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SPOTLIGHT
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PLAYING AT THE TOP –
A Role for the Strong And a Place for Women in Tech
Close your eyes and think “boss”. Is “boss” a he? Or a she? You are likelier to conjure a male rather than a female image regardless of your own gender – and that’s expected. After all, women chief executives only account for a mere 8.1% in Fortune 500 businesses. To understand how this number translates in the male dominant tech industry, The IT Society chats with Stephanie Davis, Vice-President, Southeast Asia, Google, to find out.
THE IT SOCIETY / Issue 03/2021
STEPHANIE DAVIS Fellow, SCS Honouree, SG100WIT List 2021 Vice-President, Southeast Asia, Google Earliest Tech Experience: 1982 – Commodore 64, an 8-bit home computer, at a friend’s place, a school bus ride away Currently Reading: Taking a break from The Power of Geography by Tim Marshall to read Nothing is Impossible: America’s Reconciliation with Vietnam by Ted Osius A Google App You Can’t Live Without: Search, with an average of 50 queries a day Last Googled: When is Singapore’s monsoon season, really? Favourite Music Genre: Folk, with John Prine at the top of the list, but love being introduced to new artists, like Singapore’s Jasmine Sokko Pet Topic of the Moment: Climate change Favourite Way to Relax: Tennis (learnt it during pandemic), sailing (on most weekends), long walks in the evenings
Q: Question, SD: Stephanie Davis Q: There’s a growing focus on gender diversity in tech. Why is this so? SD: Roughly 50% of the world’s population is women, and as tech sets up to change the world for the better – it just makes sense to include women. For example, Google’s mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful to everyone. And without women leaders, or without female software engineers and coders, we will be missing an important link in our mission delivery.
