Commercial Integrator is proud to continue the #AVLivingLegends series, this week announcing Justin Watts, CTS, ITIL, MTA, DMC-D-4K, EAVA, ECS, of AMD as our 75th inductee.
Watts’ career features a diverse background and well-rounded portfolio with roles at Apple, Google and Facebook. Currently, Watts serves as senior IT manager, global video and events and on-site support for North America/Europe at AMD. Prior to this role, he held the title of senior university faculty member at AVIXA and also served on the CTS Certification Program Steering Committee. Moreover, Watts is an honoree of CI‘s own 40 under 40!
Read on to learn more about our latest inductee in the #AVLivingLegends series! You can also check out our hub page for past honorees.
Commercial Integrator: What motivated you to join the commercial AV industry?
Justin Watts: I started out in the AV industry working at church and in local live events, and I honestly thought I’d be doing that forever. I love live events. There’s something about the energy associated with an awesome show done well.
One day, very early on in my career, I was job hunting and I came across a posting for a corporate focused AV technician and I was really surprised because I didn’t think there was really a desire for that kind of execution at a corporate level. I applied out of curiosity and when I talked to the team that I would be working with I was hooked. It wasn’t just another gig at that point. It was an opportunity to build something way more than that. You could see where the team was going even back then when they delivered projectors and laptops on carts on conference rooms. It wasn’t just another gig — it was building a service that had to grow and scale with the future. I was hooked after that.
Commercial Integrator: What has kept you motivated and engaged in the decades that followed?
Justin Watts: The commercial side of the industry is this unique blend of classic analog concepts and forward-looking collaboration ideas that exist nowhere else. The work we do every day enables people to do more than just have video on what would have been an “audio conference” earlier this millennium. We build experiences that enable users to do their best work every day.
This growth mindset has motivated me year over year and continues to do so today. This industry is more than just a display on a wall or a device on a table. The commercial AV industry is tangible proof that efficient collaboration is a key metric of success across any vertical. Medical, private sector, government — you name it — they all have a core desire to more effectively take information from one person to the next and email isn’t a medium to execute that goal. It’s live. It’s a living, breathing, evolving thing that we as an industry have built from the ground up and continue to do so even now.
My motivation comes from taking this and defining what the future of the collaboration experience means and for what’s next.
Commercial Integrator: Reflect on your role as both a mentee early in your career and as a mentor later in your career. Who helped shape the trajectory of your professional life? How have you tried to help shape others’ careers?
Justin Watts: I’ve had several people who poured into me from various aspects of my career. I’ve was incredibly fortunate early on to have leaders who took the time to invest in me. Mark Triplett at Sagemont Church taught me more than I’ll ever be able to properly thank him for. He worked with me on the technology side of what we do and I learned volumes in the world of broadcast.
Michael Bialas at Anadarko Petroleum Corporation was the one who hired me for my first corporate/commercial AV role. He taught me about the “business” side of what it takes to be successful as well as all of the little things that require infinite focus. Michael Herring at BP taught me about leadership and how to bridge the gap between management and being a people focused champion. John Sheldon at Google taught me how to do things at scale and how to build that next big thing.
I wouldn’t be where I am today without the early investment from these leaders and many others who took the time to work around the rough edges that has been my career.
Why Giving Back Matters in AV
One of the things I enjoy most about this industry is the opportunity to give back and help others advance. For the folks that have worked for me, I endeavor to be every bit the servant leader that was embodied in the folks listed above and everyone who wasn’t. I work with my teams to build career paths that are beyond the typical focuses. We dig into personal development and how to build a brand around what drives people. I share my own areas of focus over the years and impart what passed down wisdom I can to ensure we’re all leveling up.
Additionally, I invest time yearly working with organizations like AVIXA to help create opportunities for industry advancement. Over the years, I’ve taught AV Fundamentals, CTS Prep, and I now teach “How to Effectively Manage AV Staff” which is a culmination of learnings from the years of experience Justin Rexing and I have compiled. I’m also on the Content and Learning Committee lead by Joseph Cornwall that focuses on the next steps in building up generational knowledge for anyone who would like to experience what this industry has to offer.
Commercial Integrator: What’s the most memorable story/anecdote of your career in commercial AV?
Justin Watts: When I worked at Google, I got to meet a lot of different people. One of the most memorable people I ever had the chance to meet was Ray Kurzweil. For those playing the home game, Ray Kurzweil invented the Kurzweil synthesizer after meeting with Stevie Wonder where the latter lamented the lack of a bridge between electric synthesizers and traditional music instruments. He now works for Google in the AI program and is a wealth of knowledge in a number of areas. Having started out in live events and worked a number of concerts I’ve seen the Kurzweil name a number of synthesizes on stage.
Getting to meet the man that invented something that has had such a huge impact on something near and dear to my heart was so cool. I got to speak with him for a bit as we discussed a few things he wanted for his office. It was definitely a “nerdvana” moment.
Commercial Integrator: What has been your greatest professional accomplishment to date?
Justin Watts: It’s hard to pick just one. I’m really proud of several things I’ve done over my career. Recently I did something that I’m really excited about and I look forward to the future of this new offering.
At AMD, I started managing just the video/events team globally. We built a global service offering around an improved customer facing program that both created growth for our users as well as showcased what AMD on AMD looked like in our collaboration environments.
In 2024, I was asked to take on user facing IT functions for North America and Europe as well. I doubled my org overnight which was a pretty big lift. Looking at my teams as a whole running both sides of the service was going to be a challenge. After working with the teams and understanding impacts to the user experience both my teams came together and we reorganized as one team. There were no more IT or AV centric technical functions. Everyone can do everything by leaning on their team members across the globe. My teams worked together to define training plans, high level impact to services and even simple things like glossaries to define terms that each team may not hear every day.
Creating a High Impact Team
The result: A high impact team that is 100% user facing on any issue that comes down the pipeline. I went from having to look hard at deliverables for the year as team bandwidth is an issue to finding greater career opportunities for my team as they have more time to work on things like that. We’ve created career shadowing programs because the teams can now work together more closely and everyone is learning new skills. We reduced our response times by over 70% in most cases as we now have more eyes on issues across the board.
It really has been a highlight of my career watching two services that would’ve normally worked in silos come together to solve problems. They provide unique points of view that they wouldn’t normally have access to without some mechanism in between. It’s been an awesome experience.
Commercial Integrator: What has been your biggest professional regret to date?
Justin Watts: My biggest regret to date, as I’m sure I have more toes to stub as I go along, is that I didn’t start really listening early enough in my career. I would get just enough data to move the needle, and I was on to the next task. I wasn’t being mindful of what was actually being shared outside of what was needed to solve “x.” This made me incrementally successful but nowhere near as successful as I could have been if I had taken the time to really digest what people were trying to share with me. I eventually got the information and learned to take that feedback more as I progressed in my career. Feedback is a gift, don’t take someone who’s taking their time to share with you for granted.
Commercial Integrator: What’s the best advice or pearl of wisdom you either received during your career or came to realize on your own?
Justin Watts: The three biggest things I’ve taken away from my career are:
- Listen: Don’t assume you’ve got the answer without taking a moment to listen and assess the entirety of the situation. Someone probably has some very impactful feedback about the scenario you’re currently in that could help you find your answer.
- Learn: Be coachable and never, ever, stop learning. A willingness to learn is a hallmark of a growth mindset. Invest in yourself and your career by seeking out opportunities to grow through expanding your technical and professional skillsets.
- Live: This is the hardest one for me because I’m terrible at it but it’s true: take the time to live. Work is work. We are encompassed in an amazing industry that works around the clock to do the awesome we do everyday. That means it may be difficult to carve out time to be you but it’s critical to your success. You can’t be available for others if you have nothing to give because you’ve used it all up in execution. Take the time to slow down and not be plugged in constantly. Find those things that make the other half of the life equation memorable and recharge.
Would you like to nominate a peer or colleague — or perhaps yourself! — to be featured in this #AVLivingLegends series? If so, just email Dan Ferrisi, [email protected].
