This engineer created a fool-proof plan to overcome shyness — and it led her to jobs at Apple, Google, and now Microsoft (MSFT, AAPL, GOOG, GOOGL)

Before Microsoft, Velastegui worked at a number of tech companies: Most recently, she was at Doppler Labs, the smart headphone company that shut down in November. She's also worked at Nest, then Alphabet's smart home company, where she was in charge of the roadmap for the chips in the company's smart home appliances. She also spent 5 years as a manager at Apple. Plus, she holds several patents and sits on the board of Georgia Tech's College of Engineering.

Velastegui tells us that after she appeared on our annual list, she was approached by a number of companies. She says she was even asked to come back to Apple, which was tempting because she still lives a few miles from the its Silicon Valley headquarters.

But the thought of diving deep into AI, one of the most important up-and-coming technologies, and at the position of general manager — just a few rungs down from the executive leadership team — was too good to pass up, even though it means having to move her family to the Seattle area, she tells Business Insider.

And all of her success to date is because when Velastegui first started out, she realized that her career depended on overcoming her natural shyness.

A phobia of public speaking

Velastegui was working at Applied Materials when her boss gave her an opportunity that could advance her career. She was to give a public presentation on the team's work, putting her in the spotlight.

"Public speaking was kind of a phobia," she explains, but she agreed to do it anyway. "I presented to the vice president and I was horrible at it."

But instead of crawling into a corner and giving up, she figured that "deliberate practice makes perfect."

And she came up with a game plan that she perfected over the years that trained her out of her shyness, helped her network at business events, and led her to job offers from Apple, Google and Microsoft.

As she grew more comfortable speaking to strangers, she engineered a plan that allowed her to grow her business network, too, which led her to job offers at Apple and then Google.

Anyone can do this

This is Velastegui's process for overcoming her shyness. It's a plan that can be used by anyone, shy or not, to boost your career.

After years of hacking her career, she's become so skilled and confident in public speaking and networking with strangers, she doesn't think twice. For instance, after she was named to Business Insider's list of powerful engineers, she contacted many other women on the list to introduce herself.

And then she took it the next level, organizing a panel at the annual Grace Hopper Celebration — a conference for women in computing — with eight other women on the list. It was a workshop on how women engineers can take their careers to the next level.

She only had a couple of days to pull the panel together. "I bombarded them," she said, to get enough people to agree to do the panel with her. And it turned out to be one of the big hit sessions of the conference.

And at the event, she met Terry Myerson, Microsoft's executive vice president of Windows and Devices for a networking coffee. A month later, she had a job offer from Microsoft.

And there's another bonus to hacking her career like this, it has made her a much better manager, she says. "I know how to get people excited about a project using the same skills as I've developed for external networking. It's no longer scary for me," she says.