned 50 and my overall prioritization of goals has changed. I have become more idealistic. My goal is to experience uncertainty and adventure and collect memories. I intend to do this by looking at the unique in every day.

I am inspired by and admire many strong women, but the four that always make my list include:

Margaret Thatcher - Her transformation into a public figure without jeopardizing her values and beliefs are truly commendable. Her ability to make decisions even when she was introducing unpopular policies around welfare, trade unions, and industry privatization is amazing. I loved watching her on TV when I was a young girl. While I have no idea if the Hungarian translations were accurate, her strong presence and elegance mesmerized me at an early age.

Maria Tecla Artemesia Montessori - Her intuition into scientific pedagogy was and still is refreshing. My own daughter is a Montessori kid, starting at two-and-a-half until age 10. I don’t just admire her educational methods, but her desire to spread social responsibility. She was the public advocate for education, which included incorporating disabled children into our society. Leveraging all her learnings - from special education to mainstream classroom teachings - to create a responsible and independent society is something I will carry with me for a lifetime.

Eleanor Roosevelt - I absolutely gravitate to her profound intelligence. Who wouldn’t? She was an amazingly astute and funny woman. She was also extremely self-aware and had the ability to draw people to herself despite her lack of what some deem modern beauty. You cannot be a leader unless you can entice followers, can you? And of course I love reading her quotes - she had a clever and perceptive phrase for every situation. Some of my favorites are:

• No one can make you feel inferior without your consent (this one’s my favorite!). • A woman is like a tea bag: you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water. • The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience. • People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

Madeleine Albright - I’ve always admired her wit and ability to maintain her unique identity. Even when I disagree with her politics, her arguments are both entertaining and insightful. In her public appearances she remained mysterious but transparent at the same time - her pins spoke on her behalf. One of my favorite coffee table books is her ‘Read My Pins.’

I want to be remembered for making an impact on people, for whatever reason. I want to be remembered for making a positive impact, and if for nothing else, I made you smile!

National Association of Professional Women

VIP Woman of the Year, 2014-2015 

Volunteer Teacher - Students ages 14-17 at The Béla Bartók Hungarian School of Boston — Boskola