Kim Majerus, leader of U.S. education and state and local government at Amazon Web Services

What lesson will you take with you from the pandemic?

[Before the pandemic] state, local and education institutions really weren’t at that point where they were taking what cloud could give them, so we were able to jump in at a moment’s notice. I had one CIO actually say to me, “This normally would’ve taken us a year, but we’ve been able to get it done in three weeks.”

What opportunities do you see today in the SLED market?

Now the approach is changing to, “Alright, we did it for one system, how do we modernize the rest of our systems?” We’re going to see that with the American Rescue Plan funding, right? While we hope this pandemic never, ever happens again, states are realizing they better be prepared, and it’s the modernization of their systems that will get them there. 

How did you manage to connect with people from a distance during the pandemic?

It’s really just been about showing them we’re here for them. A lot of the relationships that I’ve built over my career have really allowed me to offer help and support. I have to say, I have an amazing team of people that are focused on solving customer problems, and it’s those relationships that really helped accelerate and solve.