How I started networking
Pioneering in AFT’s Women in Tech Buddy Program — a story written by Alexandra Likhareva
Hello everyone, I’m Alexandra, Master of Statistics student at KU Leuven, and data and analytics enthusiast. Here I wanted to share some thoughts on my experience of participating in the Women in Tech buddy program. I hope it can be helpful for the folks like me who’re approaching their final stage of studies and are interested in advancing their future career at the tech industry. You can find more information about the buddy program and how it works here: http://www.aftleuven.be/event/women-tech-buddy-program
Here we go!
During my pioneer buddy experience, I got to attend the award ceremony of ICT Lady and Young Lady of the year located at the hip venue of Art and Design Atomium Museum by the side of Brussels’ famous landmark. The award is annually organized by Data news, a leading source of ICT reporting in Belgium specializing on telecommunication industry, e-commerce as well as B2B technology news coverage in general.
She goes ICT
The event, organised by Datanews, is aimed at reinforcing greater gender diversity by endowing positive female role models and through creating extensive networking opportunities. Namely, the awards for ICT Lady and Young Lady of the year are designed for women with impressive career development at IT industry, strong leadership skills and experience and a passion to share their positive energy with others. This is especially important nowadays since girls tend to drift away from STEM subjects at the senior school years. What is more, as gender equality ambassador Valerie Tanghe mentioned during her presentation, there are still much less female CEOs and managers across various industries in Belgium although the overall proportion of the university graduates tends to be more skewed towards females than males.
This year the winners are Muriel De Lathouwer, Managing director & CEO of innovation-driven live video production company EVS Broadcast Equipment as ICT Lady 2017 and Valerie Taerwe, business development manager at c-Quilibrium as ICT Young Lady 2017. Congratulations to the winners and thank you for making this world a little bit better every day!
Networking
Being amongst the first students to participate in a Buddy Program, I was surprised to see so much enthusiasm and energy shown by both nominees and the guests at the event. It was my lucky day to get a networking buddy Ursula, ICT Young Lady of the year 2016, who is currently leading End-to-End service monitoring of the domestic bank at ING Belgium. Her personal success story includes having completed Master in Civil Engineering at University of Mons at a very young age, after which she explored several sides of the professional scenery before committing to her current career path. For her, the secret of successful leadership is based on establishing trust between the team members and the leader as well as being a manager who leads by example and inspire others.
After meeting quite a bit of ICT-leaders and experts sharing their personal stories, it became very apparent for me that there is no universal path to fulfilling career which would equally suit everyone even within the same professional domain. Personally, my networking experience so far allowed me to get a better understanding of how data science industry works and what kind of career path and related challenges I can expect. Specifically, there is a lag between what is currently taught at academia and what is required from you in the industry in terms of the use of various additional and more up-do-date software packages of the latter as well as the importance of being a good communicator or developing other soft skills for your career (surprise-surprise, after all IT Crowd-esque stereotypes about unsocial engineers working in the office basement).
Another aspect of networking was the opportunity to meet a lot of amazing people in person to connect with them and to stay in touch. The buddy program ICT event I attended was unbeatable in terms of the openness of the female ICT leaders and experts and their willingness to answer all of my never-ending (sometimes very silly) questions. You rock!
Sending my warmest regards to the participants and the guests of the event,
Thank you,
Alexandra
