Tech For Good - Issue 23

EMBRACING EQUIT Y

Tech

Despite strides made in recent years, women continue to be underrepresented and face significant barriers to advancement in technology-related careers. In this issue we mark Women’s History Month – and International Women’s Day – with a collection of features highlighting the efforts being made to address this ongoing imbalance. We hear from a wide range of female tech leaders and role-models from around the world, reflecting their own experiences and their thoughts for the future. We bring you a selection of rich, multimedia deep-dives into advancing technology in the public sector this time as well, and it’s gratifying to note the central role senior female leaders are playing in them all. Surrey County Council is on a quest to deliver human-centric design thinking to every corner of its operations, and Cancer Research UK and AWS have teamed

Romily Broad Chief Executive Officer

up to revolutionise how patients are matched with experimental clinical trials.

Also in the arena of healthcare, we take time out with 3M Health Information Systems to find out how its M*Modal natural-language processing platform aims to be a gamechanger in providing more time to care to both clinicians and patients.

Finally, the long reach of LoRa is underpinning exponential growth in the Internet of Things. We speak to the CEO of the company behind it, Semtech, about the fundamental importance of long-range, low-power connectivity to making sure IoT grows sustainably.

Our thanks to everyone who has contributed to this issue – and especially to the inspiring women involved. We hope that in continuing to work to provide equal access to our pages we can play our small part in opening the way for many more like them in the years to come.

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06 LIVING DIGITAL

Designing a new digital Surrey County Council

32 VOICE-ACTIVATED HEALTHCARE

How 3M tech will create time to care

44 CANCER RESEARCH UK AND AWS Tech innovation connects patients with drug trials

54 SUSTAINABLE IOT Semtech CEO on LoRa’s environmental mission

68 WOMEN IN TECH: MISSION CRITICAL everywoman founder Maxine Benson MBE on advancing women in tech leadership

76 VOICES OF INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY 2023

19 hot takes from female leaders

86 SEE IT: BE IT

Eight personal stories from women-in-tech’s front line

98 EMPLOYEE RESOURCE GROUPS

ServiceMax’s Angela Smith-Sly on the power of ERGs

Living

DIGITAL

Surrey County Council is on a quest to weave digital excellence into the fabric of the organisation, and residents are already benefitting. Tech For Good meets the people leading the transformation.

The business of running public services has never been more challenging. A storm of headwinds confronts those striving to deliver the best for their communities: Global crises from armed conflict to climate breakdown are cascading their consequences onto municipal authorities already running on empty, serving populations already ageing, already struggling to endure a cost-of-living crisis, and already rocked by lockdowns and disease.

As demand quickly grows, running public services more efficiently – and differentlyhas also never been more important.

It’s a fact Surrey County Council has recognised and acted upon. With 1.2

million residents, the county is in the top quartile of the most densely populated administrative districts in the UK. London sits to its east and affords the county a reputation as a homestead for wealthy commuters, but Surrey features a demographic makeup as diverse as any other part of the country.

“There’s no shortage of challenges that we face at the moment,” says Leigh Whitehouse, the council’s Deputy CEO and Digital Executive Director.

“It feels like we’ve endured 10 years of austerity, we emerged from that to find the COVID-19 pandemic facing us, and then just in case we were expecting a bit of

peace and quiet, we’ve got the impact of the cost-of-living crisis - the wider economic impact of that on us as an organisation but, more importantly, on our residents.”

The council’s mantra is ‘No-one Left Behind’ - a principle that’s helped it navigate inclement conditions with a focused set of corporate priorities: reducing health inequality, delivering economic growth, greening the county’s future, and empowering communities. The council knew that to deliver against these aims in increasingly arduous circumstances, it would need to change. It would need to become digital.

“All these issues lie in a complex and wicked space. Our digital capabilities are the right way of going about tackling some of those big challenges that we’re facing,” adds Whitehouse.

Living Digital

Six years in the making and accelerated in the last three, the council’s digital transformation journey has seen the organisation move from an IT-centric lift-and-shift approach to a human-centred design methodology that roots decision making on the front line, rather than in the back office. It is a process in lockstep with the council’s fresh, one-team ethos – a strategic framework called The Surrey Way that seeks to assemble the council’s huge range of departments and service areas under one unifying banner.

It has already resulted in milestone achievements across service areas, but in the next two years it aims to have fully embedded an agile digital mindset into the very fabric of the organisation. By 2025, it will be Living Digital.

“We’ve got financial restraints within the council. We’ve got a growing population, we’ve got growing expectations. How do you balance that without compromising the services you deliver? The way we see it is to use digital to not only redesign, but disrupt how we deliver services,” explains

Joanne Blount, Digital Programmes Manager

for the council.

‘Design’ is an essential word in recognising what the wholesale shift in the

T his is a cul ture shif t ”

Joanne Blount

council’s approach to technology actually means for its 20,000+ staff. Where once the council’s people needed to shapeshift their skills and culture around new technology dictated from the centre, it is now the reverse. Blount’s team works hand-in-hand with frontline staff to identify specific opportunities first via an in-depth discovery phase, and only then do the assembled consultants, project managers, developers, and support staff set about designing innovative solutions. Those may involve new technologies, but not always: Sometimes using existing systems differently is the answer, or simply rethinking processes. But where new technology can make a difference, the council’s digital team now has the expertise to deploy it quickly in collaboration with the people who will use it.

“This is a culture shift,” she says. “With the financial pressures over the last few years we necessarily became very reactive. Our digital transformation is so important for Surrey because we have created a team that collaborates with services to get ahead of our challenges proactively.

“The digital team works with services to revisit what they’re doing and reimagine a better way of doing things based on user research and information from our residents. That way we make sure what we’re doing is always focused on what people actually need, is fit for purpose, and delivers real benefits quickly.”

With the team and methodologies now in place, the Council is now enthusiastically encouraging colleagues across the organisation to embrace its capabilities and seize the opportunity of change.

Lorraine Juniper’s tenure at the council extends to 36 years, and she is now leveraging her extensive know-how to lead the Digital team’s change-management efforts as Head of Engagement and Digital Innovation.

“The Digital team is the best kept secret in Surrey,” she jokes. “We’ve been nominated finalists for nine different digital awards. Five of our people have been nominated for female digital awards. We’ve got some incredible talent and capabilities. Now we’re working hard to really engage our Executive Directors and leadership teams to help them understand their challenges and draw up roadmaps around what digital can offer them.”

Digital Minds

Juniper says the biggest thing that’s happened in the council over the last two years is a mindset change: Digital isn’t about IT, it’s about asking what residents need and rethinking how they can be better met in more modern, efficient, joined up ways. The Digital team sits astride all the council’s service areas in a way that means it can look at problems with a fresh, evidence-based perspective, before working with services via dedicated

business partners to imagine – and deliver – new ways of working.

“Most of what we do isn’t about technology; 80 percent of what we do is looking at people and the processes they’re locked into. We look at our own navels and ask: How do we do that stuff? How can we do it quicker or better, how can we use the systems we have better or in a more integrated way between service areas? A lot of the time that’s not obviously to do with technology, but rather an issue with how something is staffed or the way the process is working. So the solutions we design support the service in sorting those out,” says Juniper.

While digital consultants work increasingly visibly across all areas of the council to shape the art of the possible, perhaps less visible is the now comprehensive

Matt Scott, Chief Digital Information Officer

technical expertise in-housed at the council to make it happen – data technicians, developers, infrastructure specialists.

Matt Scott, Chief Digital Information Officer, describes the capability grown in this area – in particular, a deliberate effort to grow it internally – as the foundation upon which progress is being built. The process of rationalising and modernising the council’s data management began as long as seven years ago, when the council began a shift to the cloud as part of an overhaul of the ways in which it hosted, processed and shared information both internally and externally.

“We stood up a number of examples that demonstrated what is possible with new technology solutions to do things differently, but since then we have deliberately taken a number of evolutionary steps to define the approach and scope of the digital programme. Where we were once tech-centred, focused on the platforms and what they do, we now have a human-centred design approach that starts with residents.

“Having an established resource in-house means we have that organisational memory. Teams are tuned into the key priorities and challenges the

organisation faces, meaning there’s a quicker time to becoming productive and moving through the phases of discovery, prototyping and delivery.”

Scott defines the Digital team as an “ecosystem of digital capability”, coordinated centrally but extending its reach into and across all service areas. It focuses on specific frontline problems by leveraging an organisation-wide spectrum of technical and problem-solving expertise, underpinned by a holistic approach to data management that helps link services, reduce back-office burdens, and ultimately deliver better experiences to residents.

Up & Running

Whitehouse is proud of the successes already achieved, although clear that there’s plenty more to do: “You’re definitely seeing now some examples of how the digital team have worked with services across the council to really engage in a way I think people feel quite liberating and stimulating.“

Among its achievements to date is the use of robotic process automation (RPA) in a number of areas. RPA involves the deployment of software to sit across different systems and carry out mundane, time-consuming tasks between them so that human beings can spend time more productively elsewhere. The impact has been felt in back-office and finance departments, within social care, and more, returning thousands of work hours to hard-pressed staff.

We look at our own navels and ask: ‘How do we do that stuff?’”

Lorraine Juniper

The council has also used tools from its RPA partner, UIPath, to deploy intelligent chatbots in a front-facing capacity, allowing residents to access services in a far more user-friendly way, while in the background RPA helps execute their requests concerning everything from birth-and-death registration to school admissions and adult education.

Other notable successes include the use of a platform called Boomi to integrate data and systems to bridge otherwise thorny

silos, such as the complex process of transitioning an individual from child to adult social care. Separately, early in the transformation journey, the digital team earned its data stripes in the teeth of the COVID-19 pandemic, delivering rich insights to both staff and residents so successfully that the BBC got in touch to find out how it was done.

The future is full of opportunity as the council learns to live more and more digitally, says Blount – especially given the stresses faced in the public sector:

“With automation, with integrations, with data insights, we are able to work together across the organisation to genuinely change how we work – and change the experiences of our residents.

“For them, it’s things like 24/7 access to our services, be that through chatbots or improved means of contact. It’s things like Internet of Things (IoT) and sensors on roads to monitor temperatures and potholes. And it’s about getting into the community as well, transforming our libraries and customer services, and our work with the NHS.

“Digital is exciting because we are moving away from a reactive state to proactively changing the way we work, ensuring we

are putting our effort where the value is for both our staff and our residents.”

Whitehouse concurs. He says the potential to meet the council’s challenges head-on and transform the experience of its staff for the better is materialising at speed, along with its benefits for the council’s bottom line and all the county’s residents.

“Digital is about adopting the sort of mindsets that that you can see in organisations that thrive in the in the fast-moving digital age. It means putting the customer at the heart of what we’re doing, being data and evidence led, and using design thinking to make sure we’re using the sorts of techniques and practices that will lead us to solutions with real impact.”

I nside view Adult Social Care

Toni Carney, Head of Resources, Adult Social Care

My remit is to provide support services to Adult Social Care, including its data and business systems. We’re currently supporting around 22,000 residents with a lot of people coming through our systems every year – it’s a huge turnover.

The biggest challenge we have is at our front door, responding to people requesting anything from simple information to finding support in crisis. Until recently, we were also racing to confront a major change in the rules around how people are charged for their care, which was set to hugely increase the number of people entitled to support. We were expecting around 10,000 more older people to join us this year with the charging reforms.

While this change has now been postponed by government, we remain under pressure because of the increasing demand for support, particularly for older people and people experiencing difficulties with their mental health. Recruitment is really challenging, too, so we needed to do things in a different way.

My first contact with the Digital team was last year when they came into help

us design a new Digital Front Door. It was a way of us innovating new ways for residents to access our services in a self-service way, particularly via our website with web chat and chatbots.

The webchat has proved very successful. There’s clearly demand and it’s more efficient for us; one officer can deal with four people at once, in real-time. What was a

trial last year has now become part of our day-today business.

The chatbot is helpful, too, guiding people to use our online forms. This means that carers and families of those receiving support can now access us 24/7 on their own time.

We engaged the Digital team again to take on the challenge of the charging reforms and they were right at the front of that journey with us, which was great. They bring a different perspective to show us what the art of the possible really is, complementing our own ideas with the solutions we need. They are focused on the user experience, so they engage us from the point of view of the residents each step of the way.

The work they did with us in preparation for the Charging Reforms was fantastic; we were way ahead in our planning because of their involvement. They get up to speed amazingly quickly and are very empowered to work at a really fast pace. It’s tremendous to see just how quickly they can turn a problem statement into some ideas about how we might tackle it. They are a really brilliant team of people to work with.

I nside view Highways

Dan Squibb, Asset Planning Team Manager, Highways

out analysis, deterioration modelling, scenario testing and budget forecasting to help us make sure we keep our network in good condition.

The more data we have - and the more ways we have to use it - the better our decisions can be. We can act more efficiently and provide better value to Surrey’s residents, which is especially important right now.

We have worked with Ian Ballantine from the Digital team to build an exciting extension to our data collection capabilities with Internet of Things (IoT). IoT is about devices and applications that collect data remotely and then send it back to be analysed. That analysis can be processed automatically as well, making our work back in the office much more cost effective.

Within the Asset Planning team we worry about highway assets. We need a lot of data to tell us what inventory we’ve got, where things are, what condition they’re in, how much they cost to replace, and when that’s going to need to happen.

We use a lot of IT, geographic information, and database management systems to manage our data. We use them to carry

I’m the policy holder for the winter service at Surrey and we have had early successes in this area. We have 33 frontline gritters and four salt barns around the county ready to be deployed to keep roads safe when the temperatures demand it. We rely on accurate data to make sure that effort – and money – isn’t wasted. Working with the Digital team we have added about 40

new temperature sensors to the network. We have 12 traditional weather stations across the county, and we’ve installed all those sensors at a tiny fraction of the cost of installing just one of those.

Another project we’ve worked with the Digital team on around connected technologies is a product called RoadAI by a company called Vaisala. It collects images on the road from mobile phones, be that in cars, bikes or even walking, and then uses image recognition to pull out information about the condition of assets in our network. It performs this task at least twice as efficiently as our traditional surveying, which involved two people driving the network and manually collecting data, with all the time

and human error that entails. Now we need one person and a phone, and they can move faster and drive far further in a day.

An excellent aspect to this work is how we are working in tight collaboration with the Digital team and Vaisala to continually assess this method of data collection against our traditional approach. While it might be a lot quicker, we need to make sure the quality stands up. In a lot of cases, it far exceeds traditional surveys. In other areas, it’s not as good as humans, meaning we understand better how to deploy our people where they’re most needed.

As part of our overall digital transformation, we need to continually improve how we make evidence-based decisions and mitigate risk. Having so much more data to make our decisions, and at such greater depths, is really reassuring as we look to improve the safety of the network and reduce insurance claims over time.

It’s been really useful working with the Digital team - people that have such an understanding of the market, and have such a dynamic way of developing ideas into deliverable things that are actually going to help.

CHANGE

Surrey County Counncil has spent the last three years remoulding every aspect of how it can deliver tangible results with digital agility and innovation. It surged its effort to develop new ways of working during the COVID-19 crisis, and is now on a mission to embed a matured design-thinking methodology throughout the organisation.

Design thinking isn’t new. The UK’s influential Design Council was created by Winston Churchill’s government in 1944 to help motivate the county’s recovery from war. It promoted fresh thinking around innovation and best practice in areas of industrial and product design throughout the rest of the 20th century, before evolving to extend its influence into the services industry and public sector.

In 2004, it launched its now world-renowned Double Diamond design methodology – a simple, neatly defined framework describing how to imagine solutions to

problems and deliver them with end users at the centre. It’s a methodology that Surrey County Council has long understood, but in which it has systematically invested over the last three years as part of its technology strategy, as it seeks the best possible ways to meet the many challenges it faces.

The council’s Digital function now boasts a comprehensive ecosystem of in-house consultants, user researchers, project managers, developers and support staff, all geared-up to apply a design-thinking approach to problems in every service area of the organisation.

The Process of Change

“Design thinking as an approach means putting the customer at the heart of what we’re doing, being data and evidence led, and making sure we’re adopting the

best practices that will lead us to the right solutions,” explains Leigh Whitehouse, the council’s Deputy CEO and Executive Director for Digital.

“Sometimes that involves technology, but sometimes it doesn’t. What’s important is that we find the right solution for whatever the challenge is at the time.”

The council has built expert teams with responsibilities in each of the four distinct phases of the Double Diamond process: Discovery, Design, Develop and Deliver. Collaborating with frontline service staff, they work to identify problems and pain points, draw up and test new solutions, and then deliver and support them to a successful outcome.

“Discovery looks at the problem. What are we trying to solve? Is it an opportunity?

What are your as-is processes? And how does this cross over with other areas in ways we can bring bigger ideas together?” says Joanne Blount, the council’s Digital Programme Manager.

“Once we have defined the problem through discovery, it goes into our Design team. That’s all around taking what we’ve learned in discovery and co-creating solutions that our customers actually want, and that leverage all of the digital capabilities and capacity that we’ve created over the last three to four years.

“And then you’ve got the Delivery team. That’s made up of the programme team –technically building things like automation, chatbots, integrations, enterprise data management, data and insights, the Internet of Things.

“It’s a multitalented team made up of project managers, business analysts, data analysts, solution architects - experts in their fields.”

Discovery

Whatever the problem the council’s Digital team is tasked with solving, it begins with questions. Knowing that a problem or opportunity for improvement exists is one thing, sweeping away siloed thinking or assumptions in order to fully evidence and understand both the causes and effects of the problem is another. The Digital team’s Discovery process exists to paint a finely detailed picture of the issues at hand so that the best possible approach can be taken to solve them.

Bradley Ruddick is a Senior Business Analyst in the Digital team and helps lead its activities during the discovery phase of projects. He defines it as a crucial step in

being able to “unfreeze” the status-quo by stepping back and bringing a 360-degree perspective to problems.

“What we try to do in discovery is take a much broader view in terms of people, process, technology and culture. It’s all about working with services to understand how they can work differently to make life better for themselves and for residents. It’s not all about technology.”

Ruddick explains that on being presented with a problem, the discovery process can involve several different techniques to really understand the context and nuance of the situation, including rounds of interviews with frontline staff, user research and surveys, mapping customer journeys, and blueprinting schematics of service layers. Once the big picture is painted, the discovery team zeroes in on specific opportunities for change to take forward into design.

Ruddicks’s partner in the discovery team, Bryan Smith, says a significant

advantage of the discovery process is that it’s deployed on all problems, regardless of service area, and that serves to expose a raft of new opportunities to rationalise common problems.

“There’s such a wide range of things we look at. We’re working on home-to-school transport with all its budget and environmental considerations. We’re working on Adult Learning, Adult Social Care and the charging reforms. We’ve worked with Fire and Rescue, which is very different to Children’s or the corporate teams,” he says.

“What’s interesting is you learn that while the problems often seem very different, they actually aren’t. When you get down to the hard detail you can re-use your experience and tools to share solutions.

“We’re never the subject matter experts, but we are experts and helping them understand what they need. I think of people doing their jobs as paddling

canoes. We give them that time to get off the boat, stand on the bank and look up the river rather than just always focusing on the waterfall in front of them.”

Design

“When we talk about design, we’re not talking about pushing pixels,” says Jamie Griffiths, Digital Design Team Leader. “What we’re looking at is how do we design experiences.”

Following the discovery process, the design team begins by carrying out further, highly detailed investigations of the specific areas surfaced in discovery. That is followed by rapid prototyping of potential solutions that are brought back to end users for testing.

“We see what ideas might work, andimportantly - what doesn’t. We absolutely celebrate failure, because that’s where we learn really significant things,” he adds.

The design process is resolutely collaborative. Initial solutions are not intended to be final, but rather a set of hypotheses carefully balanced to allow constant refinement with stakeholders. In that moment the most creative input can be found, drawn from the well of experience of those with whom the design team is collaborating.

The next steps involve creating sketched out solutions in an alpha form, and then to a beta form where early versions of solutions are deployed into the real world to be tested and validated as adding real value. Only at that point will the next phase – Delivery – begin.

Griffiths adds: “User research is fundamental to our human-centred design approach. When we design solutions without that, both we and our customers make lots of assumptions and make lots of mistakes.

“We collaborate every step of the way, getting as deep under the skin of the problem as we can, and it’s there that we get past the ‘it’s always been like this’ assumptions and find the eureka moments. Continuous validation of what we’re doing makes sure that what we’re designing are the right things – if it doesn’t work, it allows us to find ways to make it work before it’s too late.”

Development & Delivery

The business end of the Digital team’s process comes when all the groundwork laid in the discovery and design phases is unleashed for the benefit of end users, be they internal stakeholders or residents.

The Development & Delivery phase involves a wide array of experts and technicians who work to develop the solutions blueprinted in design into full solutions for the benefit of council stakeholders

What’s important is that we find the right solution for whatever the challenge is at the time”

Leigh Whitehouse

and residents. The council’s three project managers in the development & delivery space each work with separate sub-teams to focus on one project at a time.

“This is the moment we start to realise the benefits of our process. It may be a large service redesign, or perhaps automations, chatbots, dashboards and insights. Whatever we take forward heads into a programme team to deliver the technology, process change, culture change – all the things that will support the design we’ve created to make sure it succeeds,” explains Blount.

It is not, adds Project Manager Glen Bolton, a fire-and-forget exercise in the way it perhaps may have once felt.

“We work in a scrum framework as part of an Agile environment, working on complex products in complex environments. We work through two-week sprints, delivering something every time, gathering feedback and then we go again until we deliver something that’s actually of value,” he says.

Bolton has led Robotic Process Automation (RPA) projects in this way with notable success, leveraging a combination of fast-turnaround Agile working practices and the PRINCE2 project management framework that’s common to the Development & Delivery team. By working in this way the Digital team have been able to take an automation project from Discovery to go-live within as little as four weeks.

Bolton points to work delivered in the area of deaths registrations, where automations

delivered by the Digital team are now processing 12,000 death certificates a year, returning hundreds of hours to staff to use in much better ways.

Another example is work done with Childrens Social Care to automate the assessment and scoring of questionnaires from foster carers – critical information, submitted quarterly, that can flag the need for interventions. The development and delivery of these automations has dramatically improved the council’s ability to support vulnerable children in a timely manner.

Bolton says the Development & Delivery process is a hugely rewarding phase of the overall Digital process. While he is focused on RPA, he knows that Digital’s place in the wider IT & Digital ecosystem means an always-on approach to collaboration that’s laser focused on the problem, not the technology.

“We’re all about RPA, but at the same time we know that there are other solutions out there – we always keep an open mind. There might be other factors or other parts of IT&D – other technologies – that can help,” he says.

“But once we’ve delivered and you actually see it working - you know the work’s that’s gone in through Discovery and analysis, the Design phase - and then you see it actually delivering for the service, that’s really great to see. You know you’ve saved the council so much time that they can now spend on working more closely with residents.”

VOICE-ACTIVATED HEALTHCARE

AI and natural-language processing present a dramatic opportunity for stretched healthcare systems to transform their clinical day-to-day. 3M Health Information Systems’

M*Modal platform is busy doing exactly that.

AUTHOR: Ben East

The sheer weight of numbers is staggering. More than seven million people across England are waiting for NHS treatment, with nearly 400,000 of these waiting for over a year. Average waiting times are over three months. When patients do see a clinician, they’re likely to encounter someone grappling with incredible demand, doing their very best for their patients, but having to work long hours just to make a dent in the administration of their caseload.

No wonder, then, that a SKY News analysis of NHS data revealed it lost 10,000 staff due to work-life balance issues last year alone - with work-related stress, sickness and burnout contributing to a worrying 175,000 working days lost to the NHS… in one month.

Such pressures are replicated in health services across the world. In the United States, 3M Health Information Systems (3M HIS) asked physicians what their issues were and found 60 percent felt bureaucratic tasks contributed to burnout, with nearly half of their working days spent managing Electronic Health Records (EHR) and other administrative tasks. Tellingly, only 27 percent of their total time was spent on direct, clinical, face-to face time with patients.

It might sound counterintuitive, but for 3M HIS, the answer to humanising the whole healthcare process is technology.

“As we try and address these challenges, the key enabler is digital transformation,” says Erik Van Hoeymissen, Vice President, Global Business Development at 3M HIS. “Digital transformation has the potential to make healthcare more proactive, decentralised, personalised and value based.”

3M HIS’s ethos behind its work is centred on developing tools that create “time to care”. The idea is to create platforms and software that allow healthcare professionals to concentrate on what they’re good at - looking after people. 3M’s M*Modal platform has

already begun to have a huge impact on healthcare systems across the world.

Using conversational AI and ambient listening, the real-time speech recognition engine allows physicians of any medical speciality to conversationally create, review, edit and sign clinical notes directly into the patient’s EHR, automating their clinical documentation.

Meanwhile, 3M M*Modal’s computer-assisted physician documentation (CAPD) engine analyses and monitors the clinical narrative, nudging medical professionals for additional information and even suggesting courses of action

to improve the quality of care and record keeping.

“Rather than using a keyboard and a mouse, clinicians can use their voice to create medical documentation, which is a lot faster and more efficient. Typically, a user can speak three times as fast as they can type,” says Van Hoeymissen. “That’s great because 3M M*Modal can, through real-time natural language understanding, interpret the meaning of the words.

“But I think more importantly, it changes the whole patient experience. All of a sudden, the doctor doesn’t necessarily have to look at the screen

anymore, they can fully focus on that conversation with the patient, which allows doctors to be more empathetic, have a deeper conversation, or gain real understanding of what’s going on with the patient.”

Of course, doctors using dictated notes is not in itself new. Alec PriceForbes is a consultant rheumatologist and Chief Clinical Informatics Officer for Coventry and Warwickshire Health and Care Partnership ICS. He remembers beginning his clinical journey unspooling analogue tapes of his correspondence, which would then get dictated. He asked for a digital dictaphone, and “the rest is history,” he smiles.

“The biggest bugbear for me as a clinician is documenting and dictating. It’s something I’ve never liked, despite

the fact that my whole digital transformation journey started with a dictaphone,” he admits.

“With 3M M*Modal, no letter I’ve produced after consulting with a patient - virtually, or face to face - has needed transcription. And, historically, they’d have been outsourced; I would dictate, I wouldn’t be able to see what I had dictated, it would go off to somewhere in the world to be transcribed, and then would come back as an electronic document, be matched up with the patient demographics, and then presented to me to verify.

“That was all a paper process, by the way. Now, I can see a patient, I can dictate my letter using the 3M M*Modal platform, and the voice recognition software means I can read what I’m

In creating time to care - in automating the documenting process in a much smarter way, in prioritising healthcare analytics and population health management - we know that we can significantly shift the needle when it comes to the way we manage our health”

Erik van Hoeymissen Vice President, Global Business Development at 3M Health Information Systems

dictating at the same time and make any corrections if required. And I can verify and send that in real-time to the patient, their GP, or any other clinician that’s required. And I can do that from anywhere in the world.”

Price-Forbes calls this a reimagination of the whole healthcare process, using voice to automate interactions with the EHR system. And the reason M*Modal is so interesting for people like him is that its back end is clinically-focused. While natural-language processing applications are becoming increasingly common, the requirements of such systems in a healthcare context are an order of magnitude more complex.

“You might get, say, an Alexa-style voice recognition system, but does it know how to embed its technology into the workflow of a clinician? Can it group clinical data to come up with meaningful diagnostics and analyse risk?” says Van Hoeymissen.

“In order to train these algorithms that will understand both the voice of the doctor, but also understand the meaning of what is dictated, there’s a lot of data you need to train the system with. You need a cloud-based solution to do this, and we’ve now accumulated 20 years of medical knowledge and clinical expertise to deliver this system.”

“You need to know how to make this work in the day-to-day life of clinicians

without changing the workflow they are familiar with - win their hearts and minds - so they can be confident that they can automate. That’s definitely our USP.”

3M HIS has set about its task of creating a system laser-focused on the needs of clinicians by employing them directly to help develop 3M M*Modal. Van Hoeymissen admits there’s no point in digitally transforming anything if you’re just adding more processes into the day; the story of 3M M*Modal is not just about leading-edge natural-language processing in a clinical context,

it’s about ensuring it adds the measurable “time to care” that is so important to 3M HIS’s vision.

That means 3M HIS actively partners with big EHR vendors such as Epic, Cerner, System C and Meditech - as well as more bespoke solutions - to smooth integration with existing systems rather than bolting on yet another management platform. With customers, too, 3M HIS will proactively map out how clinical documentation workflows are organised, identify choke points, and use automations to unblock them.

Alec Price-Forbes Consultant Rheumatologist and Chief Clinical Informatics Officer across Coventry and Warwickshire

These are hugely powerful tools that I think are game changers for the health and care system”

“Then, when a solution works, we scale it up,” says Van Hoeymissen. And part of the battle for hearts and minds is reassuring people that such automations aren’t there to threaten the jobs of those who administer existing documentation processes.

“I see 3M’s toolkit supporting health and care providers by repurposing staff who are doing tasks like transcription,” says Price-Forbes. “Medical secretaries have a pivotal role in being patient navigators. My secretary does an amazing job in helping patients work out what needs to happen next. There’s always been this concern around the use of these technologies, that they would somehow replace a secretary. I see it very differently. It’s not about losing people, it’s about changing their job profile so they can really support patients going forward.”

M*Modal is just the beginning for what 3M HIS aims to achieve with voicebased AI and automation in healthcare. Van Hoeymissen talks of the ambient technology used to capture clinicians’ notes also being used in the future to input patients’ own understanding of their conditions onto their EHR.

“Imagine,” adds Price-Forbes, “if a patient can also capture in real-time what problem they are experiencing and flow it into their patient record. By the time their clinician sees them, there’s

insight and data in there, which is far more powerful and credible.

“If you actually stop and think about it, at the moment we have someone with a health or care problem which builds up over a period of days, weeks, months, often years. They’ll then come along to an appointment and try and summarise everything that has happened to them in one go. With ambient listening technology, you’d already have an idea of what was going on. These are hugely powerful tools that I think are game changers for the health and care system.”

3M M*Modal’s technology can be applied to the structured data it captures to automate clinical coding, opening altogether new opportunities for data analysis. 3M HIS already provides population health management software, enabling better informed policy decisions.

“From our population health management solutions, we know that a large majority of the healthcare budget is spent on managing patients with chronic conditions,” says Van Hoeymissen.

“Imagine if you could prevent patients from becoming sick, or if you could be much better at managing chronic conditions in a way that they don’t exacerbate. That’s going to significantly reduce the overall costs.

“We need to have much more emphasis on proactive prevention - and technologies like ours can use AI and machine learning algorithms to monitor or even predict conditions before patients even get symptoms.”

Ultimately Van Hoeymissen’s dream is that an empathetic conversation between a doctor and patient, powered by technology in the background, means healthcare systems will be taking care of the wellbeing of their patients, rather than simply treating them when they’re sick.

So, can technologies like 3M M*Modal really make us healthier?

“Well, the NHS definitely has the potential to leverage its data at scale, because it’s one national health system,” thinks

Van Hoeymissen. “And if you enable patients to navigate the care system in a much simpler, easier way that is catered to their needs, then it empowers them to better manage their own healthcare.

“In creating time to care - in automating the documenting process in a much smarter way, in prioritising healthcare analytics and population health management - we know that we can significantly shift the needle when it comes to the way we manage our health.”

INNOVATING CANCER RESEARCH IN THE CLOUD

Digitally transformed, Cancer Research UK has unleashed a gamechanging clinical-trial matchmaking service in the AWS Cloud.

AUTHOR: Ben East

The notion of ‘beating’ cancer is, without doubt, one of the most emotive and important talking points in healthcare. The good news is that while most families will in some way encounter the disease during their lives, the march of scientific research means the survival rate for people with cancer in the UK has doubled in the past 40 years. Indeed, two in four people now survive their disease for ten years or more.

In part, that’s thanks to the fundraising and research strategies implemented by organisations such as Cancer Research UK, the world’s largest independent cancer research organisation whose

pioneering work can be traced over 120 years. A key pillar of its mission is to ensure that cancer treatments are more effective, kinder, and more targeted, so people can lead better, more fulfilling lives. It works against that objective via its 40,000 volunteers, its own research institutes, and in partnership with universities and government across the country.

But for all the incredible work Cancer Research UK does –- and for all the willingness of patients to take part - actually testing ground-breaking new treatments on the patients who need them the most has become a huge issue.

“It’s a really significant problem,” admits Siru Sengul, Senior Product Manager -

Science at Cancer Research UK. “About 80 percent of research fails because of inadequate enrolment of patients to trials. Clinicians - who are often still the gatekeepers to these trials - struggle to find the right trials in the first place; the information is often incomplete, unstructured, and not up to date.”

And when patients and their doctors do happen across a potentially good trial treatment, the registries in which they sit are not fit for purpose in terms of patient matching.

It was obvious to Cancer Research UK, back in 2018 when this issue was first discussed with clinical leads, that better administration alone wouldn’t necessarily loosen this blockage in carrying out cutting-edge research. A technological solution was required.

About 80 percent of research fails because of inadequate enrolment of patients to trials”

Siru Sengul Senior Product ManagerScience, Cancer Research UK

Sengul was part of a team tasked with developing a cloud-based tool that could make finding trials easier and faster for under-pressure clinicians and their patients.

Enter the Experimental Cancer Trial Finder (ECTF). It’s possibly too simplistic to liken ECTF to a dating app, but to get a tech product into the NHS and used effectively, it had to work in a similarly intuitive way. It needed to use data to instantaneously connect clinicians with the up-to-date information they needed.

“Initially, we were aiming for 50 clinicians to use it across the whole of the UK,” says Sengul. “But through the success of

the pilot, we had 200 NHS users. We saw a 55 percent increase in the speed, ease and feasibility of matching patients to clinical trials. And 70 percent of our users had either received or referred a patient to a trial. These are patients that would not have had any other options for their cancer treatment without this tool.

“So that’s quite amazing.”

Amazing, in this context, feels like an understatement - and the continued rollout to any clinician working in the NHS means ECTF is likely to be a genuine gamechanger for cancer patients seeking different options for their treatment after they’ve gone through the standard therapies.

It’s also proof positive of a wider digital transformation taking place at Cancer Research UK. The process is not only helping the charity meet its fundraising challenges and the expectations of those who rely on it for support, but is fostering an environment where solutions developed by its engineers can have a genuine impact on cancer care.

“We’ve had several challenges to address over the past seven to eight years,” says Pete Ainsworth, Cancer Research UK’s Head of Platform Engineering.

“We’d built products around specific charity-first objectives; taking online donations, event management, and so on. It suited us at the time because it allowed

With the Experimental Cancer Trial Finder, we spotted a gap in that market and were able to respond quickly, due to the engineering foundations we had. We rapidly affected a change”

Pete Ainsworth Head of Platform Engineering, Cancer Research UK

us to move at pace, but then it became much harder - because of the different languages used - to share knowledge and innovations across products.”

So Cancer Research UK set about implementing an engineering strategy that would empower teams to develop and deliver software at speed that could adopt common frameworks and tools, using off-the-shelf products where necessary and only custom engineering where there was real value for the charity.

It’s at that point, says Ainsworth, where moving to a more cloud-native approach

became so useful, gluing all its solutions together with existing market products to produce compelling (and ultimately useful) applications.

“Take the Experimental Cancer Trial Finder for example. We spotted a gap in that market and were able to respond quickly, due to the engineering foundations we had. We rapidly affected a change,” adds Ainsworth.

The other reason Cancer Research UK could implement ECTF so quickly was thanks to its partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS). For more than

15 years, AWS has been significantly involved in supporting charities and nonprofits in their digital transformations, helping them take advantage of the benefits of cloud technology and accelerate their impact and purpose.

“Because we can automate so much of the back end, and so much of the technology, that really allows nonprofits to spend more time on their mission

and do more of their human work,” says Allyson Fryhoff, Managing Director Nonprofit & Nonprofit Health at AWS.

“Cancer Research UK is such a great example of laying a foundation for cloud computing, looking at where their IT resources are being spent and using them more effectively and efficiently.”

Such efficiencies are critical for a charity such as Cancer Research UK.

Ainsworth says that being funded almost entirely by the generosity of the public means there is a huge obligation to spend the money it receives wisely.

“We have 650 shops across the country, so we’re a full retail business. We have drug discovery labs, a research function, we’re an events and fundraising business, too. There’s no way we can’t invest in technology to make all

this work, but we need to make sure we get the absolute best value out of the money we spend on it.”

What AWS offers is a way in which nonprofits can quickly spin-up resources as they need them, using them only as they’re consumed, and then deploy those resources and applications anywhere in the world within minutes. Trying to develop and roll out a system such as

PODCAST

Cancer Research UK (Cancer Research UK) has launched a groundbreaking, cloud-based clinical trial finder that has already made a critical, live-saving difference to patients in the UK. Its impact on the efficacy and pace of clinical research could be just as profound.

It’s part of a continuing digital transformation journey that has seen the charity shift its technical infrastructure to the AWS cloud, and embrace a culture of agile innovation.

Tech for Good joined AWS’s Managing Director for Nonprofit and Nonprofit Health and the people behind Cancer Research UK’s game-changing platform at the charity’s London HQ to find out more.

Pete

Siru Sengul - Senior Product Manager - Science, Cancer Research UK

Allyson Fryhoff - Managing Director Nonprofit & Nonprofit Health, AWS

Listen on

ECTF outside of the cloud, siloed in one department, would have been a far more time-consuming and costly process.

“When you put some of those hardearned funds towards technology and technology platforms, you’ll see a tremendous return on investment with limited resources. With cloud computing, we see organizations of all sizes, not just nonprofits, saving between 30 to 40 percent in technology costs,” adds Fryhoff.

It’s fascinating, too, that Fryhoff and Ainsworth both mention skills increases as a welcome by-product of its cloudbased digital transformation. The automation and management of more

administrative tasks actually provides added bandwidth for innovation and creative problem solving.

“Having a skilled workforce that understands technology, the cloud and rapid application development is really important,” says Fryhoff. “Which is why at AWS we also put a number of programmes together to help nonprofits upskill their employees.”

These programmes complement others, including AWS TechAction in the US, which supports nonprofits in the country to build fundraising and donor engagements solutions. It has also directly funded nonprofits in the US via its IMAGINE Grants - since its inception

Romily Broad – Tech For Good

Ainsworth - Head of Platform Engineering, Cancer Research UK

in 2018, the company has awarded more than $6mn in unrestricted funds, AWS computing credits, and training support to 66 nonprofit organisations. On March 14 2023, the IMAGINE: Nonprofit conference in Washington, DC gathered leaders from across the sector to discuss the impact of technology on their missions, with sessions and keynotes set to be made available to stream.

Upskilling its workforce is a significant idea when it comes to recruitment into a charity, too.

“On simple wages terms, we can’t compete with commercial organisations in the technology industry,” admits Ainsworth. “But because we’re aiming to take advantage of the latest technologies in every area possible, we’re definitely an innovative and forwardthinking place to work.”

And a place where, if one person gains access to a cancer trial that works for them, you will have made a real difference. “You do get very passionate as well as talented people here,” agrees Sengul. “When you bring the right people together, it’s not so much about the actual technology tool as much as what you want it to do and the impact it can have.

“With the Experimental Cancer Trial Finder, involved with us is the wider network of clinicians, nurses and, of course, patients. That’s what charities can do, bring people together.”

Cancer Research UK is such a great example of laying a foundation for cloud computing, looking at where their IT resources are being spent and using them more effectively and efficiently”

Allyson Fryhoff

Managing Director Nonprofit & Nonprofit Health at AWS

SENSING THE FUTURE SUSTAINABLE IoT

The Internet of Things is here and it’s changing the world. Making it environmentally sustainable is vital. Semtech’s low power, long range LoRa networking platform is a very large part of the solution. Tech For Good speaks to President and CEO Mohan Maheswaran.

AUTHOR: Ben East

Exponents of the Internet of Things (IoT) have long touted its potential to transform the way we live and work. Today, the seeds they have sown are bearing meaningful fruit. Standards have been established and an increasingly vast network of connected devices is ubiquitising the collection, processing, analysis and exploitation of real-time data. From homes and factories to farms and hospitals, the advent of edge computing, WiFi 6 and 5G connectivity is supercharging the engine of IoT’s progress.

But with all that data comes an insatiable thirst for the energy to power it, be that end devices or the data centres that serve them. While IoT offers the prospect of driving much greater efficiency into the workings of industry, it must be powered sustainably so as not to undercut its environmental and societal benefits.

“Sustainable IoT is a massive opportunity for the world,” says Semtech CEO and President Mohan Maheswaran – a man who knows more about it than most.

Maheswaran has been president and CEO of Semtech for 17 years, a company that has spent the last decade investing in the growth of its proprietary technology, LoRa – the now-de facto wireless platform underpinning much of the Internet of Things world. The company creates the LoRa chipsets that now sit at the heart of hundreds of millions of devices, all running on the LoRaWAN networking protocol.

Semtech has been developing LoRa technology since 2012. The name LoRa is derived from ‘long range’ - its devices leverage spread-spectrum radio communication techniques to transmit information wirelessly over a typical range of up to

16km, while using tiny amounts of energy. Transmission distances can be much higher, though. Data sent from a small sensor attached to a high-altitude weather balloon travelled 832km in 2020, before another was bounced off the moon the following year.

A non-profit organisation, set up in 2015, called the LoRa Alliance functions to maintain the open LoRaWAN standard and grow its adoption, and runs a certification and compliance programme to ensure interoperability. It now boasts more than 500 members, including many of the largest technology and telecommunications companies in the world.

Maheswaran says the ultra-low-power, long-range capabilities of the LoRa platform are essential to ensuring our journey to a data-driven world featuring trillions of talkative sensors is a sustainable one.

“That’s got to be the end game. When every city, every enterprise, every building is using sustainable IoT to make smart choices about their energy and resource use,” he says.

“Organisations, even whole cities, have put in sensor technology and loads of electronics without ever thinking about their power budgets, and they’re probably already energy constrained anyway. I have examples of cities that have had power outages because of this. So, you actually have to be smart about smart technology. And that’s where Semtech can play a huge part.”

There are just amazing use cases out there that I couldn’t have even imagined”

Mohan Maheswaran

While Semtech’s LoRa technology is inherently low-power, enabling a ‘fit-andforget’ approach to deploying low-cost devices whose battery lives are long enough to sustain them, an ace up LoRa’s sleeve is its ability to turn itself off when not needed. Other forms of wide-area networking might be always on, needing to be connected to a power source and nearby WiFi hubs.

“The beauty of LoRa is that the sensors essentially go to sleep; they don’t try to communicate until something happens,” says Maheswaran. “So maybe the temperature goes up in an environment where

it needs to be low, in food production or storage for example. At that point the sensor wakes up and talks to the network via an unlicensed spectrum.

“Where I live in California, we have big issues with drought. One leak and you’re just wasting water. With sensors, you can add intelligence at the edge or pass that data into the Cloud ready to be acted upon. The point with LoRa is that you can proliferate low-power sensors cheaply and sustainably - the battery doesn’t have to be changed for ten years.”

Originally from Luton in the UK, Maheswaran’s long tenure in the

technology space – and now at the helm of a company with a 60-year track record of its own - has exposed him to a lot of potentially transformational tech and LoRa really excites him.

“It really is an ecosystem of companies and players out there now,” he says. “Cloud companies like Microsoft and Amazon, systems companies like Cisco and IBM, sensor companies like Schneider and Honeywell… they’re all using LoRa. The technology was developed and is managed by Semtech, but we are very much proliferating around the world, making the concept of sustainable IoT a reality.”

The sustainability message is key to LoRa - not just in terms of the low power it uses but the capability it gives cities, businesses and organisations to operate in a more sustainable way. Maheswaran cites its work in India, where it partnered with a company called CITiLIGHT to keep street

lights connected, monitored and used efficiently in real time - rather than to a set schedule. Automating streetlights in this way has saved 1.29 billion kWh of energy so far - the equivalent of $260 million, or 424,000 tonnes of carbon emissions.

“Power outages are a way of life in some Indian cities,” he explains. “They just carry on and hope they come back. But the key with LoRa and sustainable IoT is that you can add smart technology that not only runs the system more efficiently but does it in a way that doesn’t add a huge energy budget to the city. That’s critical.”

Such work in smart cities is proliferating all the time, but Semtech initially proved its worth in the countryside, installing sensors to help with irrigation systems and soil monitoring. Maheswaran explains that most irrigation still takes place on a schedule-based system, whether the land needs it or not, but LoRa-enabled devices offer

real-time insight into the health of crops and moisture monitoring. A project in India resulted in a reduction of farm water and electricity use by 26 per cent - and other installations on commercial farms have achieved a 50 per cent water reduction.

“Smart agriculture has been one of the predominant uses of LoRa,” he admits, “mainly because if you have millions of these sensors on the farm or in the soil, you want them to connect over quite a long range - you don’t want to have gateway infrastructure everywhere.”

The agriculture use case extends to cows. A collaboration with an Australian

company saw cattle GPS-tracked using LoRa over a huge area, not just to see where they were but to provide operational oversight into their water usage, where electricity needed to be used in fencing, and so on.

And cows are just one form of smart asset tracking, another field in which LoRa has already made a significant impact. Whether it’s pinpointing a wheelchair in a hospital, a shopping trolley in a mall or, on a wider scale, pallets of goods throughout a supply chain, if they’re tagged with a Semtech LoRa Edge chip, a client can immediately see where they are on a LoRa Cloud Locator. LoRa Edge adds satellite-scanning geolocation and WiFi on the same chip as LoRa to provide a comprehensive tracking package for logistics use cases.

“It’s just a perfect use case for LoRa,” adds Maheswaran. “The next interesting possibility for that technology is to make it solar powered.

“If I was going to look forward ten years from now, there’ll be a proliferation of energy-harvesting sensors that don’t need batteries to be replaced at all; they can recharge and continue connecting to the network using LoRa.”

LoRa can have a real effect much closer to home. Maheswaran didn’t initially think the LoRa platform would be that beneficial for smart buildings or smart homes. The clue is in the name; it’s designed for use at long range rather than short ranges inside

buildings. But the more people began to use smart technology in their daily lives, the more it became clear that LoRa could actually be a solution.

“There is so much waste today; lights left on, energy left on, air conditioning left on, heating left on. Even water taps left on. You can of course use WiFi or Bluetooth to connect your smart devices up, but the range is so short you often need repeaters everywhere. They’re also expensive

technologies to use. But with LoRa I can have one gateway that connects everything. Even a security camera; video streaming images is high bandwidth, but in that case LoRa plays a different role: it acts as the control panel, telling the camera to wake up and send the data when it detects motion. That’s why I feel LoRa is going to be used everywhere, eventually.”

Sustainability is clearly the key driving force for Semtech and LoRa - but it’s

Sustainable IoT is a massive opportunity for the world”

interesting that from those initial aims other uses and benefits have revealed themselves as the technology has matured. LoRaenabled devices have become increasingly important in manufacturing environments as a means by which efficiencies can be made.

“The sensors are essentially providing any manufacturing or industrial

environment with intelligence through data, which means you can then start predictive maintenance,” explains Maheswaran.

“So a sensor tells you there’s something inefficient going on with your gas supply. You want to be able to shut that down and fix the issue before there’s a big gas leak or an explosion. Same thing with a machine

in manufacturing - you want to be able to see that something isn’t working efficiently and predict that something is wearing out before it actually fails.

“You could save billions of dollars across a company by being clever with your low-power sensors - and that efficiency is linked to sustainability - as energy

availability comes down, finding these efficiencies will become vitally important.”

Smart metering has become one of the biggest areas of interest for LoRa devices. Many domestic consumers are all too familiar with smart meters ticking away reminding them just how expensive their energy has become. The irony is those

meters need to be continuously powered, connected to always-on WiFi. It needn’t be the case with LoRa, while utility companies themselves can affordably arrange hundreds of thousands of low-cost, battery-operated sensors connected over long distances and harsh environments to optimise billing systems and provide insight into supply and demand.

The value of LoRa is clear, and Semtech is constantly building out new features

to expand its capabilities. The use of Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum techniques now allow for greater bandwidth and a larger number of connected devices, as well as enabling LoRa devices to communicate with satellites in orbit.

In 2023, Semtech completed the acquisition of Sierra Wireless, which brought together the ultra-low power benefits of LoRa with the higher bandwidth capabilities of Sierra’s cellular Internet of Things.

“There are just amazing use cases out there that I couldn’t have even imagined,” says Maheswaran. “Especially with our acquisition of Sierra, there’s the opportunity for customers to dream ‘Hey, what if I could do this with Semtech?’ And that’s really what Semtech is all about, innovating together to create technology platforms for sustainability.”

Maheswaran talks about leaving a better world, and though billion-dollar acquisitions like that of Sierra Wireless don’t happen without a focussed business objective, Semtech applies its ‘Smarter Planet’ message to all its activities.

“When you talk about IoT, sustainability and Smarter Planet, you’d hope that everybody has an interest in that,” he says. “I think the reality is that much of the world’s deployment of technology is driven by very big companies talking a lot about sustainability, but not necessarily putting it into action. But there is pressure on them now, and they are engaging with LoRa.

“With digital transformation, the world will change. It will improve. I’m excited for my grandchildren and the positive impact these billions of sensors can have on their world. It’s the reason I do this.”

Women in Tech

For more than 40 years, March has signified Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day. It’s an opportunity to reflect on both the progress we have made and work that still needs to be done. As we face a era of unprecedented technology-driven change in the way we all live and work, furthering the cause of women in tech has never been more important.

WOMEN IN TECH MISSION CRITICAL

Maxine Benson MBE, cofounder of the international women-in-business network everywoman, on why advancing female leadership in the technology industry is not a ‘nice-to-have’.

AUTHOR: Maxine Benson

The technology industry has made great steps in terms of gender diversity; an increase in women and those in senior leadership roles, more visibility of successful female role models, and the rapid growth of initiatives to encourage more young girls into STEM subjects. However, the $1 trillion and rapidly growing industry is facing a recruitment crisis and needs to address its diversity and inclusion as a social and economic imperative to drive and allow for sustainable future growth.

Currently only 24% of people working in STEM in the UK are women. While this is expected to increase marginally to 29% by 2030, women still only account

for 10% of leadership roles in the industry1. And for those women forging careers in tech, they face a 2.8% gender pay gap2. It is estimated that to achieve gender parity in the UK technology sector, one million women need to be hired and that this shift would benefit the economy by £2.6bn3, and based on current trends, it would take 22 years (until 2044) for the same number of women to be starting STEM apprenticeships as men, according to new analysis by the Labour Party conducted as part of National Apprenticeship Week.

Addressing this gender gap is why the everywoman in Technology Awards were originally established in 2010.

The ongoing requirement to attract and advance more women in this industry has never been more urgent. The past 14 years has produced so many stories that demonstrate the impact this programme has in achieving this goal. These awards showcase the diverse, fulfilling, and exemplary careers that women can have in technology and how they really can make a difference to people’s lives.

This year’s 2023 FDM everywoman in Technology awards celebrated the tech industry’s most exceptional talent and recognised all stages of the career journey from apprentices to C-Suite, creating role models to inspire the next generation from the UK and beyond.

An area within the technology industry that is key for growth and cut from the same cloth as diversity, is sustainability. Terms such as “green tech” and “clean tech” have emerged in recent years and the positive impact the tech industry can have on us all is clear in even day-to-day solutions like smart homes. In 2021 we launched a new awards category, Tech For Good, which recognises a woman who is driving forward an initiative that uses tech for good – whether as part of a social enterprise, diversity and inclusion, a focus on sustainability or any other area of impact.

With the necessary global drive for not only sustainability, but within a wider umbrella of ESG, it is clear just how

entwined gender equality (social) and sustainability (environmental) are to ensure responsible, successful, competitive, and inclusive businesses. The marriage of gender equality and sustainability even gives a competitive edge in talent retention. Research found that 60% of UK job hunters research a potential employer’s sustainability commitments before accepting a position, while nearly 2 in 5 say they have rejected a job because it did not align with their values in terms of social and environmental impact, and women are more swayed by a company’s values.

A 2022 Deloitte study showed that, while society and environmental impact

along with diverse and inclusive cultures may not always be the top of the priority list when choosing a job, these continue to be critical issues in terms of retention. Those who are satisfied with their employer’s societal and environmental impact, and their efforts to create a diverse and inclusive culture, are more likely to want to stay with their employer for more than five years.

This year’s Tech For Good Award category is sponsored by RS Group and Adele Baker, New Ventures Development Director at RS Group, has said that “RS Group is a global engineering and technology led business that advocates for equality, diversity and gender balance. Our partnership with everywoman is at the heart of our belief in championing education, innovation, empowering people, and doing business responsibly.”

To keep moving the needle on gender equality and its role alongside wider ESG and sustainability goals, representation is key. It has been inspirational to hear the stories and achievements of women overcoming the challenges of operating in a male-dominated industry, while simultaneously making a positive impact on the world. We are thrilled to shine a spotlight on this year’s Tech For Good category finalists, believing they will have a positive impact in encouraging future generations of women into technology careers.

KONSTATINA BETHANI Founder & CEO at Tenebra Studios, from Athens

Tenebra Studios is an independent video game and digital interactive software development company with high-profile partners globally in the public and private sectors. Konstatina is a game development professor, researcher, mentor and organiser of several technology events in Greece. Through her own initiative and funds, Tenebra Studios has created educational applications for refugees and has released free educational games that enable children to familiarise themselves with technology.

CHRISTIANE DEMGENSKI

Chief Product Officer at Awina, from Zurich

Awina is a Swiss fintech start-up serving families with young children that launched in 2021 with Switzerland’s first day-care financing solution. A dual French and German citizen, Christiane holds an M.A. in International Relations from Sciences Po in Paris and spent five years building digital banking products at Switzerland’s largest bank before joining Awina. She has a baby daughter, is currently studying her seventh language, and volunteers as a firefighter.

BONNIE MOLINS

Inclusive Design Principal at Kainos, from London

Bonnie has committed her career to producing tech that improves the lives of diverse people, working across charity, commercial, healthcare and public sectors. At Kainos, she is an ethical tech leader and a powerhouse of digital inclusion, leading the delivery of cutting-edge inclusive design for services used by millions every day. Bonnie is passionate about creating a fairer world through technology. She demonstrates this by acting as a mentor to inspire and guide the next generation of women, and by driving digital innovation to create equitable access and outcomes for all.

HELEN ROLAND

Global Forensic Accountant in Legal and Commercial Services at Accenture, from Dublin

As well as being a qualified accountant, Helen holds a higher diploma in Computer Science. Helen also plays an active role in Inclusion and Diversity programmes at Accenture. Helen led the partnership with Global Tech Advocates (GTA) Black Women in Tech, specifically supporting the publication of their book ‘Voices in the Shadow’ I and II. The book features 51 stories of black women who impacted the tech industry and inspires future generations of black female talent to pursue a career in tech.

Emma has been with the multi-award-winning videogame studio Creative Assembly for almost 14 years, seeing it grow to over 800 people strong. Emma heads up the studio’s global recruitment, as well as the award-winning education and social responsibility program, the Legacy Project, which she founded in 2014. The Legacy Project aims to break down existing educational barriers and give people from all backgrounds the skills and information to become the game-development talent of tomorrow. This has led to key partnerships to drive forward the quality of games education in the UK, including with BAFTA, IntoGames, Women in Games, Pixelles, Ukie, Digital Schoolhouse, Teesside University and the East London Academy of Music and Arts (ELAM).

EMMA SMITH

Director of Talent & Social Impact at Creative Assembly, from West Sussex

JANE GOVINDSAMY

Executive PA to the General Manager at Lenovo South Africa, CSI Champion and Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) administrator, from Johannesburg

Jane started at Lenovo four and half years ago and has evolved with new skills and applying them to new responsibilities. The role of BEE administrator strategically coincides with CSI projects that Lenovo South Africa successfully delivers. Jane is responsible for the budget, planning and execution of set objectives. She enjoys working with internal and external stakeholders in ensuring beneficiaries are empowered. Jane also successfully leads the compliancy aspect of all the projects.

To view a complete list of the 2023 FDM everywoman in Technology Awards finalists and winners, click here.

STATE OF THE NATIONInternational Women’s Day

International Women’s Day, on 8 March every year, presents the opportunity to celebrate women’s accomplishments. It is also an annual reminder of just how far we still have to go: just 26 percent of the tech workforce is female. Nineteen female tech leaders offer their bitesize opinions.

AUTHOR: Tech For Good

Building Inclusivity

Jo Matkin, CEO, Grayce Amy Springford, Director

“Employers should create an inherently inclusive environment to attract and retain talent, including female workers. We do our best work when we feel empowered and supported in the workplace. Companies need to invest in creating this supportive environment, including embedding a culture of universal empowerment and implementing inclusive policies and practices.”

of Client Relations, Exponential-e

“Organisations also have a bigger role to play in creating the right environment for women. There needs to be a stronger focus on advocating mentors to help female employees progress their careers, and on implementing flexible working policies to help women like me who have childcare responsibilities, to juggle their work life balance with greater ease.”

Saleha Williams, Global Head Analysts & Alliances Software & Platforms Engineering, Cognizant

“Women’s ambitions don’t shrink with age; employers need to enable them the flexibility to realise their full potential. Too often managers judge employees on their availability, meaning individuals that have childcare or care giving responsibilities are frowned upon. This must change and business leaders need to ensure their workforces are assessed based on their performance, not just presentism.”

Eve Maler, Chief Technology Officer, ForgeRock

“One challenge for many female employees right now is striking the right work-life balance; organisations must focus on improving flexibility in this area. Many organisations offer great support groups, but often day-today work gets in the way, preventing people from taking advantage of the support available.”

Najila Aissaoui, Head of HR, Venari Security

“Remote work has opened up a global talent pool and if companies want to make an active difference, they need to look beyond their own borders help educate in areas where the digital divide is greater. This is one of the reasons why we set up our Centre of Excellence in Tunis last year.”

“There is no woman on the face of this earth whose identity is not also impacted by factors including her race and ethnicity, age, religion, sexual orientation, family and background. Have these conversations, and then take targeted and meaningful actions. Only then can inclusion, diversity and equality be truly embedded into a company’s culture.”

“We are starting to see a change in hiring practices to tackle inclusivity and unconscious bias, and improvements are being made to the interview process to consider women who may not have much practical experience by looking at other qualities, such as creative thinking and innovation.”

Pam Maynard, CEO, Avanade

Meng Muk, Director of Engineering, Matillion

Building Community

Poornima Ramaswamy,

Chief Transformation Officer, Qlik

“I’ve been fortunate in my career and life to have a lot of unconscious influencers among my friends and family who helped me pursue a career in technology where I have been part of the push to bring women into tech. Others have not been as lucky. This International Women’s Day, we must all work together to make the digital world work for all, by making access to technology and the tech sector easier for women around the world.”

Fiona Mackin, Public Sector Specialist, Cradlepoint

“Having supporters and contacts is crucial for building a career, and challenges you to explore new areas. For example, I would not be here today if it wasn’t for one of my early mentors who supported me leaving an admin role and move into a completely new sector, sales. This support also helped me push myself out of my comfort zone to continuously learn new skills.”

Hayath Hussein, Chief Operating Officer, Com Laude

“We need to be able to give girls a chance and encourage them by providing the platform to shine. Having women in senior leadership positions can encourage more women into tech roles, which isn’t surprising news. If you don’t see someone like you in a leadership position, then you might think this isn’t your world.”

Caroline Vignollet, SVP Research & Development, Onespan

“While I always present myself as a professional in the workplace, and not a woman, I do believe bringing a feminine approach to a solution, strategy, team building and thinking helps bring a different perspective to the given environment. We need to celebrate differences and ensure we are all learning from each other in order to further innovation and progress.”

Laurie Haley, VP of Strategic Alliances at Veracode

“Accessing industry networks and support from mentors in particular, is key. As a security leader working in a fast-paced tech business with a female CEO, and as a mother of four, I know how important it is to have like-minded people around me that understand the challenges of juggling work and home.”

Creating EducationalOpportunities

Clare Loveridge, Vice President & General

Manager EMEA, Arctic Wolf

“It starts in school, where we need to equip girls with the right skills to excel in STEM careers. Then we need to ensure more female role models are available while increasing the number of women in leadership roles. This will improve the visibility of women in the workplace, while also encouraging more women and girls to consider a career in STEM.”

Abi Catt, Security Services Team Lead at Cyberark

“The key is starting at grassroots level. Careers in STEM should be made accessible starting with school-age girls, through both awareness of career options and access to role models in STEM who have paved the way. STEM careers should not be an intimidating undertaking for women.”

Karen Worstell, Senior Cybersecurity Strategist, VMware

“Many of us can take access to tech for granted in our day to day lives. However, its advantages are still out of reach for some. The industry must come together to ensure the expansion of access to technology and a thorough digital education. We must renew our commitment to all who lack the resources to pursue their tech curiosity.”

Liz Parnell, COO - Private Cloud, Rackspace Technology

“Jobs and careers in all industries and sectors are evolving at the intergalactic pace of technology. For this generation, every job will be a tech job. Specifically for women, this means showing what skills in technology can do for them: illuminating the path, removing barriers, creating genuine excitement for what is possible, and most importantly - building belief in themselves and the value that they bring.”

Mairead O’Connor, Business Unit Managing Director, AND Digital

“Recent AND Digital research revealed 63% of women have not received digital upskilling from their employer, compared to 49% of men. For this to truly change, businesses must remove the stigma around upskilling. We know 40% of women want to improve their digital skills, but don’t feel comfortable bringing it up with their employer.”

Faye Ellis, Principal Cloud Training Architect at Pluralsight

“In addition to technical skills, you also need the ability to understand business requirements, communicate with stakeholders, understand their concerns, and have empathy for the teams around you who have to deliver and support the solution that you recommend.”

UiPath

“We need diverse voices more than ever because the stakes are higher as we mature into the next generation of technology – and ‘why’ questions will be at the core of this. Instead of fighting to attract women away from the social sciences, we need to embrace the social sciences and explicitly incorporate them into technology education and careers.”

Siobhan Ryan, Regional Vice President, Enterprise UKI,

SEE IT TO BE IT EIGHT FEMALE JOURNEYS IN TECH

Behind the rallying cries of International Women’s Day, real stories of fascinating female success in tech abound.

AUTHOR: Romily Broad

Every year, International Women’s Day is a powerful opportunity to focus minds on continuing issues of gender inequity in the workplace, particularly in technology related roles. It gives us an opportunity to sense-check the progress we’re making, celebrate those working hard to engineer change, and renew our commitments to keep going.

However, there are 364 other days in the year during which the stories of women making their mark in tech are really written. Tech For Good asked an international cross-section of successful women-in-tech for a reflection on their own stories, and their advice for those that may follow their example.

Daisy Leak , Director of Production, Magnopus USA

After initially coming to LA to do TV and comedy, YouTube started to become a popular platform. It opened up new opportunities for people to create and consume entertainment and it made me think “wow, maybe there are other ways to influence the entertainment industry.”

I grew up playing video games and my mom was interested in tech throughout my childhood, so I had some early influences that stayed with me and I remember thinking that tech could have a greater impact on the entertainment industry than I had initially considered.

While working on TV shows and creating YouTube content during the day, I got a night shift at Disney working on their games customer support team answering questions from kids. This part-time job became my passion. I came to the realisation that by combining technology and entertainment, it’s possible to transform the very nature of entertainment itself. I went on to spend eight years as a producer at The Walt Disney Company working on social games and interactive.

One thing I’ve noticed as a female coming into a predominantly male industry is that sometimes you need to adapt the way you communicate.

I’m not saying change who you are but learn to communicate effectively with the audiences that dominate the landscape. It’s not about compromising your identity or playing by their rules, it’s about understanding how to communicate your perspective so you are heard.

Gradually the tech space is being filled with different faces, different gender identities, races, ethnicities, etc. It’s better than it was, for sure. But I think there’s still a lot of room to grow and improve. I don’t think I’ve experienced barriers because I don’t see barriers as something that stops me - they are something to navigate on my way to achieving my goals.

As a female in tech and entertainment, you have to be tenacious at all times, you simply cannot afford to be passive. Your

knowledge, your perspective, and your points of view matter and you are the only person that can truly ensure that is the case. I recognise that not all women in tech have had the same experience as me. Many have faced more significant barriers and obstacles than I have due to gender bias and discrimination. So I believe it’s also our responsibility to foster communities that support addressing the unfair barriers affecting women and underrepresented groups in this field.

Diversity in the tech industry brings fresh perspectives and new ideas to the table. Women often approach problem-solving and innovation differently from men, and their unique viewpoints will lead to more creative solutions and products in the marketplace.

The metaverse/3D internet/future web - whatever we want to call it - is and will continue to be a significant economic and social force. As women (and other diverse groups) we need to ensure it’s diverse, accessible, and inclusive for everyone. We can’t wait for an invitation, we need to actively step in to shape the future.

Carmen Duran-Wolburg , Vertical Partnerships Director, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, Mexico

Technology was always an interest of mine, but it wasn’t something I was entirely focused on. Growing up, the tech industry was projected as a very male-dominated space and there didn’t seem to be room to enter that world.

I ended up studying international business and marketing, never intending for it to lead me to tech. Although the representation of women in tech rose by less than one percent in 2022, achieving a role in the tech industry made me realise how attitudes are changing to evolve past these gender biases.

There are many routes to tech, and you don’t have to take the most obvious one.

I have found myself on the business and marketing track, but there are verticals to correlate with many other sectors and skillsets, for example, science, education, fashion, conservation, and health.

Find your passion and follow it. Careers in technology can be exciting: the landscape is constantly evolving with important new discoveries around every corner. Delving into the tech industry allows you the chance to be part of innovation and you can see the effects and changes tech has around the world. You never stop learning!

It’s also crucial to have good role models. Women in tech are being given a voice and we want to share our knowledge and experience with you. There are internships and mentoring programmes specifically aimed at young women entering the tech space which can provide a great learning environment for nurturing the skills to take you further in tech.

I have been fortunate at ALE in that mentoring and development has been a strong focus throughout my career here and I have been able to glean learnings and support from experts in their field who have created the structures and processes that have helped me get to where I am today. For me, mentoring is one of the key areas where technology companies can really offer the best possible support to women in tech.

Joy U Kordts , Senior Content Designer, Personio, Germany

Believe it or not, my journey to a career in tech actually started out with me working as a chef in Los Angeles (my hometown) and San Francisco. But when I relocated to Germany in 2012, I realised that the long and unsociable hours that chefs work were not going to allow me to prioritise my partner, my family, and my health.

I pivoted into translation, building on the skills a lifetime of code-switching and interpreting for my first-generation immigrant parents had endowed me with. This role led to me getting a job as a copyeditor at a tech company in Düsseldorf, where I first learned about UX— more through the process of intellectual osmosis than anything at first!

This is when everything changed for me. I was fascinated by UX, and before long this led me to becoming the company’s first UX writer. Before I knew it, I had built a UX writing sub-team around me. Five years later, I started my second role as a UX writer/content designer, this time as a senior, at Personio.

An inevitability in life as a womxn is that, every now and then, you’ll run into people who expect less of you than your male counterparts. Of course it can hurt - especially if those people are people who care about you, like family, or people you respect and look to for answers and validation.

This is especially important to remember if you’re entering the world of tech, where it’s tempting to look at yourself through the eyes of the people around you, who you might feel are so much smarter and wiser than you are because of their experience. But you know what you can be. Don’t let others’ expectations stop you.

Never, ever, forget: you alone determine how capable you are. Another person’s opinion and expectation of you, no matter what it is and who they are, is just a powerless thought if your actions disprove them.

Laura Barrowcliff, Head of Strategy and Customer Insight, GBG, UK

In school, I wanted to be a teacher, but I think that was because I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, and people said I would be good at it. I kept my options open and after A-levels, I did a degree in English Language at Liverpool University. I got a job straight out of Uni at an advertising agency, and there I completed a CIM diploma in marketing. Unfortunately, that agency went into liquidation, which led me to apply for a marketing role at GBG on a 10-month fixed-term contract, and here I am 12 years later!

During my time at GBG I’ve worked hard, been ambitious and made sure I was open to good opportunities as they have arisen. I spent several years in the product team, which gave me a

rounded experience of the business and developed my skills in stakeholder management, technical knowledge, and product and commercial strategy.

GBG is a great place for developing people and as the company has grown, I’ve been able to take opportunities to grow as well, with great support from the leadership team. While at the company I’ve been able to add to my learning with a professional diploma in management from Coventry University, and a certificate in Executive Strategy from the SAID Business School.

I went to an all-girls high school and honestly, I don’t remember technology roles being discussed as an option for us. How wrong they were!

There are huge opportunities for women in technology and the technology sector is so vast and expansive that even if you don’t think you are technically minded (whatever that means), then there are opportunities to use many different types of skills and experiences.

We all use technology in our day-to-day lives and that technology should be built by a diverse workforce that is representative of the population. Currently, the technology sector is predominantly male, and you can make a difference in making technology work for women and future generations by considering a career in the sector.

Sarah Ennett , Smart Island Manger, Digital Isle of Man, Isle Of Man

When I was at high school in the late 80s/early 90s, it was assumed that the only route was university and there was no conversation about what topics you actually enjoyed and were naturally good at. I grew up with computers and was programming in BASIC at home for fun. I don’t remember having IT lessons at school or being made aware of career options in tech. All I knew in high school was that I wanted to do something that would allow me to progress.

I ended up on a university course that really didn’t suit me, so I dropped out and starting temping. That was the making of me, especially at a time where computers weren’t prevalent in office environments. I was a fast learner and

able to use spreadsheet and database packages. My confidence grew and I enjoyed being part of an organisation and trying to help it be more efficient in its operation.

I am based on the Isle of Man, which is a brilliant location for women interested in tech, thanks to the wide range of career options and thriving tech sector. I’ve spent the majority of my career in the telecommunications sector to date, and the industry on the island is really exciting

to work in. Given the fast-paced evolution of technical change it’s meant there is no time to get bored and you are used to learning new things continually.

Ignore stereotypical ideas of what a technology career may look like and who can succeed in the sector, and really think about the changing world of work where nearly every career requires you to have good digital literacy.

Make sure you explore all the options available to you, there are so many

routes to an exciting tech career and I love the fact that apprenticeships and T-Levels are gaining attention. Some people suit a more academic route and others suit a more hands-on or business-focussed approach, while some people neither need nor want to start earning at 16 or 18; we are all different.

Technology allows us to be more creative, to problem solve, to collaborate, to sift through lots of information quickly, to communicate and so much more, and the tools for doing all this are changing all the time. Our increasing usage of tech means that it’s a great sector to be involved in, and you develop an in-demand set of skills for those creating tools, installing or maintaining them, connecting them, being a power user or trainer.

I currently work as Smart Island Manager at Digital Isle of Man, and it’s a dream role. I’m in the thick of evaluating new Internet of Things (IoT) solutions and how they can help make our island a more secure, vibrant, and sustainable place. It’s inspiring to work with tech that has so many different possible outcomes, from saving energy, making us healthier, reducing carbon emissions and so much more.

No two days are the same and I have the privilege to meet and speak to people from all walks of life who want to make a difference.

Rachael Greaves , CEO and Founder, Castlepoint Systems, Australia

I didn’t do a STEM degree, and I went on to found an Artificial Intelligence company. There are many pathways into a technology career, and the transferable skills from almost any higher education are as valuable as the hard skills of coding and engineering. AI is about seeing patterns, thinking ahead, and finding solutions to problems. I used these skills, which I gained in my Arts degree, to become an analyst, and then an auditor.

I designed the Castlepoint solution after about a decade of auditing (and failing) million- and billion-dollar programs, and recognising that everyone was failing in their security, privacy, and compliance obligations for the same reasons. They had too much

data, in too many systems, with too many applicable rules – and absolutely no way to understand and map that across the enterprise.

This was causing catastrophic impacts on real people. We have seen vulnerable people dispossessed, unlawfully deported, and even killed because of failures of information control. I developed our solution with the goal of stopping this from happening again.

Since we released it, we have found evidence of child abuse that was otherwise hidden. We have enabled Indigenous Data Sovereignty. We have responded to hacks and helped to prevent them. Those are the kind of outcomes that you will achieve, guided by your own vision and mission, using the skills you learn in whatever discipline you find most engaging and rewarding.

Growing up, I always loved science and space. My career goal at high school was to become an astrophysicist because I would contribute to space discovery. After some reflection, I realised that this job would lead me to a research career as opposed to a practical engineering job. I then decided to study engineering and discovered it could bring me not only technical knowledge but also leadership, communication, enthusiasm and critical reasoning skills.

Being an engineering student was certainly the most exciting part of my life so far! I was able to grow so much personally and it gave me the confidence to follow my engineering career

Laurène Armer, Launch Systems Safety Engineer, Gravitilab Aerospace Services, France

in one of the most fascinating sectors of all: the space sector!

If I have one recommendation to give to young girls who are hesitating in their career path, the journey can’t be defined right from the start; you will find your way because of your perseverance. So follow your dream no matter what it is!

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics have no gender. The skills you can develop in those disciplines are so broad, you will always have the choice of working in various industries, for example cosmetics, agrifood, transportation. Studying in STEM will open up lots of career opportunities you can’t even imagine right now.

Here I am, talking to you as an enthusiastic space engineer, and I would have never imagined myself in this role if you had asked me at your age!

Helen Hawthorn , Head of Solution Engineering EMEA, Zoom, UK

It’s been a long career, there are so many different paths to take now within technology! When I started in this industry, I was a novelty, especially when they found out I actually knew what I was talking about. I never felt blocked at any stage, it was when going into management that I actually found the difference.

I do see many more women coming into the industry, but this seems to be focused on the sales side. I would love to see a bigger drive in articulating some of the unknown jobs that women excel in, for instance, my background in Solution Engineering.

One girl I remember as I explained what I did said, so you are like a shopper for IT! Although maybe a little simplistic,

it stuck with her and made her want to go look into how it could happen for her.

It has been an amazing plus for me to be working in the industry I have. As a woman, I was able to work from home when pregnant and during the early years of my child’s upbringing. This allowed me to be able to drop my child at school every day and pick her up. The ability not to miss out on concerts and sports days is not something that I take lightly.

It is amazing that the technology that I help place into businesses is the same one that has enabled me to not only work effectively but also still go into a management position. I do not believe without this I would have been able to.

I feel that women bring a very different mindset when speaking to customers and how technology will affect their business, not only from a financial perspective but also the day-to-day lives of their employees. We find it easier to place ourselves in the shoes of the very people that technology normally helps; to enable the table to become bigger and include people from different backgrounds to be part of decision-making processes.

I still find the biggest barrier is the ‘old boys club’, which is inevitable as they have been in this industry for so long. The only way to break that down is to keep feeding the funnel. The more we get girls involved earlier the more leaders we will have in future generations.

There are many things that women face that mean working in a more remote way, and being able to juggle working at different hours, helps. As a leader, I drive the thought process that 9-5 is not the way we work. I try to help drive people to work at their best, which could mean starting earlier or working later - it is their output that I am interested in.

Of course, in sales we still need to be mindful of our customers, but generally, I have found that giving people the right tools and treating them as adults drive the right output and a bond with a company that makes that possible.

The Value of ERGs For Women In Tech

ServiceMax’s Angela Smith-Sly on the pivotal importance of Employee Resource Groups in furthering the cause of diversity in the workplace.

Just about every woman I know has experienced a standout moment of workplace discrimination in one form or another. As a Black woman working in technology, I have plenty of anecdotes. I’d like to tell you about one in particular and illustrate why Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) and mentoring matter so much – and what’s still lacking when it comes to corporate mentoring programs.

Earlier in my career I was the Global eCommerce Manager for a tech company. We were meeting with various vendors to decide which partners we’d work with and gain a better understanding of their go-to-market strategies. I arrived early and sat at the meeting

room table catching up on emails, waiting for everyone else to arrive.

The group from the partner company came in, sat down and before I could introduce myself, immediately began discussing their strategy on how they’d approach the key decision maker (aka me). They completely ignored me. I was invisible to them.

Although most of them were mortified when the rest of my team arrived and we all introduced ourselves, one man was particularly arrogant. He kept deferring to a member of my team, who kept redirecting him to me. Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident as it pertains to my career and indeed my personal life.

While some of the behaviour is blatant racism or sexism or whatever “ism” particular individuals may hold, the truth is we all have some form of unconscious bias deeply rooted in us. We may not be aware, but we do have them. Both my younger sister and niece have started their professional career and I tell them quite often to trust their intuition. If you think something’s not right or you feel you’re being overlooked, don’t dismiss it. Remember, you have a right to be in the room, but quite often you may also

feel the added pressure to prove it and that can be exhausting.

Why I Started An ERG

At my current organization, ServiceMax, I started an ERG for Black Employees and Allies United (BEAU) in 2020. It was shortly after George Floyd was killed by police. I contacted the Chief HR Officer and told her bluntly that people like me are hurting. The CEO and Chief HR Officer called me and another colleague, asking how they could help. It wasn’t just lip service.

The conversation was genuine and organic. As my colleague and I shared our stories, and I explained the conversations I have with my children especially my son regarding how he needs to conduct himself if we are ever pulled over, or why he can’t wear his hoodie over his head at night – we all started crying. Our CEO and CFO became executive sponsors of BEAU and they still check in on a regular basis. Shortly after that came the wave of Asian hate in the US and the Asian and

Pacific Islanders ERG was born. While both ERGs were born out of crisis, they continue to flourish.

Our CFO has participated in speaking engagements, that the BEAU ERG has sponsored for Black, Indigenous, and people of colour (BIPOC) youth. We’ve partnered with the YWCA, creating bite sized content to help educate all who were interested in BIPOC history and unconscious bias. It’s been a platform for organic, truthful, and deep conversations. Last year we did a Juneteenth celebration that walked us through the 1800’s to present day. We discussed the birth of a few stereotypes, why certain foods are

used to celebrate Juneteenth and stories of often forgotten brave men and women.

ERGs create platforms to have these conversations, educate us on different perspectives and insights into cultural awareness and hopefully unlearn any deeply ingrained biases. You don’t have to be a minority to attend an ERG minority group. I’d encourage you to engage with an ERG in your own organization that interests you and look through a different lens.

Mentoring, on the other hand, while invaluable and instrumental, is still lacking in both structure and diversity in most organisations. It’s often mistaken for a feel-good friendship. That’s not the case. You want your mentor to hold you accountable (and vice versa), give you truthful advice and meaningful support.

Mentoring - Be Your Own Match Maker

In the same way that not every individual contributor makes a great leader, not every person makes a great mentor. If you don’t have a mentor, I’d urge you to get one, but it’s important to be clear about expectations on both sides, and the style of mentoring that would benefit you best (e.g. nurturing or delegation).

It’s also important to remember that your mentor doesn’t need to look like you. You don’t have to be the same gender or ethnicity. A white man may be the

perfect mentor to help you understand and navigate a particular challenge. I’m enjoying mentoring two people at the moment. One is a young man with a very different background and perspective to mine, and it’s so rewarding.

What’s still missing from mentoring in my opinion is basic structure. Mentoring is very loose and that’s OK for some

people, but HR could and should be putting more scaffolding around these programs. (A good place to start would be having more diversity in HR itself). Finally, don’t just look at someone who is successful or in the role you’re aspiring to be in some day and assume they would be a good mentor for you. Study them for a while. Look at how they conduct

meetings, how they carry themselves, what you admire (or don’t) and decide whether you’d be a good fit for each other. The current lack of structure around mentoring means you have to be your own match maker. Go out there and find yours.

Angela Smith-Sly is Senior Business Operations, Global Professional Services for ServiceMax.