What I learnt from the Women at 10 Downing Street
On Friday I went to Downing Street.
There. I said it.
The invitation popped into my inbox earlier last week and my first reaction was to look around for the candid camera. Sure, I’d applied for the opportunity. But the result seemed like an opportunity too good to be true. The email came from the rather lovely Girls in Tech London and after some extensive research (mainly waiting for someone else to tweet about receiving the invitation) I convinced myself that the invitation was, in fact, legit.
The event was about much more than sitting in the PM’s favourite chair in the cabinet room (but yeah, we did that too). Thirty-nine other young women and I pitched up at Downing Street on Friday afternoon and had the chance to spend time with some of the most powerful women in the European tech industry. It was hosted by Baroness Shields, currently Digital Advisor to the PM, and attended by women whose careers I frequently read about and follow and aspire to, such as Facebook’s Nicola Mendelsohn and Kathryn Parsons, the founder of coding school Decoded.
The three hours that I spent with those inspirational women and the ambitious (not a dirty word) young women starting out in their careers (like me) will be a time that I remember and call on for a long time. It was so refreshing to speak with young women working through similar issues to myself — whether that’s looking for funding for their business idea, finding female coders or the bigger question of finding their place in the world. Even more refreshing was hearing that even these highly accomplished, leading women struggle sometimes too — whether with a fear of public speaking or with being the only woman in a room full of men, yet again.
This event was about celebrating these incredible women and their successes, but also about these women passing on their knowledge and experience to the next generation. And that is what really blew me away. The openness and honesty of such highly successful women and their willingness to listen was quite breathtaking. Everyone that I spoke to was kind and interested in my story. The sense of sisterhood truly overwhelmed me and I simply could not think of a better way to kick off the weekend of International Women’s Day.
For lots of reasons, my world last year contracted to include just a tiny number of people. Both personally and professionally, I pulled back from the world and spent a lot of time with my immediate family and my darling Nana before she devastatingly passed away just before Christmas. As my biggest supporter and my closest ally, I know that she would have told her friends, her hairdresser and the postman that her granddaughter was advising the Prime Minister on how to win the election.
And hey, that bit might not be true but it’s an afternoon that I want people to know about. As I look to start my own business and rediscover my place in the world, the event at Downing Street convinces me that not only is it possible to achieve success as a woman in technology and business, but that these fantastic women want other young women to succeed too.
It’s never going to be easy, but in the words of the esteemed Eleanor Roosevelt, it’s time for me to “do the things you think you cannot do.”
