Advice for the Female Tech Leaders of Tomorrow — from the Leaders of Today
#QBWomen
On May 17, QuantumBlack is hosting the follow up to Women as Tech Leaders, Women Transforming Tech. Spaces are now full for the event, but please follow us on Medium, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook for further updates on future events and career opportunities.
By Helen Mayhew, Chief Operating Officer, QuantumBlack
It’s no secret that we have a gender diversity problem in tech, and it’s about time that changed. Although women make up 45% of the workforce in the UK and US, research shows that they hold just 17% of tech roles, and when it comes to management in tech, it’s a mere 15%. If women reached parity with men in tech roles, a potential £3.6billion (per annum) could be added to UK GDP. If we don’t make progress women are not participating in the some of the highest growth and most highly productive sectors in our economy and we then risk reversing all the gains that have been made in gender parity in recent decades. We simply can’t let this happen.
At QuantumBlack, 30% of our tech roles and 25% of our management roles are held by women. However, this is still a long way from our aspiration, which is why we’re committed to change and helping advance women in tech roles through to executive level.
We recently hosted a “Women as Tech Leaders” day at our office in London, inviting some of the most promising female tech leaders of tomorrow to learn about how they can help shape positive change in the world of work using data.
Here, four of our attending leaders reflect on the event and share their advice for the female tech leaders of tomorrow.
Tanya Cordrey, Non-Executive Board Director
Tanya has an extensive career in technology leadership and has worked across a breadth of industries such as the BBC, eBay and The Guardian. In addition to Tanya’s technology leadership roles, she has served as an Advisor and Non-Executive Director for companies such as Schibsted Media and Clarks.
To be successful as a female tech leader, you need to always be human. When you’re in a busy job, it’s easy to throw yourself into work and focus on doing lots of great work. While that’s important, it’s not enough — relationships and building yourself a support network is ultimately what will sustain you.
I’ve struggled with this in the past. After my maternity leave, I came back to work four days a week. I was obsessed with working every single minute of those four days; so much so that I never took the time to make a cup of coffee or stop for a chat with someone in the kitchen area.
Research shows that as men get more senior in the workplace, they are liked more, but the more senior a woman gets, the more people dislike her. Whether we like it or not, as a woman you have to work harder at building and maintaining human connections — and that’s often more difficult in male-dominated industries. There are easy ways to do this. For example, if you’re writing an email and asking someone to send some figures, read it a second time to make sure there is a human touch. Efficiency to you might be perceived as rude to someone else.
Clare Kitching, Senior Principal, QuantumBlack
Clare leads teams of data scientists, data engineers, designers and analysts to improve business performance using advanced analytics and data science.
You have to understand what success looks like for you, but then make sure your colleagues, mentors and sponsors know what this is so that they can help you get there. There are so many choices and paths to take in your career, so others won’t automatically know what you want.
This really came to life for me when I returned from maternity leave. I thought about what I wanted to achieve in the year ahead and the work I wanted to focus on. As I returned to work, I had conversations with people about what was happening at QuantumBlack and how I could get involved, but also articulated what I was interested in doing. Two things surprised me as I did this. Firstly, how different people’s assumptions were about what I would do compared to what I wanted to do — so it was I a good thing that I told them my view. Secondly, once people knew my goals, they were overwhelmingly supportive in creating opportunities that were both interesting for me and allowed me to grow and develop.
Larissa Suzuki, Senior Product Manager, Oracle
Larissa is an award-winning and passionate computer scientist, inventor and engineer. Her professional career includes over 10 years advancing many fields of computer science and engineering, including smart cities, data infrastructures, emerging technology, and computing applied to medicine and operations research.
Women have always played a part in tech: the first computer scientists were women, the first software engineer was a woman, we have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi because of the work of women — they created alongside men. Women don’t feel we belong or see ourselves as creators of tech because we’ve been erased from history.
Because of this, women have to prove themselves all the time. I used to watch myself very carefully because I wrongly thought that a mistake from me would have an impact on the perception of all of women in tech. My advice to other women would be to forget about that and focus on delivering things, challenging the status quo and owning your place — tech is for everybody.
Anna Watkins, Advisor and Double Olympic Medallist
Anna is an independent consultant and speaker who works with QuantumBlack as an advisor, training consultants and technical practitioners at all levels in the development and execution of successful analytics projects.
The female tech leaders of tomorrow should think of themselves as data scientists but also as translators.
I began rowing when I started university. I rowed for fun for a couple of years, not really wanting to take it too seriously. But then someone made me see that I could be really good at it, so I got stuck into learning how to train properly. At first, I thought it was all about rowing fast but actually I realised it was about refining your process of rowing and doing that sustainably over a period of time.
I came into the squad when men were earning lots of medals and women weren’t, and although I found it intimidating I just focused on the task of making incremental improvements in our technique. I took it upon myself to install biomechanic instruments into the boat and acted as the translator — taking the data we collected and interpreting what the changes meant. We ended up winning bronze in the Olympics which — although wasn’t what we wanted — gave us an incredible sense of having reached our end goal.
If you have any thoughts or recommendations about building ‘a women in tech community’ please contact us at info@quantumblack.com.
Further reading
Watch Principal Data Scientist, Martha Imprialou, talk about Augmented Intelligence.
If you are interested in learning more about QuantumBlack please go to our website, or if interested about specific roles, please contact us at careers@quantumback.com.
