The 10 Most Inspiring Women Leaders to Follow in 2022, February2022

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VOL 02 | ISSUE 01 | 2022

10 Most Inspiring Women Leaders The

Visionary Leadership

Accomplishing Most Worthy Goals with Cheerful Leadership

Tech Talk

The Need to Embrace Tech-Transformation Approach

to Follow in 2022

Alexandra Coulson Leading with a Result-Oriented Marketing Strategy

Editor’s Desk Chasing Business Goals with Determination and Diligence

B

eing a successful business leader is a journey and not a destination. It is a constantly learning and growing process.

Let’s admit it; you can make your mark only when you have achieved something substantial in the business world.

Credible achievements are directly proportional to trustworthiness. Especially, women business leaders know that they have to accomplish something worthy to prove their credibility for avoiding any form of discrimination in a traditionally male-dominated business world.

To avoid any form of prejudices, women business leaders are ambitious to achieve some worthy goals for establishing their credibility. They take aggressive efforts and chase their goals with passion. Most of them are a lion at chase and resolute in their purpose. Determination and diligence help them to be inspiring leaders. They cultivate the qualities that are essential for helping them to reach greater heights.

They don’t settle for mediocrity because their aim is excellence. They never go back to the level they already leveled up from.

Women leaders have the aptitude, approach, and attitude of thinking big to win big. They believe that if they are going to think anyway, it is always better to think big and deliver big. They have great harmony in their thoughts, words, and actions. They are walking and talking legend. They have a keener sense of inquisitiveness, and they lead with a clear vision and purpose. They inspire others with their words and actions.

Besides, persistence is the most important quality of women business leaders. They become successful because of their ability to stay dedicated to a worthy cause. They believe

that being dedicated gives them life and the power to fight for success. Inspiring women business leaders have tremendous ability to distinguish between truth and illusion because of their sharper intuition. They increase their awareness to make the right choices by understanding what is right and what is wrong. They make thoughtful decisions and make them count.

Women leaders are bold in their approach. They seize the moments as they come. They leverage all their assets, resources, and technology to their fullest potential for driving their businesses to greater heights and increasing profitability. They build great teams, delegate their tasks and accomplish huge success in due course of time. They are highly competitive and believe in delivering great business results. They attain great success because of their persistence, clarity, dedication, diligence, and determination.

Only when you have all the above-mentioned traits, you can inspire others to be a greater version of themselves.

In this edition of “The 10 Most Inspiring Women Leaders to Follow in 2022” we are publishing the most inspiring women leaders who are pursuing business goals with passion, dedication, determination, and diligence and driving businesses to great heights.

Happy Reading!

Sharad Chitalkar sharad@insightssuccess.com

08

C O V E R S TO RY

Alexandra Coulson

Leading with a Result-Oriented Marketing Strategy

A RT I C L E S

30

Visionary Leadership Accomplishing Most Worthy Goals with Cheerful Leadership

Tech Talk The Need to Embrace Tech-Transformation Approach

50

Delivering Accessible Marketing Solutions

18 Arungalai Anbarasu

Deirdre Mc Gettrick

38

22

Bianca Rangecroft

Offering Wide Range of Furnishings

32

Using Digital Skills and Power of Data Science to Make a Difference in Society

Erna Grasz

Dr. Shruti Kohli

Empowering Youth to Architect Their Own Future

Shifting the Tides of Workplace Ideologies

46 Natalie Cramp

56

A Pioneering Trailblazer with a Unique Perspective

Putting an End to “I have Nothing to Wear” Dilemma

26

Angela Earl

42 Katerina Trajchevsk

An Accomplished Tech Leader Leading by Example

Helping Businesses Tell Their Stories in Compelling Ways

52 Paige Arnof-Fenn

Editor-in-Chief Hitesh Dhamani Managing Editor Anish Miller

Executive Editor Sharad Chitalkar

Assistant Editors Jenny Fernandes

Visualizer

Associate Designer

Co-designer

David King

Shyam Sonawane

Sonia Raizada

Senior Sales Manager

Business Development Manager

Kshitij S

Peter Collins

Marketing Manager

Sales Executives

John Matthew

David, Anthony, Saurabh

Technical Head

Business Development Executives

Jacob Smile

Steve, John, Saurabh and Shrinivas

Technical Specialist Aditya

Digital Marketing Manager Marry D'Souza

SME-SMO Executive Amol Wadekar

Research Analyst Frank Adams

Database Management Stella Andrew

Circulation Manager Robert Brown

Technology Consultant David Stokes

sales@insightssuccess.com February, 2022

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Featured Person

Company Name

Brief

Alexandra Coulson Global Head of Marketing

disguise disguise.one

disguise is the platform for creatives and technologists to imagine, create and deliver spectacular live visual experiences.

Angela Earl Vice President Global Marketing

RFPIO Inc rfpio.com

RFPIO is the market leader in response management software, trusted by some of the world's smartest companies to support RFP and Security questionnaire response, create and manage sales proposals, and resolve inefficiencies rooted in decentralized and inaccessible content and knowledge.

Arungalai Anbarasu Chief Technology and Strategy Officer

Baker Hughes bakerhughes.com

Baker Hughes develops and deploys the most advanced technologies to serve energy and industrial companies looking for more efficient, more reliable and cleaner solutions.

Bianca Rangecroft Founder & CEO

Whering whering.co.uk

Whering exists to bring back a culture of caring for the clothes.

Deirdre Mc Gettrick Founder and CEO

ufurnish ufurnish.com

ufurnish partners with 100+ furniture retailers, bringing over 1 million of their products together onto 1 website.

Dr. Shruti Kohli Lead Data Scientist and Innovation Lead

DWP Digital careers.dwp.gov.uk

DWP is the UK's biggest government department, building digital services that make a real difference to the lives of 20 million people.

Erna Grasz CEO

Asante Africa Foundation asanteafrica.org

Asante Africa Foundation is a social impact organization educating children and transforming worlds in east Africa.

Katerina Trajchevska CEO

Adeva adevait.com

Adeva is an award-winning global talent network that connects organizations with distributed tech talent across the world.

Natalie Cramp CEO

Profusion profusion.com

Profusion supports SMEs and blue-chip companies to make the best use of their data and help increase revenue.

Paige Arnof-Fenn Founder and CEO

Mavens & Moguls mavensandmoguls. com

Mavens & Moguls works with venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and business executives who seek expert marketing advice and innovative ideas without the overhead of a full-time marketing staff.

C O V E R S T O R Y

Alexandra Coulson

Global Head of Marketing disguise

Alexandra Coulson Leading with a Result-Oriented Marketing Strategy

With disguise’s powerful software-on-hardware, teams can produce incredible live visuals on complex video surfaces.

M

arketing, if executed correctly, can attract a large number of potential targeted customers to the specific element that the business wants to highlight, ranging from various products, events, TV shows, and much more. In today's digitized world, it is essential to stay updated on the recent trends while meticulously aligning strategies with the business goals to carry out effective marketing. Analyzing these elements to ensure perfect results is Alexandra Coulson.

As the Global Head of Marketing of disguise, Alexandra leads the global marketing campaign strategy for the company that is powering some of the most spectacular live and virtual experiences in the world, ranging from film, TV and broadcast productions, to corporate and entertainment events. disguise has built its two-decade legacy in the live event space, developing its workflow through various global concert tours, theatre shows and video installations. Last year, with the sudden halt in live events, its business focus pivoted to virtual production, as the team discovered an innovative way for the workflow to enable cancelled live productions to resume virtually. disguise has since developed into a multi-award-winning Extended Reality solution trusted by enterprise businesses, global brands, leading broadcasters, educational institutions, VFX and music artists as a number one solution to connect with their audiences.

In Insights Success’ endeavor to find "The 10 Most Inspiring Women Leaders to Follow in 2022," we came across Alexandra. We talked with her to understand how her methodologies are changing the face of marketing within the industry.

Below are the highlights of the interview; Brief our audience about your journey as a business leader until your current position at disguise. What challenges have you had to overcome to reach where you are today?

I've always been passionate about how marketing and technology influences consumers in their buyer decision making.

Marketing is what I chose to study at university, and I landed an invaluable placement at talent assessment technology company SHL. That led to my first full-time marketing role at CEB when they acquired SHL, and then Gartner, when they acquired CEB.

With disguise e-learning, customers can access dedicated training programs covering all aspects of using disguise software, and it's free!

The 10 Most Inspiring Women Leaders to Follow in 2022 So, in a way, I was really fortunate to experience marketing at a small, midsize, and large enterprise company all in the space of a few years.

There isn't really any secret sauce to my path; I worked really hard to get where I am today. I was able to move from Marketing Associate to Senior Marketing Manager by the end of my Gartner career by putting in the hours and not being afraid to ask for help from talented people I could learn from. Always ask for advice or help!

During my time at CEB and Gartner, I had some very supportive mentors who encouraged me to push myself out of my comfort zone. I also helped lead the development of a close relationship with the sales team, so I got first-hand experience early on in my career around working with some larger-than-life characters. That experience taught me the value of speaking up and holding my ground.

Marketing is often misrepresented or misunderstood in a business, so you can have a lot of very strong marketingrelated opinions coming thick and fast. Having faith in my background, education, and grassroots marketing experience gave me the courage to find my voice and make sure it was heard when I knew that what I was saying was correct.

Everything I learned from those experiences helped propel me forward in my career. By forcing myself to stick my head above the parapet, I was constantly opening myself up to more opportunities at work and was able to quickly get a broad understanding of what the different departments of the business cared about. All of which helped improve the overall effectiveness and focus of our marketing campaigns.

Having worked within the large enterprise corporate tech space for six years, I felt I'd learned enough to gain the confidence to move on to a role with more responsibility at a scale-up organisation. The feedback speed of the work you're implementing is so quick at a rapidly-growing company and I knew I wanted a taste of that faster pace.

I was so lucky to find disguise, which was growing exponentially while also producing truly innovative work and a marketing role that was a significant step up to really challenge me.

Unfortunately for a tech events company like disguise, the pandemic created a number of restrictions for our clients and customers. Although this was a challenging time for the company and my team, we were able to work together and pivot the business.

I had worked hard to be in the right place at the right time, and, luckily for me, an opportunity to head up the marketing team came my way.

It was a dream job come true but also, my goodness, the learning curve! The first nine months were hard work, and that was before throwing all the COVID-19 uncertainty and remote work elements into the mix.

Ultimately, the challenge I have had to overcome the most since becoming Head of Marketing is stepping back, empowering my team, and giving them the confidence and trust they need to work autonomously.

Whilst I obviously love marketing, I get my biggest kicks in work from seeing my fantastic and absurdly talented team progress, develop and grow. The business has undergone a huge central strategy pivot from live events to our new extended reality (xR) solution over the course of the pandemic, and I could not be more proud or thankful of my team for how they've collaborated and worked hard at every stage.

It's a well-used phrase, but "it takes a village," and there's no better group I'd have wanted to go on this journey with.

We've all got each other's backs, and we all turn up and deliver - what more could you want from a team?

Tell us something more about your company and its mission and vision. disguise is a platform for creative and technical professionals to imagine, create and deliver the world's most spectacular live visual experiences. We combine leading experience production software with powerful media server hardware to empower brands, artists, and organizations to tell stories that inspire their audiences. disguise was established in 2000 to deliver show-stopping visuals at concerts for artists like Massive Attack and U2.

Today, disguise is a global operation with locations in London, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, and New Zealand. Its technology has been sold in over 50 countries with disguise offering technical support in all regions to meet customers worldwide.

Our latest award-winning extended reality (xR) solution has powered over 400 immersive real-time productions in the past 18 months for music artists such as Katy Perry and Billie Eilish, enterprise businesses like SAP and Siemens, educational institutions like the University of Michigan, broadcast networks like ITV and Eurosport, commercial brands like Nike and Under Armour and on-set virtual productions in more than 40 countries.

Our vision is to be at the heart of every inspiring live experience in the world. We do this by constantly innovating and pushing boundaries in our software and hardware solutions to meet the future needs of productions.

We are proud to be industry leaders, and our c-team are persistently looking for ways to be ahead of the curve.

Our core values are linked to the motto of 'Create Together.'

With this, we hope to empower our users to use our technology to bring some of the world's most amazing experiences to life.

Enlighten us on how you have made an impact in the IT niche through your expertise in the market.

With help from all teams at disguise, we were able to launch our extended reality solution to market five months before schedule. We were able to do this by engaging with our community of users and understanding their needs.

When the pandemic hit, many of our users needed a way to keep on creating visual experiences, albeit virtually. We listened to their needs and adapted our message and targeting accordingly. We were also able to explore and appeal to new markets that we had not worked with before.

platform to connect with our users as well as an eLearning portal providing complimentary courses and certifications.

As a business we opened our software to users for free during and after the pandemic to ensure anyone, anywhere in the world had the opportunity to learn the disguise workflow.

This paid off! We were able to help the company achieve record growth with support from our partners and these new users and markets. disguise is currently recognized in the 22nd annual Sunday Times BDO Profit Track 100 as one of Britain's private companies with the fastest-growing profits over the last three years.

We are open and transparent in everything we do and maintain a strong sense of community with our end-users.

Most importantly, belonging is a huge part of our core values at disguise. We want to make sure that everyone feels welcome and belongs here, and we are always striving to make disguise the most inclusive place to work. When I joined disguise, I immediately felt at home, and I hope others do too.

Describe in detail the values and the work culture that drives your organization. disguise is driven by three key pillars, and that is innovation, community, and partnerships. We innovate to create revolutionary technology, which we then release to our partners and community early for feedback through various Insider Programs. This helps creators get access to tools that empower their productions whilst allowing us to access feedback and improve the quality and capabilities of our technology. We launched a dedicated Community

disguise is the platform for creatives and technologists to imagine, create and deliver spectacular live visual experiences.

At disguise, we’re all driven by the following set of values: we are fearless, resilient, honest, and evolutionary, meaning we are not afraid of going where nobody has dared to go before.

Undeniably, technology is playing a significant role in almost every sector. How are you leveraging technological advancements to make your solutions resourceful?

Our solutions combine reliable, high-performance hardware with software and training to empower our users to achieve their creative vision. When Star Wars: The Mandalorian was released, disguise undertook research and development to provide the tools to enable a new field known as virtual production or extended reality. Extended reality allows for real-time graphics content to be rendered on LED panels. It is a step beyond green screen or blue screen workflows as it allows for real-time changes to be made on set instead of doing everything in post-production. It also allowed for live broadcasts, livestreams, and even virtual corporate conferences and brand launches to take place.

Even though our history and main customer base were in live events, we were able to pivot and develop cutting-edge, award-winning technology to allow for films, broadcasts, and many other virtual events and experiences to happen in the middle of a pandemic.

Currently, the innovation is still underway. Our extended reality platform is being used and constantly developed to empower experiences on the Metaverse - which is tipped to be the new internet.

If given a chance, what change would you like to bring in the Marketing industry?

I would make two changes: Whilst this isn't marketing specific, the first change I'd like to bring is women supporting each other more.

From my own career and also the careers of friends, I often hear horror stories of women not supporting each other to try and get ahead. There seems to be this misconception that in order for one woman to get ahead, all others must fail.

It's simply not the case, and when one does get ahead in that style, they will quickly be found out. They will find themselves without a strong support network. It is far better to champion and support other women, even if it doesn't directly benefit you at the moment.

I'm a big believer in “what goes around, comes around,” and people won't forget your support and encouragement.

In the end, it's better for everyone to see more women getting ahead! All the more so if they're being propelled by other women.

The second change I'd like to make is marketing specific.

Generally speaking, I believe the impact of B2B marketing is chronically undervalued by a worryingly large number of business leaders.

Fortunately, that's not been anywhere close to my experience at disguise.

The change I'd like to bring is seeing marketers (from junior roles all the way to CMOs) champion and really understand the revenue contribution and value they are driving and be able to communicate it effectively. One of the most important ways to do this is to leverage data and fully track the end-to-end buyer journey, from a lead generated right through to booked business by sales teams.

This also means tailoring what you're saying to each stakeholder, depending on what they care about. For example, do you know what sales care about vs. Finance vs.

HR vs. the Board? This should be a priority for every level of marketer.

That all sounds incredibly basic, but I would argue that clearly communicating the impact your function is having on bottom-line revenue is the most fundamental foundation of a high-performing marketing team.

Where do you envision yourself to be in the long run, and what are your future goals for disguise? disguise is on a very exciting journey - it is a place where you have to work smart and fast, and I'm really enjoying that challenge. For me, this is just the start of an exciting chapter! As disguise teams continue to deliver awardwinning technology solutions, our marketing team needs to be at the forefront of delivering it in a way that truly resonates and excites our customers and partners and cuts through the noise of other offerings.

I see the marketing function expanding exponentially and globally into key markets across the APAC region and the Americas. This will enable us to localize our activities and deliver more targeted services and solutions to each individual key market in our shared mission to democratize xR and open up possibilities on the Metaverse.

That adrenaline and the open collaboration with the senior leadership team compel me to keep pushing boundaries for the marketing function. But, more importantly, for every individual in my team. I want the disguise marketing function to carry the baton for what all marketing teams should be aiming for.

What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the marketing sector?

1. Practice fearlessness. Don't wait to be asked for a seat at the table. Take it and own it, backed by your own knowledge and experience.

2. Always seek mentors, and these don't have to be in marketing. Speaking to other leaders about overcoming challenges in your role will help guide you and reassure you everyone is learning and no one has all the answers.

3. Always be learning. Marketing and the technology sector are constantly advancing and it’s important to always be reading around the discipline to ensure you’re at the forefront of the latest advancements or trends.

4. Don't take negative feedback personally. Review it dispassionately, see what you can learn from it. Go and learn those things, and then move onwards and upwards.

It’s from this feedback that you will probably learn the most.

Angela Earl

Vice President Global Marketing RFPIO

The 10 Most Inspiring Women Leaders to Follow in 2022

Angela Earl Delivering Accessible Marketing Solutions

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ord of mouth, brand loyalty, advertising, and in a multitude of other ways, effective marketing heavily influences our purchase decisions.

Remember that jingle that you couldn’t get out of your head? Or the funny commercial you couldn’t forget. And of course there’s that one time your best friend kept raving about that new something and you had to have it.

Memorable moments may seem like magic, but it’s just good marketing — and unquestionably the most efficient way for organizations to succeed in getting their products or services into the hands of their buyers. And while jingles and billboards work as well today as they did in the Mad Men era of advertising, digital channels have opened up a nearly unlimited number of ways marketers can capture attention and drive sales.

With experience spanning many facets of business, Angela Earl, Vice President of Global Marketing at RFPIO has seen her share of challenges and innovative solutions. She credits her success to the relationships and amazing people she has met throughout her career and to the lessons she learned in some of the hardest times.

"From tactical lessons in time management to lifeimpacting ones like putting people first, my journey has challenged me and made me a better person.”

These life lessons have led Angela to where she is today.

We asked her to share what she’s up to today and some advice from these experiences.

Aligning Values Angela embraces a mantra of empowering others in all

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areas of her life and her work at RFPIO is no exception.

“Find a company with values and you believe in,” she advises, “and the work won't feel like work most of the time.

RFPIO’s mission to create software users loved and their goal to empower organizations to unlock their potential fits right in line with Angela’s focus. “RFPIO is reinventing how customer-facing teams create content, respond to opportunities, and meet prospects' needs to drive true results,” says Angela. The company is the leading provider of response management software, and is trusted by successful and growing organizations of all sizes to streamline their response processes. One client, Microsoft reported saving an estimated $2.4 million and credits RFPIO for the success.

RFPIO is also striving to be one of the best places to work.

Angela is one of 10 leaders at RFPIO who focus on prioritizing work-life balance, promoting diversity and inclusiveness, and instilling a true sense of ownership and belonging for all employees. "We believe that automation needs a human touch and that teams, including our own, can unlock their full potential when they are empowered to invest time in impactful and meaningful ways,” shared Angela.

Software People Love Technology helps businesses worldwide do more, work smarter, and achieve better results. RFPIO believes that instead of spending time looking for information and tracking down colleagues, organizations should democratize their knowledge, resulting in faster response times and improved customer (and employee) experiences.

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Prioritize Experience Technology stacks are getting more complicated, and data is becoming more and more siloed; since starting her career in marketing, Angela has focused on leveraging and aligning technology to improve outcomes. She believes that alignment to business processes and goals is critical and is excited about the roadmap and RFPIO's ability to continue to meet the needs of customer-facing teams inside growing organizations.

Angela has seen a notable shift in how businesses are buying and selling software. “Ten years ago, software was shifting from large providers who did “everything” to point solutions focused on solving specific problems.” Angela notes, “Today we see the pendulum swinging back toward the middle. Buyers want to simplify their tech stacks and are looking for functional solutions that can solve more than one problem, and more importantly integrate easily with other solutions.”

Angela has worked in B2B software since 2007 and believes RFPIO is a shining example of technology done right. “Our customers love us, and not just because we have an awesome team, but because the software is easy to use and makes achieving their goals significantly easier.”

RFPIO has consistently been rated #1 by customers on G2.com and was recently ranked the fastest growing company in Oregon on Inc. Magazine’s Inc5000. The company proudly took home 8 Comparably awards in 2020 including Best Company for Diversity 2020, Best Company Work-Life Balance, Best Company Perks & Benefits, Best Company Happiness, Best Professional Development 2020, Best Leadership Teams 2020, Best CEOs for Women 2020 and Best CEOs for Diversity 2020.

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RFPIO is a relatively young organization despite its size and growth. Founded in 2015, the company has sustained incredible growth every year even through the economic uncertainty that started in 2020. From its humble beginnings, the focus amidst this growth was always on building a culture and company that people would want to be a part of. Looking ahead, Angela and the other leaders are focused on supporting the growing team while protecting and prioritizing customer and employee satisfaction.

Words to Live by Angela recalls advice she received from a mentor years ago, "You can't give what you don't have," and encourages others to prioritize self-care, especially those in leadership roles. Time, energy, confidence, and peace all fall under this mantra, according to Angela, ”Take care of yourself, and you'll be better able to take care of your team.”

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“

We like to obsess over problems so that our customers and partners don't have to think about them.

“

22 | February 2022

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ven the hardest stones change their shapes when facing the continuous water flow. Similarly, women's leadership constantly soars, bending the inadequate difficulties of making balanced decisions, fostering a culture that benefits everyone. One of many attributes that make women leaders unique is that they might perceive business through an eye of a mother; the way they care, nurture & enable growth then is carried through with their business acumen. Akin to such distinct perceptions, Arungalai Anbarasu, a mother of a 7-year-old daughter (Ada), is passionately keen on promoting STEM women, making the world a better place.

Apart from being a mother, Arungalai leads as the Chief Technology and Strategy Officer at Waygate Technologies (WT), world leader market leader in industrial inspection solutions and a business that belongs to the Baker Hughes energy technology company. She acquired her master's degree in Electrical and Computer Science working on the Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) thesis. Arungalai and her team spearhead Waygate Technologies' evolution into a Digital Inspection Solutions (DIS) space. She envisions playing a critical role in the

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The 10 Most Inspiring Women Leaders to Follow in 2022

A Pioneering Trailblazer with a Unique Perspective

company's ambition to take energy forward - making it safer, cleaner, and more efficient for people and the planet.

Sculpting Herself Curiosity leads to questions, and questions lead to answers.

As a child, Arungalai's curiosity got her thinking about where we came from, how things are built, and how the earth was formed, keeping her awake at night. She aspired to become an astronaut, but unfortunately, her poor eyesight became an obstacle, never letting her pursue that path.

Thus, she embarked on a path closet to space sailing – Engineering.

A Visionary Forward-Looking Partner Waygate Technologies' purpose is to provide peace of mind for manufacturers in various major industries by ensuring safety, quality, and productivity.

Arungalai expresses that WT combines over 125 years of experience and the heritage of renowned industry names such as Krautkrämer, phoenix X-ray, Seifert, Everest, and Agfa NDT with a global DNA and the unmatched precision of German engineering. Its business offers a broad portfolio

After acquiring her master's degree, Arungalai joined the renowned conglomerate General Electric (GE) in their graduate program called Edison Engineering Development Program. She learned how technology builds and sells solutions that solve different world problems related to energy, healthcare, and transportation, Arungalai built on this experience in multiple roles at GE & Baker Hughes (BH).

Arungalai operated in finance, strategy, operations, technology, and business leadership, before landing on her current role of Chief Technology & Strategy Officer for Waygate Technologies. She looks at the overarching business strategy with her team, delivering breakthrough technology innovation, new business models and digital transformation. She also led the industrial X-ray and computed tomography (CT) business in the past few years at WT. www.insightssuccess.com

Arungalai Anbarasu Chief Technology and Strategy Officer Waygate Technologies

23 | February 2022

of award-winning solutions in industrial radiography and computed tomography (CT), remote visual inspection (RVI), ultrasound (UT), eddy current, and robotic inspection. They help customers drive their digital transformation by applying state-of-the-art data and analytics to their assets and processes for best-in-class insights.

Arungalai notes, "Today, several brands in the automotive, aviation, space exploration, electronics, energy, battery, and additive industries trust our inspection and testing solutions. Yet as a consumer, you have probably never heard of us or of all the industrial inspection that goes into the car you drove this morning, the flight you took recently; the cell phone you carry in your pocket, or the computer you are seeing this article on – and that is the way we want it." The most successful inspections are the ones you don't hear about. She continues, "We like to obsess over problems so that our customers and partners don't have to think about them.”

Waygate Technologies' industry-leading digital inspection solution and software platform - InspectionWorks - can

collect data from borescope inspections, cell phone cameras and written logs, and correlate an asset's health. Further, building analytics that automatically detects defects while inspections are in process, saving the customers valuable time and energy in "reading" inspections.

The company's strong push to drive innovations and deliver data and insights provide exponential improvements in productivity and safety to its customers. Waygate Technologies aims to take the customers from detecting defects to avoiding them.

The Foundational Pillars Arungalai states that the parent company Baker Hughes shares four main values with its employees: Grow lets the company see the challenge as an opportunity and learn every day.

Collaborate means inspiring, being inclusive, and bringing out the best in each other.

Lead implies making, inventing, and performing with impact.

Most importantly, Care strives to always do the right thing for its customers, people, and the environment.

A significant and growing feature of its work culture is diversity; it is committed to an inclusive work environment with opportunities for people to reach their full potential.

Arungalai wants its workforce to reflect its communities' global reach and diversity. The company aims to develop a culture based on merit where talent is nurtured, regardless of gender, background, age, religion, ethnic origin, nationality, disability, or sexual orientation.

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The Inevitable Future Arungalai understands that inspections are necessary to cost today, and the future demands more Accurate, Available, and Autonomous processes to be the desired value tomorrow. She envisions inspections to able to: • Harvest inspection data and turn it into a key enabler to optimize your asset lifecycle. Imagine bringing "Lab" technologies to "In-Line" operations… production plant of the future • Deliver deeper insights by interlacing siloed operations… continuous traceability • Add exponential value to asset fleet by connecting and optimizing all devices and workflows… data for planning • Create virtual loops from design to production to maintenance; from one generation to the next...

Nothing is wasted She states that when one thinks about industrial inspections today – on any market; and at any customer; the data from inspections today are: • Fragmented, siloed, and overlooked information.

• Isolated inspection tasks as suppliers not integrated.

• Multi-NDT technologies leading to disconnected results.

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• •

Limited process feedback with no actionable insights from datasets.

Suboptimal approach to manage NDT costs.

Arungalai will be delighted if customers embrace NDT 4.0 to go from detecting defects to avoiding them altogether.

Soon, industrial inspection will enable customers to drive innovations.

A Diligent Guidance Arungalai advises fellow women leaders to create a vision, develop a plan and execute it with perseverance to achieve outcomes to benefit the industry and environment while pushing the boundaries of technology. As the Japanese proverb suggests, "Vision without action is a daydream.

Action without vision is a nightmare." Arungalai believes it's equally important to create a vision and execute it with perseverance. In her concluding thoughts, she says, "Push the boundaries of technology, commercial, outcomes within the boundaries of compliance, ethics, and safety to take the first steps that will create progress for the others and you.

First times are always tough, but they are the most fulfilling!”

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Bianca Rangecroft Founder and CEO Whering

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The 10 Most Inspiring Women Leaders to Follow in 2022

Bianca

Rangecroft Putting an End to "I have Nothing to Wear" Dilemma

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rom the way we work, communicate, shop, bank to the way how we relax and entertain ourselves, digitization has transformed everything. Imagine your wardrobe getting digitized! This is what exactly Bianca Rangecroft has brought to the world through her company Whering. Bianca founded Whering in June 2020 out of a profound desire to democratize the personal styling landscape and fundamentally change the way we interact with our clothes (i.e. upend the throwaway culture).

We at Insights Success got into conversation with Bianca to learn more about her journey and how she is shaping the future of the fashion industry.

Below are the highlights to the interview: Brief our audience about your journey as a business leader until your current position Whering. What challenges have you overcome to reach where you are today?

For me the system was broken; the vicious cycle of not being able to see what you own, impulse buying (never getting it quite right), and the lack of inspiration in the styling process meant only one thing, we had to take it digital and harness the power of machine learning to hyperpersonalize our fashion experience. The journey from there www.insightssuccess.com

has been mostly organic; Vogue covered our launch in 8 countries, helping us secure 35k users in less than six months. We now have 80k users, with downloads increasing monthly.

My background is totally unrelated to fashion – I studied History and Politics at SOAS & LSE, then moved into the business world after doing my Masters at Imperial (Economics & Management). I worked at Goldman Sachs from 2017 to 2019 in the firm's Consumer and Investment Management Division in London. I was lucky enough to work on the Stichfix IPO and began to delve deep into consumer buying patterns, how machine learning was being used to optimize shopping, and above all, the environmental cost of fashion. This kickstarted in me a whole introspective journey into my own contribution to this issue and how we could leverage the data found in our own closet to make the supply chain greener, but crucially to make the most of what we already have to get that newness fix and buy to fill wardrobe gaps (all optimized through AI). Before starting the company, we conducted over 350 focus groups to identify key commonalities in the user journey amongst our key demographic: women in their early twenties and thirties.

I absolutely loved working in the Consumer and Investment Management Division at Goldman Sachs - and still manage 27 | February 2022

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We exist to radically shift our relationship with clothes (for ourselves and mama nature).

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my own portfolio (it's my downtime from startup life!). I covered a lot of retail stocks and worked on two big fashion tech IPOs (Stichfix and Farfetch) during my time at GS, and this taught me to deeply understand industry shifts and growing consumer/behavioral trends and how both these factors affected nascent technologies. Not only did this journey provide me with insights into how we could use AI to personalise our fashion experience but during our process to sell the equity story we'd often speak to customers to get a sense of WHY this company was so ground-breaking and that's what transformed by relationship to the end user (as the real source of information for product discovery and innovation). I felt we fundamentally had to change the way we interact with our clothes (i.e. upend the throwaway culture) and thought the timing (by the end of my tenure) was perfect to bring to life Cher Horrowitz' Clueless wardrobe app.

Tell us something more about Whering and its mission and vision.

Whering, the app designed by and created for the next generation of sustainability-minded and style-conscious women, paving the way to an ethical wardrobe and an end to the 'buy-use-dispose' model. The launch of the app allows users to quickly and easily digitize their entire wardrobe, resulting in a streamlined, personable, and accessible online styling tool.

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Whering creates a digital wardrobe that allows users to see everything they own in one place, allowing them to maximize the potential of their wardrobe. Users will also receive styling suggestions and personalized product recommendations that complement the pieces they already own and love. In turn, this helps users to shop strategically to fill wardrobe gaps whilst helping to reduce the habit of unnecessary purchasing, ultimately leading to a more cohesive and sustainable wardrobe. Whering uses an intricate style matrix and personality test to create the ideal styling environment for each customer. The user can then use these images to create outfits themselves or use the 'Dress Me' function, and Whering's algorithm will provide outfit suggestions.

At the heart of everything Whering does is a desire to improve the fashion industry by tackling some of its most damaging facets. The app aims to revolutionize the way we shop, style, and dress, and in doing so reduce the carbon footprint left by fashion consumers globally. In the UK alone, clothing has the fourth largest environmental impact after housing, transport, and food. Shockingly, half of the fast-fashion items we buy as a nation are thrown away in less than a year. Whering helps users utilize their wardrobes 80% more effectively, meaning consumers are less likely to turn to fast-fashion options, as our app helps them maximize their wardrobe's potential. Ultimately, there is no place for fast fashion in a sustainable future, making Whering an essential app offering much-needed lifestyle guidance, allowing users to think more sustainably in this time of climate upheaval.

Enlighten us on how you have made an impact in the industry through your expertise in the market.

The 'I have nothing to wear' dilemma is a universal sensation of being trapped in indecision. In our view, part of the problem isn't having nothing to wear, but having nothing new to wear and too many options of cheap clothes to choose from. We keep buying because we think that just one more item will unlock our ideal wardrobe – but how can it do so if we have no accessible inventory of what we own?

This is why having a digital inventory is so key - to aid our visual memory. Not only does it allow you to 'shop your own wardrobe' to get that newness fix, but having an organised digital wardrobe helps you identify what you really need and what pieces can unlock a myriad of combinations. You can also easily track your wears, most worn items, decide what's worth donating or selling, but mostly importantly, create different versions of your best

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looks from the comfort of your couch (i.e. unleashing your inner creative). We created Whering for recovering lifestyle hypocrites like us: millennial women who are excited to take back ownership of their fashion consumption and the way they dress. Whering is not just a wardrobe organizer, it's so much more. We're building a one-stop-shop for all your fashion needs.

Undeniably, technology is playing a significant role in almost every sector. How are you leveraging technological advancements to make your solutions resourceful?

Our tech is focused on two parts of the value chain that consumers own: purchasing and utilisation. For purchasing, I think a big part of the problem is that people don't understand their style so buy items and wear them just a couple of times before deciding they no longer like them.

The artificial intelligence we are building will be able to identify your style, help you maximize what you already have, and only then suggest sustainable items that we know you will love and, above all, love to repeat wearing. You can already use Whering to try before you buy - adding items into your wardrobe and creating outfits - ensuring you will get maximum usage out of an item before purchasing.

The app uses an intricate style matrix and personality test to create the ideal styling environment for each customer. The user can then use these images to create outfits themselves or use the 'Dress Me' function, and Whering's algorithm will provide outfit suggestions.

For utilization, you can already track how many times an item has been worn in your wardrobe, and soon, Wherers will be able to get access to a custom dashboard - focused on useful stats for you to improve your wardrobe's carbon emissions. What could be better than knowing how much you wear an item to be able to properly evaluate the value that your clothes bring to your life?

Where do you envision yourself to be in the long run and what are your future goals for the company?

potential to minimize the impact of fast fashion and reduce clothing waste and pollution on a global scale. As a small company with big ambitions, we want to inspire others to aim high. Whering plans to work with partners to further tackle the fashion industry's waste issues and prevent the 350k tons of clothing that end up in landfills each year in the UK. Users will find recommendations of where to mend, repurpose or donate their items, or, as they are already digitized, sell or rent items through third-party API integrations. We want to work with big brands like Depop, Vinted, Selfridges, and other slow fashion figures to grow our brand and provide the best possible platform for all sustainable fashion needs.

Our mission is to extend the life cycle of the clothes we already own (and that are perhaps sitting idle in our closets). We are hoping to reduce the carbon and water footprint of consumers by focusing on the two parts of the value chain that they control: purchasing and utilization.

Through digitization and machine learning, Wherers can track what they wear and understand their style. We encourage outfit repeating!

What would be your advice to budding women entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the industry?

My advice would be to trust your passion and go for it as soon as you get the urge. My mantra is carpe diem, which means no time like the present. I believe in seizing the moment and doing what makes you happy. This mantra carried me through my decision to leave my job in finance and focus on doing something I enjoy that has a positive impact on people and the planet. Life is too short to wait around for the right time to do something. When you have an idea and a passion, and you can get together a team of like-minded and motivated people, the world is your oyster.

It is amazing how far having a great concept and being open-minded can get you, even with little money to start off with. As a company, we are proudly ambitious, and this has favoured us throughout our journey, and we have so much more to come.

Our large-scale plans for the Whering app have the

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Accomplishing Most Worthy Goals with Cheerful Leadership

Visionary Leadership deliver great results by their remarkable ability to hold people together for accomplishing the most cherished goals of the organization they are leading.

Leadership is not just about philosophy but about proving it practically. Common people follow what great leaders do.

The standards set by great leaders become the norm for the common people. Charismatic leaders lead by being genuinely exemplary. They live the essence and preach it.

They say what they mean, and they mean what they say.

Their brilliant personality and brilliant traits help them to bring out the best in others for great causes.

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eadership is the ability to inspire people to pursue the most important business objectives. It is the ability to bring out the best in others to get the job done most diligently and creatively. One essential trait that counts to lead by example is being charismatic.

Charismatic leadership is a potential leadership style to lead the people in the right direction for the worthiest causes. It is driven by inspiring traits like excellent communication skills, exemplary attitude, cheerfulness, harmony between words and actions, persistence, and an appealing personality.

Charismatic leadership is characterized by a great balance of amazing talent as well as brilliant temperament.

Charismatic leaders have happiness in their smiles, gravity in their voice, grace in their walk, and command over their words. They have the knack of pushing others to great heights. They become good mentors and good guides.

In the world of temptations and distractions, everyone needs a charismatic leader to help them stay away from unnecessary temptations and distractions. Charismatic leaders keep people focused on achieving their goals. They

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Charismatic leaders are not rigid. They are highly flexible.

They ignore or overlook the minor offenses or mistakes by their employees or teammates. They inspire their employees to make mistakes as learning experiences. They don’t force their opinions on others. They respect the individual’s will and their creativity. This helps them in nurturing the creative spirit in the organization. They sharpen their personal and professional attributes to be the most effective business leader. Coolness, common sense, communication practice, charm and cheer, confidence, honesty, and humility are the most essential traits of charismatic leaders.

Moreover, they are very cheerful in their approach. They always think of win-win solutions. They respond to situations with coolness and common sense. They are very good communicators because of their great communication practice. Charm and cheer is the most attractive trait of charismatic leaders. They know that half the job is done if they succeed in making themselves and their employees happy and cheerful. They believe that care of another half job will be taken by hard work and their ability to divorce themselves from negativity and stay joyful, and maintain the same joyful atmosphere in their team members.

Confidence, honesty, and humility are in their genes. They understand that confidence is fundamental to success in any field. Their honest and humble approach helps them to be grounded to pursue their goals with grit and determination.

They are high vibrational at all times. They don’t tune into negative frequencies. They know that they can get the job done if they stick to the process. They enjoy the process than just celebrating the result. They fight with competence, confidence, and cheerfulness and celebrate success without being complacent or casual. They keep themselves calm in all situations and aim to deliver more than needed or expected from them.

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Deirdre Mc Gettrick Founder and CEO ufurnish.com

Deirdre Mc Gettrick Offering Wide Range of Furnishings

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hile architecture provides the framework for space, setting up vibe and mood requires suitable furnishings and interiors. A welldesigned room speaks volumes about the atmosphere one wants to convey. To provide customers with the perfect furnishing products that they seek, Deirdre Mc Gettrick, founded ufurnish.com, which has a mission to change the way we all shop for furniture and furnishings.

As the CEO, Deirdre provides a platform that enables consumers to easily search, discover, compare, and shop furniture products on one website across the entire retail market. In our endeavor to find “The 10 Most Inspiring Women Leaders to Follow in 2022,” we came across Deirdre. We talked with her to understand how she elevates different aspects of her business.

Below are the highlights of the interview: Brief our audience about your journey as a business leader until your current position at the company. What challenges have you had to overcome to reach where you are today?

As a child, I loved all things interiors, visiting furniture shops, and looking at images from the property section of the newspaper. After a career in banking spanning a decade, I bought my first home and was super excited about the prospect of furnishing it with all my saved inspiration designs. Alas, the excitement turned to frustration as I was

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unable to find the perfect products for my vision. This led to the business idea that has become ufurnish.com. I was solving a consumer problem, and that consumer was me.

Leaving my career in banking meant walking away from a well-remunerated role and taking the risk of starting a company, something I had no experience with. I had to overcome all my doubts and really believe in the solution I was bringing for consumers. The key I realized to starting and growing a business is that you need help. You will never be the best at every skillset, so get people on board who can complement your skills. Together we are stronger.

Tell us something more about the company and its mission and vision.

I am the founder of ufurnish.com, an online search, and discovery website for home furniture and furnishings. At ufurnish.com, we bring 150+ furniture retailers onto one website to make finding the perfect item of furniture easy for the consumers, akin to how Autotrader aggregates cars, Skyscanner aggregates airlines, and Rightmove for real estate search in the UK. At ufurnish.com, your dream home is our mission.

Enlighten us on how you have made an impact in the industry through your expertise in the market.

I started the business from the perspective of a consumer who wanted to recreate a home design based on all the home inspiration I had collected over the years. By being the person, you are actually solving the problem for; it

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The 10 Most Inspiring Women Leaders to Follow in 2022 helps to keep clear in your mind the solution that is required while putting aside other influencing factors such as shareholders, retailers and all other stakeholders. The consumer is always kept at the core of my decision-making process.

Describe in detail the values and the work culture that drives your organization.

We have five core values at ufurnish.com, Honesty, Integrity, Fairness, Simplicity, and Sustainability. We describe ourselves as akin to a sports team; we are highperforming with a desire to deliver results. We work hard to create the change required in the furniture industry. To do this, however, we need to be open, transparent, and honest in our opinions and feedback. We encourage people to speak up, share their views, but once a decision is made

based on the facts available at the time, everyone lines up behind that decision for the overall good of the team. We keep simplicity and fairness at our core and operate in the most sustainable way possible, both for 1) the environment and 2) maintaining sustainable relationships with all our stakeholders from team members, retailers, consumers, and shareholders.

Undeniably, technology is playing a significant role in almost every sector. How are you leveraging technological advancements to make your solutions resourceful?

For ufurnish.com, what is critical is developing autonomous systems that serve many purposes within our business, whether it be data processing, integrating disparate systems, or the use of machine learning tools to improve the

ufurnish.com allows you to search furniture and home furnishing ranges from 150+ retailers all on one website.

accuracy and quality of data. These are the things we constantly implement, analyze, and refine today and will continue to do so into the future.

If given a chance, what change would you like to bring to the industry?

I am the ultimate champion of the consumer, and if the industry can change to make improvements for the consumer, that is always a step in the right direction. I am passionate about increasing the amount of choice available to consumers to help them make better-informed buying decisions. By bringing together all retailers, regardless of size, the strength of the brand, marketing budgets, or a number of products, I believe ufurnish.com is creating that change.

What, according to you, could be the next big change in the industry? How is your company preparing to be a part of that change?

The supply chain will be the biggest challenge over the coming decade, with the impact of limited resources, expensive shipping rates, and ever-changing trading rules (such as Brexit in the UK), meaning that the supply chain will be interrupted. As ufurnish.com is one step detached from the supply, we seek to help the consumer find their perfect furniture items by showing them what is actually available in the market.

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Where do you envision yourself to be in the long run, and what are your future goals for the company?

The vision of ufurnish.com is to be the world’s largest search and discovery platform for home furniture and furnishings. That is my core focus for the future, as it takes years to build a truly successful company. For example, Airbnb is over 13 years old, having been founded in 2008. I envisage myself leading the company through the startup phase into growth and entering maturity as a globally recognized brand.

What would be your advice to budding women entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the industry?

Network and learn from others who have achieved similar things to your goal. You can’t and won’t avoid every mistake, but something you can learn from others’ journeys to help you achieve your goal easier.

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Dr. Shruti Kohli

Lead Data Scientist, Innovation Lead, Innovation Lab DWP Digital, Department for Work and Pensions

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Shruti

Kohli 38 | February 2022

Using Digital Skills and Power of Data Science to Make a Difference in Society www.insightssuccess.com

The 10 Most Inspiring Women Leaders to Follow in 2022

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eaders born with a knack to help people with sheer goodwill have tremendous capabilities to impact the lives of millions positively. These leaders are natural givers and understand how their work can create a disruptive transformation with their skills and expertise.

Akin to such qualities is Dr. Shruti Kohli, the Lead Data Scientist, and Innovation Lead, who is passionate about helping people. She believes in supporting a significant change in the lives of millions of citizens, taxpayers, using the power of data science.

While Dr. Shruti joined the Civil Service in 2017, her feeling and motivation are as fresh as day one. Every morning there is a spring in her step to do more as she feels proud as a public servant applying her digital skills to make a difference in society. Dr. Shruti works for DWP Digital, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) technology arm. She drives innovative projects to support DWP services. The role involves working in close relationships with colleagues in digital, non-digital, cross-government to support technology-driven solutions that can help them serve better.

We at Insights Success caught up with Dr. Shruti to know more about her journey and her overall contribution to people's lives through DWP Digital.

Below are the highlights of the interview: Brief our audience about your journey as a business leader until your current position at the company. What challenges have you overcome to reach where you are today?

Overall, I have more than a decade of experience leading digital transformation, data innovation, leadership, and culture change projects. Being an academician in the past has given me a good appetite to learn quickly and share my learnings. I have always taken a proactive approach towards my learning and development, which I've brought into every workplace. I create new opportunities for myself and accept every opportunity that comes my way.

My career developments have come a long way in mentoring, leading data and tech-driven projects, and building relationships. I have always taken the initiative and time to enrich myself by using the civil-service learning framework, attending professional training such as the Oxford Leadership Executive program, and doing technical certifications to be a step ahead.

I'm a good listener, effective communicator, and confident individual who believes in the power of teamwork. I www.insightssuccess.com

“We're building a reputation for pushing the digital agenda by delivering some of the largest tech projects in Europe.” encourage my team to make decisions and support them, especially in critical times.

Managing the team has been an enriching experience; it has enhanced my situational leadership qualities; for example, I've simply learned when I need to be 'on the balcony or the dance floor.' Looking after the well-being and progress of the team and keeping their trust is very important for me. I see myself as an adaptive, but at the same time, authentic leader.

I go beyond the corporate mindset, which helps problemsolving and promotes creative thinking. Plus, over a decade of rich experience encompasses various challenges, e.g., stakeholder engagement, project deliverables, team motivation.

Here are a few highlights from my career journey so far: • Volunteering as a mentor in the GDS Data Science Accelerator program.

• Promoting diversity and inclusion – Had been a Member of the Shadow Board representing the BAME community and participating and influencing the Digital Executive team and their engagements.

• I'm a member of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Women chapter. In addition, I'm also a member of our internal DWP Women's Network. Both of these networks are focused on supporting and celebrating women in digital.

• Cross-government – Regularly participating, speaking in public sector conferences, mentoring at civil service live events, and organizing meetups.

• Supporting wider community - Universities on DWP Research interest, charities (e.g., DataKind) • Recently, I was shortlisted as the Innovator of the year

by Women in Tech Excellence.

• Initiated SAIL(Synthetic Data Analytics Innovation lab program) in the department and work got acknowledged and further idea got short listed in Civil 39 | February 2022

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Service Synthetic Data challenge, https://www.datachallenge.uk

Tell us something more about the company and its mission and vision.

DWP is the UK's biggest public service department. DWP has over 84,000 staff located across around 800 sites, supported by 15 agencies and public bodies that administer the State Pension and a range of working age, disability, and ill-health benefits. DWP provides support to 20 million claimants and customers.

The Departments' key priorities are: • Running an effective welfare system that enables people to achieve financial independence by aiding and guidance into employment.

• Creating a fair and affordable welfare system that improves the life chances of children.

• Delivering outstanding services to our customers and claimants.

Enlighten us on how you have impacted the industry through your expertise in the market.

Leading an Innovation Lab in government is like an entrepreneurial venture, as our goals are different from the regular delivery teams. The projects are generally the first footer, challenging the perceived thinking. I recently triggered a synthetic data project in the lab to innovate the way the department shares and learns through external collaborations. https://dwpdigital.blog.gov.uk/2021/06/18/why-syntheticdata-could-be-useful-for-a-government-department/ You can find out more about the work we're doing at DWP's Innovation Lab in our podcast episode: https://dwpdigital.blog.gov.uk/2021/05/12/podcast-digitalinnovation-at-the-uks-largest-government-department/ 40 | February 2022

Describe in detail the values and the work culture that drives your organization.

Our organization uses a structured decision-making framework. Decision-makers work in an agile way and use their team perspectives and more information to distill their judgment. The department garners potential for digital technology to improve governance and decision-making as our ability to aggregate data and make an informed decision has been utterly revolutionized.

Being in the Innovation Lab, I would say, decision-making here is more revolutionary, and scope is more systemic than other businesses that are evolutionary and contained to their deliverables. Leaders are more engaged, communicative, and active listeners. This openness works as a catalyst for transforming organizational culture to accept more revolutionary decisions that would evolve the ways of working.

If given a chance, what change would you like to bring to the industry?

Open Sharing, leveraging Crowd Sourcing innovation.

Where do you envision yourself to be in the long run and what are your future goals for the company?

I see myself having grown both in expertise in my field as well as with the company. I want to continue to grow in my leadership role, contributing more to the organization's growth. I want to continue using my technical and data science skills to lead projects transforming our society.

What would be your advice to budding women entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the industry?

Take ownership of your career. Dream big, grow your network, have a mentor at every step of your career. Having humility and strong will is a solid combo. Also, don't forget to pull up others to grow with you. www.insightssuccess.com

Erna Grasz

CEO Asante Africa Foundation

Providing academic support, life skills training, livelihood skill development, and opportunity creation.

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Erna Grasz The 10 Most Inspiring Women Leaders to Follow in 2022

Empowering Youth to Architect Their Own Future

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n today’s world, the importance of education is unparalleled. The better education the younger generation receives, the more they will contribute to the development of communities that will assist in shaping a better tomorrow. However, not every child is fortunate enough to receive a quality education due to various circumstances; their potential and talent don’t flourish with lack of access. After witnessing the situation in rural East Africa, Erna Grasz co-founded Asante Africa Foundation to fill this gap.

As Erna transitioned to corporate leadership in Silicon Valley, these skills enabled her to lead diverse teams through ambiguity and chaos by providing vision, structure, and purpose to their technical tasks. For Erna, forward progress is always driven by a greater purpose.

Asante Africa is rooted in UN Sustainable Development Goals; it achieves results through interconnected programs designed to alleviate poverty by fostering the development of educated and resilient youth. As the CEO of Asante Africa Foundation, Erna is passionate about the power of quality education. She understands the challenges in managing the complex priorities of health, safety, security, and education, recognizing the fragility and linkage between education and food and economic stability. Apart from playing an essential role in assisting the younger generation with education, she is frequently on the global stage, promoting executive leadership, innovating education programs, and promoting sustainable philanthropy versus charity.

Mission & Vision Asante Africa Foundation, a global social impact organization, is focused on “Educating Children and Transforming Worlds” through academic support, skill development, and opportunity creation for youth in rural East Africa. Erna expresses that education is the first and most crucial step in emerging from poverty.

The Journey A single mother raised Erna in Texas, facing challenging conditions. Erna learned early in life that education was an excellent enabler and personal resilience was the key to thriving in difficult circumstances. Her focused drive led to her graduating at the top of her class in the man’s world of Electrical Engineering. Her professional career started at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, leading innovative teams developing system solutions for the nation’s greatest technical challenges.

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Erna co-founded Asante Africa Foundation after visiting rural communities lacking access to education in rural East Africa. She and her two African co-founders were inspired to pursue that greater purpose: Educating Children.

Asante Africa takes this a step further in all programs with locally-led, youth-led, and girl-led programs. Asante Africa’s young people have a saying: “If it’s about us, it can’t be without us.” It challenges and drives the motivation of the foundation’s work - simple, scalable interventions can provide young people with the tools they need to thrive.

Solutions must be locally led and embraced by the community. This is the best way to ensure sustainable impact and gender equity.

Leaving the Mark As sustainable progress in rural East Africa requires a nontraditional approach, a top-down solution is not likely to work in the private and education sectors. Asante Africa programs are designed to be locally led and implemented to ensure the solutions address local challenges and are embraced and sustained by the community. Erna pushes this even further with youth-led initiatives where students actively engage in Asante Africa’s “Learn-Do-Teach”

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academic programs and embrace Pay-it-Forward principles, ensuring their efforts have immediate impact on students, their families, and their community. Youth become empowered and confident, knowing their ideas can lead to local solutions to local challenges and ultimately, sustainable impact.

The efforts of Asante Africa’s programs were recognized when it received the USAID Young Women Transform Prize in 2018 for the girl-led Leadership and Entrepreneurship Program. In 2019, Asante Africa was recognized as a Top 10 finalist for the Drucker Innovation Prize for the “Learn-Do-Teach” model. The Obama Foundation invited Asante Africa to participate in the Global Summit. In the following year, Asante Africa received the Bronze Award for Sub-Saharan Education Innovation.

Shared Values are the Foundation for Change Having rooted values in an organization is essential as it plants the seeds from which it will grow from. A set of core values guides Asante Africa Foundation: Youth and Women Led, Inclusive Leadership, Pay-it-Forward, Innovation and Continuous Learning, Partnerships, and Accountability.

These drive all efforts toward sustainable impact while ensuring transparency and accountability to all stakeholders. Erna states that these efforts impact Asante Africa’s youth thriving by learning, doing, and teaching others. Their parents and communities are involved and embrace the values of education and Pay-it-Forward initiatives. The value of education, entrepreneurship training, and hard work is clear and is spreading to neighboring schools and communities.

Assistive Technology Technology is a great enabler, and Erna expresses that during the pandemic when schools were closed, Asante Africa sustained education for youth in the most rural communities by bringing digital content to small learning groups housed under trees or other community locations.

Modern quality education is increasingly available digitally, with or without the internet, and the interface engages students, unlike the memorization of conventional classroom settings. By embracing digital technology, African youth will be at the forefront of innovation, prepared to build peaceful, more vibrant communities and thrive in the global economy, Erna mentions.

learning and education. Technology is changing how knowledge is delivered, and the world is increasingly connected, enabling the distribution of content and ideas in real-time. Erna continues that technology is a key ingredient in conquering the greatest challenges of our times: Climate change, health, gender equity, and ending poverty. In her opinion, technology-enabled youth will be more successful in business, providing for their families, building local economies, respectfully utilizing resources, and growing the middle class. Technology brings the world closer together, spreads ideas, enables local and global commerce, and enables positive action toward peaceful collaboration. Asante Africa Foundation is leading that change in rural East Africa.

Planning Ahead Asante Africa Foundation aims to impact an additional one million young people in East Africa by 2025. It plans for its students, staff, and alumni to be recognized for their community success and impact. Erna states that women and youth will lead the programs, and the funding will be more globally diversified, with almost half of the foundation’s resources coming from the countries where it operates with lean operations and strong governance. She says, “These are all key ingredients of a thriving, sustainable organization with deep impacts on tomorrow’s leaders.”

Empowering Guidance No one ever promised life would be easy. Erna’s mother used to say “If you are striving to be good, it will be hard. If you are striving to be great, it will be even harder”. Erna says “Expect difficult times and take it one step at a time, celebrating the small successes along the journey.

Eventually you will be achieving greatness.” Erna encourages budding women entrepreneurs to think big and take calculated risks with the simple philosophy of “Trust your instincts, intuition, and intellect. Feel the fear and do it anyway!”

Erna’s work is living proof that big challenges require bold leaders capable of listening, learning, and acting in the best interests of those they serve. “The future is being created by empowered, skilled, and passionate young people. Asante Africa will continue educating and creating opportunities for youth determined to architect that bold future for themselves and their world,” Erna concludes.

The Next Big Change Erna expresses that the pandemic taught several valuable lessons, including why classroom walls do not limit 44 | February 2022

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The 10 Most Inspiring Women Leaders to Follow in 2022

Katerina Trajchevska

Shifting the Tides of Workplace Ideologies

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he modern business world requires an innovative approach in workplaces; we have witnessed the change from cubicles to open workplaces; however, work culture demands another change. With a perception to bring the following desired change to workspaces, Katerina Trajchevska co-founded Adeva, enabling companies to work remotely by creating various solutions based on years of experience in the field.

As the CEO, Katerina strongly advocates that the future of work is not about where you work from but what you deliver. Adeva's efforts hit the nail on the head in the unprecedented pandemic that allowed businesses to operate remotely, expand their roots globally, break traditional methodologies' barriers, implying Adeva's concept of Work Without Boundaries.

Enabling work without

boundaries by connecting organizations with tech talent across the world.

www.insightssuccess.com

Below are the highlights of the interview: Brief our audience about your journey as a business leader until your current position at the company. What challenges have you overcome to reach where you are today?

Back when I was starting my career, my country didn't offer too many opportunities to work on exciting projects. The outsourcing industry was on the rise, and most of what we saw were legacy projects and unexciting work. The startup world was out of reach, together with all the fun challenges that came with it.

I started freelancing in search of more interesting work and instantly loved the flexibility it offered. The challenge was, though, to keep the work supply steady - it was too risky and unpredictable. That's how Adeva was born. Searching for ways to improve our own freelancing experience together with my business partner, we realized that we could do the same for everyone who wanted the flexibility of remote work without compromising on the stability of regular employment.

There were plenty of challenges on the way, especially because the companies that could provide a more stable workload were the ones that were more inclined toward the traditional way of work. Educating enterprises about the benefits of remote work is a major task. Now with the pandemic, we faced a massive shift in the industry, which accelerated the adaptation for many companies and enabled us to grow much faster.

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Tell us something more about the company and its mission and vision.

Adeva is a remote tech professionals' network driven by the purpose of enabling work without boundaries for tech professionals worldwide. We're passionate advocates for remote work, and our network is distributed in over 30 countries across the globe.

Using a community-driven approach, we engage some of the brightest talents in the industry, enabling organizations to scale their engineering teams fast. By cutting out unnecessary expenses and minimizing fees, Adeva helps companies reduce their hiring costs while providing longterm, remote opportunities for tech talent worldwide.

Enlighten us on how you have made an impact in the industry through your expertise in the market.

We've been fully remote for five years, and over the years, we dealt with most of the challenges companies are faced with now, having to adapt to the new normal quickly. Our approach has always been to work out our problems, find a solution and once we're certain it works, offer it to our customers to facilitate their work with distributed teams.

Whether it's by educating companies on implementing strong processes for remote working or providing infrastructure for easier management of their remote contractors, we've always used our expertise to enable companies to work remotely without limiting themselves to a certain geographic location.

Describe in detail the values and the work culture that drives your organization.

We stand behind the premise that it's never about how much you work but what you deliver. What value do you create.

That's the main thing we want to pass on to every member of our community and each one of our clients.

Being a people-driven company, we measure success in the opportunities we create for people to enjoy life more, to live the lifestyle they always wanted. For some of our colleagues, that means to live and work from a different location every couple of months; for others, to surf or climb mountain peaks because all they need to do to afford it is pack their laptop and hit the road. For most of them, though, it's the flexibility to balance their personal and professional lives, to spend more time with their families, or move to a more peaceful location without worrying about the commute or lack of work opportunities.

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Those are the experiences that drive us. Knowing not that you helped someone make a living, but that you helped them live the life they want.

Undeniably, technology is playing a significant role in almost every sector. How are you leveraging technological advancements to make your solutions resourceful?

Technology is imperative to our ability to grow and serve our talent and customers. We completely rely on our platform for achieving that. On one side, we have people interested in remote jobs who can apply to join regardless of if they're actively looking for a job or not. On the other side, clients can easily sign up and post their job requirements to start the hiring process.

The magic happens in the back office, where we have a smart search and matching process to find the best fit for a given position and make an introduction. We're increasingly automating the repetitive steps of our manual processes to be able to focus more on creating value for our clients and our network.

Where do you envision yourself to be in the long run, and what are your future goals for the company?

Our mission is to enable work without boundaries for 1 million people by 2030. To support companies and individuals untap their full potential and remove borders from work by creating an infrastructure for everyone who wants to work remotely.

With more and more companies opening up to working with distributed talent, a completely new set of challenges will arise dealing with fake identities, the inability to stay compliant with local laws, the overhead of managing and paying people across borders. Utilizing our experience and the obstacles we've overcome to get where we are today, we aim to solve each of these challenges for companies across the world and enable more individuals to access opportunities that never existed before.

What would be your advice to budding women entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the industry?

The glass can be half full or half empty, depending on how you look at it. We're far from having a favorable environment for women entrepreneurs, but just because of that, there are so many communities and networks that support women and create opportunities that would be hard to get otherwise. Make it your strength to use them.

www.insightssuccess.com

The Need to Embrace Tech-Transformation Approach

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www.insightssuccess.com

Tech Talk

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here is a wide world out there full of opportunities that test us in every part of the journey. But along with success, what follows opportunities is challenges. So, what makes this journey tolerable for companies and especially for business leaders? It is the transformation brought by technology that has changed the life of everyone and made things easier for us. The industries welcome this transformation, and even the leaders are embracing it. The implementation of innovation and technology in the workplace has created many opportunities, due to which companies and leaders were able to bring much-needed changes in their respective sectors. This shows that everything is possible - only with the right intent, knowledge, and the approach of always learning.

Circle of Transformation As they say, if you stay in one place for a long time, you become that place. That is why you need to keep updating, innovating, and re-innovating yourself continuously. Today, the drive to turn innovative in their approach has become a necessity for leaders. This journey goes through a lot of challenges, failures, and ultimately successes. But it is the experience that matters the most. Evolving according to the situations and rising in all the challenges will define you.

Recently, the pandemic emphasized the need to embrace digitalization as many businesses had to go digital. The bottom line is business leaders will always have to be prepared for such unprecedented times, and technology is one of the factors that will keep you ahead of the curve.

Leading Strongly A leader with diverse talent is the first choice for many companies, and it is about a matter of time that it becomes a criterion for today’s business leader.

Today, many leaders are focused on building their successful business careers in the technological field. The great news is that we are building a generation of business leaders who are bringing a change to make this world a better place to live. Sundar Pichai, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, etc. are some prominent names who have brought a drastic transformation in the business world.

Conclusion There are many possibilities brought by technological advancements that are yet to be explored. Finally, we can conclude by saying that by combining technology, innovation, and business acumen, business leaders will cross their paths with transformations they want to bring in this world.

And today, there is a dire need for businesses and leaders to leverage technological advancements to thrive in their domains.

www.insightssuccess.com

51 | February 2022

Natalie Cramp CEO Profusion

The 10 Most Inspiring Women Leaders to Follow in 2022

Natalie Cramp An Accomplished Tech Leader Leading by Example

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omen have paved their way in the tech space and achieved remarkable milestones. They have climbed the leadership ladder in tech organizations by bringing different perspectives, skill sets, and approaches to the table. One such striking instance of the above statement is Natalie Cramp. Through her leadership, Natalie has aptly exemplified how a tech company can thrive by having women at the helm.

Natalie is the CEO of Profusion, a customer and business analytics agency that supports clients of all sizes to monetise their data. She brings more than a decade of experience leading private, public, and third sector organizations through significant periods of innovation and change to the company. At Profusion, she leads a team of 80 consultants, data scientists, data architects, developers, and digital marketing experts.

We at Insights Success got into conversation with Natalie to learn more about her journey and dynamic contribution to the tech space Below are the highlights of the interview: Brief our audience about your journey as a business leader until your current position at Profusion. What challenges you had to overcome to reach where you are today?

My journey as a business leader has been about helping people solve problems, be that for their transformation programs for their businesses, www.insightssuccess.com

supporting to deliver the London 2012 Olympics, or tackling some of the challenges we face as a society that will have a broader public benefit. I truly believe data is the way to solve our problems. As CEO at Profusion, we support people to tackle the challenges their organizations face using the power of data science.

There are few female CEOs in data, and whilst it can be a challenge, it is also an opportunity to add more diversity of thought and approach. One of the things I am very determined to do as a leader is to surround myself with as many people with differing backgrounds and approaches as possible.

Tell us something more about the company and its mission and vision.

Profusion helps businesses to grow using data and AI. We believe that data is often an untapped asset - widely available and frequently underused. We create multidisciplinary teams to look at people, technology, and culture to embed data-led ways of thinking and operating.

We don't just help you create the data strategy that will support your business strategy, but we ensure that you have the technology you need to deliver it, the people who are skilled and confident to both deliver the projects and put the insight into action in their everyday roles, and when you need us to, deliver projects themselves.

Enlighten us on how you have made an impact in the tech industry through your expertise in the market.

Outside of working with companies to deliver cutting-edge 53 | February 2022

“Data is the untapped asset on your balance sheet and Profusion translate that asset into profit for your business.” data projects, I'm proud of the work Profusion has done to promote the ethical use of data, improve data literacy and drive better representation in the industry.

Our Data Academy is geared towards both developing data literacy in organizations and helping underrepresented groups get into the data profession. Often businesses don't have the data literacy in the leadership of the organization to ask the right questions of their data, understand the art of the possible, and execute on the insight they receive. We enable organizations through training and support programs to develop their knowledge and confidence. We also support young people from diverse backgrounds to get their first opportunities in data, with exposure to commercial projects.

Describe in detail the values and the work culture that drives your organization.

Diversity and inclusion are at the heart of our organization.

Profusion embraces different ways of thinking and working because we fundamentally believe that this drives better results. We are proud that our team of 80 people is made up of over 20 nationalities with more than 25 languages spoken.

We have a foundation, Profusion Cares, which seeks to use data with purpose and impact to make a difference in society – this ranges from pro bono data projects to a big focus on supporting the next generation to embrace the data profession and secure opportunities in this very exciting field.

Finally, innovation is unsurprisingly an important tenet of our culture. We partner with leading Universities to bring the latest academic thinking to our commercial clients and have won multiple awards for this partnership working.

If given a chance, what change would you like to bring in the tech space?

Improve diversity in the data and AI industry. As long as 54 | February 2022

there are limited backgrounds and ways of thinking for our practitioners and leaders, there will be limited progress. We are trying to contribute to this through our Data Academy where we bring candidates from different backgrounds into the industry and retrain existing leaders with different skills into data and AI. We operate on a model where for each course we sell, we gift places to education and charity leaders and teams to also gain the benefits of this learning.

What, according to you, could be the next big change in the tech industry? How is your company preparing to be a part of that change?

Technology moves at a faster pace than the law, and we have seen many instances where data and AI have been used poorly, in invasive or unsafe ways. The field of Data Ethics is growing rapidly and is set up to be the next big change in the industry.

There is always more than a business could do than perhaps it should do. When a business could use the data to help, but a customer may consider that an invasion of their privacy, where should the balance fall?

It's hard to have a simple answer, so our Data Ethics Advisory Board is helping us to create The Good Data Guide, a set of principles and advice that companies can use when they don't necessarily have ethicists available.

What would be your advice to budding women entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the tech industry?

Recognize the skills you bring – it is not all about being able to code. Data is a collaboration between technology, technical skills, and business, and business understanding is critical. Understand the assets you bring to the table and find a role that lets you use those strengths.

Secondly, ask for help and support – people like to be useful, and there is a lot of support available: networking groups, educational charities, mentoring schemes, free online training, and much more. Until you talk to them, you won't know what you don't know. Ask for help before you need it, and don't forget you're never too old to do work experience.

Having a support network both personally and professionally is critical. It's not a lie that it is lonely at the top, and you need those people to help guide, challenge, connect, support, and listen to you – don't be afraid to ask.

All of us need help.

www.insightssuccess.com

The 10 Most Inspiring Women Leaders to Follow in 2022

Paige Arnof-Fenn Helping Businesses Tell Their Stories in Compelling Ways

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were very early to pioneer sharing resources on the marketing front (before my company, it was really only done with HR, legal, and accounting/finance).”

Paige did not plan on starting a company. She always wanted to go work for a global business and be a Fortune 500 CEO. When she was a student, she looked at leaders like Meg Whitman & Ursula Burns as her role models. She started Mavens & Moguls after beginning her career on Wall Street in the 80s and having a successful career in Corporate America at companies like Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola and then working at 3 different startups as the head of marketing. All 3 startups had positive exits. She took the leap right after 9/11 when the company she worked for cut their marketing. She had nothing to lose.

Inspired by her passion, we at Insights Success got into conversation with Paige to learn more about her journey and how she and Mavens & Moguls are meeting the branding needs of businesses.

eet Paige Arnof-Fenn, an avid marketer who turned her love for building brands into a profitable business called Mavens & Moguls.

Running a global marketing business provides her a platform to do work she truly enjoys with and for people she respects. "I get to set my priorities, I have time to travel (pre-Covid) and hang out with my inner circle, and I work out every day. It has been a journey to get here, but I am lucky to have found it. I love the autonomy, flexibility, and the fact that I know every day the impact that I have on my business," expresses Paige.

When Paige worked at big companies, she always felt the ball would roll with or without her, that if she got hit by a bus, someone new would be in her office right away. Now her DNA is in everything she does. She can trace every decision and sale to something she did or a decision she made, which is incredibly gratifying and fulfilling. Like most entrepreneurs, Paige is working harder and longer than ever, and she has never been happier. She asserts, "Working for yourself and building a business you started is incredibly rewarding and gratifying. It has been a lot of fun.

I joke that I am an accidental entrepreneur. I knew I had made it as an entrepreneur when Harvard wrote 2 case studies on my business a few years after I started it. We

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Below are the highlights of the interview: Tell us something more about Mavens & Moguls and its mission and vision.

My company's mission is to bring world-class marketing talent and expertise to organizations that want to make a difference in the world. We believe every organization deserves the right words and pictures to tell their story in compelling ways. Our vision is that all companies, regardless of size or budget, should have access to the best marketing talent on an outsourced basis.

Mavens & Moguls provides ideas that work to help our client partners build sustainable brands and profitable businesses.

www.insightssuccess.com

Paige Arnof-Fenn

Founder and CEO Mavens & Moguls

www.insightssuccess.com

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Where do you envision yourself to be in the long run and what are your future goals for Mavens & Moguls?

Successful businesses post-pandemic must be adaptable/agile, strong communicators, and have a growth mindset. They will be inclusive and collaborative because we never know when the next crisis will hit, so being able to adapt to change is critical. Staying nimble today is core to survival and ultimately success. We are measuring productivity going forward by what we get done; it is based on accomplishments, not activity.

My goal is to continue to build growth mindset teams because they never stop learning/experimenting. They are focused on the future and see opportunities ahead by creating a culture of learning/growth. It takes effort and a commitment to excellence for people to continually learn/grow, especially in a virtual/remote environment. I do not think there is one habit to keep teams sharp/fresh. I am using a combination of reading/learning online and off/attending conferences/talks/networking/ newsletters from influencers/TED talks/podcasts/finding mentors/listening to all feedback, good and bad. To stay relevant/keep growing, I try to encourage the team to prioritize professional development to keep skills fresh and stay on top of new trends/technologies.

Enlighten us on how you have made an impact in the Marketing niche through your expertise in the market.

We are storytellers and content creators who help our clients in compelling ways by finding the right words and pictures to create interest for their products and services.

Creating content is a great way to build your brand, increase your visibility more broadly, raise your profile, and ultimately attract more attention/clients/customers. I have always loved telling and listening to stories since childhood. In the early days of mankind, stories were a great way to communicate around the campfire, they are critical to the Bible, and they are still effective today.

People do not remember facts and figures, but if you tell them a story that touches them emotionally, you get their attention, and they want to hear more. People need to be educated, informed and/or entertained, so I love to figure out how best to tell a story in a way that makes people pay attention and breaks through the noise. When you share what you know -- your passion, your war stories, the good, bad and ugly -- the content will flow and pour out of you.

The stories will be interesting, and the lessons will be real; people will remember you and come back for more.

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What would be your advice to budding women entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the Marketing sector?

So much of success in marketing is about effective communications online and offline. My advice for success is to be a student for life, walk the streets and notice your surroundings. Do you know which movies won at the box office? Books on the NYT best seller list? Top Billboard and Grammy songs? Oscar winners? Why was Game of Thrones popular? Even if it is not your taste, you need to know about these things and have an opinion. A career in marketing and communications is about relevancy, so every day, I try to pay attention to pop culture, trends, etc. You have to keep your antenna up! You have to be driven, focused, intensely curious, and always be looking for the next way to make something better, be a good listener to clients, colleagues, feedback, the market to show respect for great ideas, and be a great communicator. With these traits and a strong work ethic, you increase the odds of succeeding.

www.insightssuccess.com