News and InsightsWomen in Tech Scotland 2018
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Women in Tech Scotland, held at SEC Glasgow on October 10th, is an annual event as part of the Women In Tech World Series (#WinTechSeries). The event enables organisations to take a deep dive into current tech trends, network and discuss the need for diversity and inclusion in the tech sector. With over 30 Speakers throughout the day, it was difficult to pick our favourites but we’ve picked two sessions from the event to cover in detail.
Session: Life: My Career Incubator
Speaker: Rebecca Moore – Director of Growth for EMEA @ Skyscanner
Rebecca delivered an emotive, inspiring keynote on her personal accomplishments and career progression. Initially entering the Tech space as a Mechanical Engineering Graduate, she obtained a series of roles within Supply Chain and Strategy with Unilever, RBS and Skyscanner. The point of this keynote wasn’t to impart knowledge on a particular tech trend or even delve into the operations of one of the UK’s fastest growing companies. It was to share her own ambitions and experience for work-life balance and inspire the audience that significant life events such as having a child won’t stall your career, it may just be the leverage you need to lean in and take a step up.
Rebecca highlighted how the all-male C-Suite executives at Skyscanner gave her the support she needed when she decided to use her maternity leave as an opportunity to level up her career and become Director for Growth at Skyscanner. The key takeaways from the keynote were that leadership needed to extend their hand back to those lower down the career ladder and pull them forward. As well as, never needing to forfeit the accomplishment of a personal dream for a career one. More often than not if you ask for the opportunity, you can have both.
Rebecca Moore at Women in Tech 2018
Session: Getting More Women into Technical Roles
Panel:
Tripti Sethi – Global Advanced Analytics Lead @ Avanade
Sharon Moore MBE – CTO Travel and Transportation @ IBM
Annemieke Frank – Co-Founder @ EduHeroes Club
Pamela Linton – Senior Delivery Manager, Information Systems @ Sky
In this session, the panellists delved into a debate around how tech has embedded itself into every industry, and how we should now all consider how we work in ‘tech’ in some capacity.
The key themes that were being drawn upon were:
‘How do we allow school children and young adults the opportunity to understand what tech careers are available to them?’ ‘Should we only accept applicants for a job role if there is a gender balance of applicants?’ and ‘for those already working, are there opportunities to upskill and transition to more technical roles such as software engineering, development etc?’
Two of the most poignant takeaways from all the topics discussed by the panel were a need for inclusion with many audience members highlighting that to achieve diversity, we need men attending events aimed at Women in Tech, so they can contribute to the conversation and facilitate change. As well as the final point on parental leave and return to work for men, ‘How can we support families by enabling and encouraging men to feel more confident taking extended parental leave and what return to work programs can we offer them?’
Women in Tech Scotland 2018 Panel
Overall, Women in Tech Scotland was a huge success, leaving many individuals empowered and inspired for the future of tech. The #WinTechSeries is a fantastic event series hosted by Maddox events; hopefully, next year they will build on the conversation of inclusion, diversity and access to tech for school leavers.