So, thanks a lot for joining. It's a pleasure to be here. Um I'm really happy to be part of this event. I've watched a couple of sessions so far and they're just great. Um I was just watching the previous one about being the only woman on the team.And that was really interesting and I do see uh I do find myself in that kind of uh situation. So it was very nice to relate to those experiences. Um So thank you all for uh joining this session. Uh It's about uh sharing some of my experience and thoughts about uh my journey from a kind of developer of all the way to being an executive in different contexts and in different uh companies. Uh It would be great if you also maybe shared a couple of thoughts within the uh chat section. Um because I'd love to have a bit of a conversation with you. It's not just about me sharing some thoughts, but it's also about, are you finding yourself here? This is it helpful for you? Are you finding it useful? So that would be really uh great to learn from you. So, uh this was the abstract of the session that I thought about. I thought there are uh these kind of questions that are on top of many of our uh minds. Uh Can we even have a career in technology? Uh Should we just drop it or can we uh go ahead and forge a career for ourselves in technology?

Is there space for women? Um How difficult would it be to progress once we've chosen such a path? And what kind of strategies uh can we actually apply to be successful? Um And we will talk a little bit about uh that. Um And I will share about the things that I found useful and hopefully those will also help you. Uh Of course, each path is different, but I think it's good for um for us to share experiences because if I had known some of these things earlier in my career, it would have helped me and maybe accelerated my path. And this is something that it would be nice to hear from you ladies maybe in the chat. Uh But uh does it feel lonely? Are you in such a situation? Uh Does it feel sometimes awkward? Uh because sometimes I think we have different perspectives for me. Uh It never felt awkward for instance to be in that situation, but maybe more because I didn't even think about uh not having a place in technology. Uh but it did feel sometimes lonely um because I was quite often in situations like the lady who was speaking before me where I was looking around the room and there was a full room of 50 men and myself as a woman.

Um It I was in situations where I was maybe the only woman on a team of technologists. So sometimes it did feel a little bit lonely and people are very nice and accommodating. And I think some of our biggest friends and uh strongest allies are men. But sometimes to me, it did feel like that my sister, someone is already saying, yeah, that's me also and don't be scared of that. Uh It's happened before and it's just a matter of mindset, right? And finding your uh friends in that kind of situation. Um This is me, I won't go into a lot of detail, but just so you understand why I am uh passionate about speaking about these things. So I did start um with studying computer science. Um And I was the one of the five women in a group of about 150 people. Um So it was again a bit um lonely from that perspective. Uh But I did start uh from the beginning thinking about technology. Uh I know other ladies who have started on different paths and then switch to technology, which is also great. And I have seen people who maybe have studied uh history or arts and then have become some of the best developers. So don't be concerned if you're in any kind of situation like that, anyone can learn technology nowadays and can really make a nice career on it.

Um So whether you're like me and started from that uh from the beginning or you're just discovering it, go ahead if you think you're passionate about it. Then uh over the time I moved through different types of roles, I became one of the strategic advisors of sales Force, which is a global company, uh technology uh provider, uh 50,000 plus employees. It was an amazing experience. I learned a lot. Then I decided I, I actually want to move on this kind of uh sea level path. And I moved to Cap Gemini uh big systems, integrator delivery of projects globally, again, very large company. And that was the CTO of their sales force practice in the UK. And after that, I moved to um a large financial services institution and I was the CIO for um one of their practices, technology practices um worldwide. Uh Now I've started my own company, which is at the same time, super exciting and a little bit scary because having a start up with COVID cr uh COVID Times is not uh the most reassuring thing, but thank God it's going well. So I've decided to uh go ahead um and start my entrepreneurial journey and became the CIO CEO of uh Ino True. Um I've been in technology for about 20 years. Um I did have a four years career break.

I had to re invent myself and my career several times during these 20 years. Um, and I still managed to get to, uh, uh an executive level. Um If that was my goal and this is really what I would encourage you to do. Don't be, um, don't take any setback as the final step. Think about where you want to get to and still drive in towards that direction. Uh Question about career breaks. Um That's a very good one. We probably won't have time because we only have 20 minutes in this session. But if we do have some time, I will share a little bit about uh the career break. Um I did also speak uh several times about that and the strategies I applied. So happy to talk Erica, if you want to reach out to me separately on linkedin, so I can um share some thoughts um then moving forward the first thing. So I said I would share five major tips that helps me in the first place. Something that to the point of I wish I knew earlier in my career, what type of executive or leader would you like to be? That's important because uh there are career paths. Even if you start in technology, you can go more towards kind of revenue and sales uh areas, you can go more towards technology.

So if you want to become a Chief Revenue Officer if you want to become a chief executive officer, maybe you need to think about things and plan it a little bit differently than if you want to become, for instance, a Chief digital Officer or Chief Innova uh chief Information Officer, there are different paths and different things that you should be focusing on.

Um, depending on which way you want to go. Then if you think of, um, do I want to become um more like a leader in a business area or do I want to drive operations? Do I want to help uh companies uh manage their uh people, their operations uh or do I want maybe to be more in the business creation side? Do I want to be on the product creation side? Do I want to do delivery of projects or create uh projects? Again, it's different uh things that you should be focusing on and a very important point. There's no way in just saying I want to make a social impact. I want to be maybe the leader of a social enterprise and I want to have a nonprofit organization that I'm leading that is making an impact in the world. I know some amazing places. It is an amazing people who are, for instance, helping uh parents who have gone through a career break, uh get back into work and it's a social enterprise. So it's not something that they do for a commercial pro uh profit and that's perfectly fine. Uh So just think about the area. Do you, do I want to make a career in uh commercial, in the commercial space or do I want to make a social impact? You can also do both, of course, at different points in time.

Uh And then what kind of path do I actually want to take? And for instance, if you think of going more in the uh business development directions or more sales and uh revenue, then uh learn about um industries, learn about um how you run a business, le learn about management and finance. So get all of those kind of um points that would help you eventually run a line of business or a business itself. Because as I uh went about things, I went a lot on the technology side and then when I wanted, so I had uh the roles of C CTO CIO, which was extremely interesting and aligned to my capabilities. But then when I wanted to switch to the business side, it was not that easy. I did not have the advantage that the people who had focused earlier on the business side had. So I had to retrain reprove myself and uh make an extra effort to get closer to that side.

Then if I think, think of the uh second tip I would give you is for me, it really helped to build strong, strong expertise, recognizable expertise and to think about my strengths. And uh this can have again, different shapes um and different um ways in, in which you project this expertise. But why do I think this is really important? You would think that at sea level, all you do is kind of manage people, manage businesses at higher level. The reality is, yes, you can be maybe that kind of leader uh and some do it well. But what my experience has been is it's most effective and it's best received if you actually are extremely knowledgeable in your area. So if you're, for instance, um running up Barclays, a financial services institution, right, you need to be a super expert in the industry or uh if you want to be a very credible and efficient cio like I was in Barclays and my, I was saying I, I was very efficient, I think I was, but that's not the point.

The point was uh I had a lot of credibility and I was able to do things uh with much higher impact because I deeply knew a certain area that I was responsible for. So for me just to make it specific, the expertise that I've developed over the past maybe 10 years and funnily enough after I started after I had the career break. When I reinvented my career, I went very deep into, for instance, salesforce products and technology. So I really became an expert in that. And I can prove my expertise not only through my knowledge, but also also through certifications through um kind of community uh recognition. So I built a deep knowledge of an area and I made it easy for people to uh to recognize that, to understand those capabilities. I have lots of certifications in that area, uh the highest levels of certification. So it's easy for people who are familiar a little bit with the area to say, oh OK, this person is likely a super expert. Uh And honestly, that brings a lot of credibility, especially when you're a woman, you need that kind of doubling down on the credibility when you're in that situation where with 50 people with 50 men around the table, and you're the only woman if they know you have that expertise.

And when you actually start opening your mouth and speaking about something, what you say is extremely relevant, then their positioning sometimes in my situation was whoa like they didn't even expect that kind of capability. And on one hand, it's bad because they should have expected it.

On the other hand, it really helped me to, to have that uh deep knowledge. And again, think about your strengths and it can be um anything from like Indra Nui was saying, the former CEO of Pepsico who is an amazing lady. She said people knew me because I make complicated things seem simple and it seems like a very um easy thing to say and to do in reality, she was put in extremely complex situations and she had this kind of ability to really dissect get to the point, be very efficient about what she was recommending.

But that was kind of her high level statement. I make things complicated. Things seem simple in my situation. It's this kind of deep expertise I was discussing about. But also the ability of going from very deep level to high strategic level, understand the operation, all the business uh concept alignment and then how it all translates into technology pack. So think about what is my strength is my strength, communication is my strength. Negotiation is my strength.

Um Some deep technical expertise, we're just making things simple. I need to check how we're tracking on time. Ok. Um And then uh what else? Uh I found helpful if you're a builder um to be able to be hands on at any level, even if you're a cio if you're still able to understand what the people within the lower levels of the organization are dealing with, uh how they need to do their work in order to be effective, then you are effective as a leader.

If you just set a strategy from a crystal ball that won't help anyone, you need to really still be hands on, be close to the business, be close to the reality. If you're ahead of a services delivery organization, for instance, doing projects for customers, if you don't understand the reality of the customers and you're keeping away from them and you're just managing people within your own organization. It's not going to help, you're going to be detached from the, the reality and that, that's not credible, but also think about ethics. Uh So Indra again was saying something like I wouldn't ask anyone to do anything. I wouldn't do myself. And on one hand, that to me means she would be able to do that task, maybe not to the same level of proficiency as the one who is doing it. But she at least understands how and what needs to be done. But on the other hand, she would never ask someone to compromise their values uh in a way that she wouldn't do herself. And to me that's extremely important, stick to your values. And I, I've been asked sometimes, what from your values would you be able to compromise on? And I thought about it and I said nothing. If I do have core values, I would never compromise on some of those values. No, never ask someone from my team to compromise on them.

Then the fourth thing, uh this is another lady I really love and uh feel very um kind of close to from an experience perspective. It's Melissa De Donato. Um She is now the CEO of SU I don't know if you know, so it's a really cool organization um in technology. Um And uh what she said was you need to win loudly and celebrate every success And on one hand, that means um you need to uh have that kind of happiness and gratitude for the successes that you have and uh mindfulness about maybe the failures and what you can learn from that.

But what I think is also important is how do you make others be aware of what you do? Because sometimes, and I've done this a lot during my career, we women are very maybe uh shy and humble and don't brag. And we think people will understand the value that we bring and will recognize the good things that we are doing. And the reality is sometimes people, no matter how nice they are and want to recognize you, they just don't know. So you, we need to make them aware of our successes of the impact that we have brought in one or other uh situation in a project, in a uh business challenging situation, maybe. So just make sure that you're making people aware of your contributions and don't expect that they will know. No, they won't unless someone makes you aware, them aware of it. And then the five fifth point I have uh is sometimes and again, I've been kind of guilty of this. Um You have a great idea, you pitch your idea to your manager, to the people around you who you believe um would support you or um you want to discuss with them about something, but then it kind of fizzles down and nothing happens.

And you're just waiting for permission that maybe never comes and then you drop an amazing idea. Sometimes what we should be doing, of course, aligning with other people and seeing if this is actually relevant, if this can actually have a, a success, um can, can have success if there's anyone who can help us. Those are all important questions, but sometimes just going ahead and doing something is really important. And I've been told many, many times that I won't be able to do something. And the reality was I did it. And, um, sometimes this was even in my own head. So when, for instance, I came back from the career break in my head, it was, oh my God, my career is finished. I'm never going to be able to go back to work. Then a second thought was, oh, I will only be able to work part time and it's not gonna be relevant just because it's, it's not possible. Another thought was, how am I, how am I ever going to be able to do consulting where you have to travel and be away from my family and my small child. I thought it kind of in my own head.

I was putting all of these blockers until at some point I just removed all of the blockers from my mind and said, what if I tried? And if you know what if I try and it doesn't work, I'll just drop it and like try something else. But I just went ahead and did it against all of the voices in my head and against, against everyone else. And I had people telling me, oh no, this is not gonna work. You can't do that. You're going to be a bad mother, right? So all of these things you have to just acknowledge and ignore sometimes and say what if I tried, just go ahead and try. Um And then I think I'm getting close to having to summarize the talk. And what I would want to leave you with is to trust yourself, remove all of those negative voices, trust yourself. If you have an idea, you know what it might be the right one and if it doesn't turn to be the right one, it's better to know you've tried than to regret never trying and be true to yourself. Am I really passionate about this? Is it interesting to me and don't accept being pushed in a direction?

Sometimes it often happens that people just want to say, oh, you just stay in this position for another five years and do this job even if you hate it and then maybe we'll switch it to another role or something like that. Do you know what you don't have to if you don't like it or it's not interesting to you or you want to go in another direction? Just be true to yourself? What am I interested? In what do I want to actually do? And why should I actually accept something just because someone else wants it from me and make sure to uh highlight your achievements, don't underestimate yourself and your capabilities again, stand by your values, with confidence, with humility, but with confidence and always develop yourself.

I think if I, even if I, after I reached the top of the certifications in the sales force space, for instance, right, I still went back and I keep learning. I keep adding new information to my kind of um uh playbook in my head. I still getting, keep getting certifications. Do I need to get certified even more as a CEO? Definitely not. Do I feel like it's good for me? Yes, it helps me keep close to the reality and then think about things positively. I'm not saying overly positive and unrealistic but just uh pragmatic. What if I tried this might actually work? Ok? It didn't work. That's fine. I'll try something else. So keep this kind of positive mentality and try to um remove and maybe push a bit away the negative um feedback that you might get. Of course, no, uh no one would have exactly your, your path. And people will think this is a stupid idea at some certain point and people will encourage you. So different people have different perspectives and just take that input, think about maybe their points and why are they saying that thing? Because that maybe it will help you but just be positive about what you're trying to do. And this is me. If you do want to get in touch, I'm happy to connect. I'm happy to share more of my thoughts and I love the, uh, comments in the chat.

This is great and, um, I'd really like to have more of a conversation with you if you have more time. So maybe I'll jump in one of the, um, uh, networking areas. This has been really nice. Congratulations again on the event and on participating to it. Uh, and let's keep in touch and keep together and make ourselves stronger. Thank you, everyone. Bye. It's been a pleasure.