Recently, I was asked to speak at a Wominspiration event run by BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT. This was part of an ongoing series of events designed to highlight the achievements of women in technology leadership roles.
Initiatives like this really matter to me. If we want to see a more balanced technology industry with more women in leadership positions, then it’s important that they can see people who are already there; people who may be just like them. Alongside my colleague Jasmine Taylor, I was more than happy to accept the invite.
Discussions of our technology career paths revealed that both Jasmine and I have educational backgrounds and artistic interests which wouldn’t have suggested technology as the obvious career choice. I went to art college before reading English Literature and Language at Manchester, while Jasmine trained in dance and musical theatre.
While growing up however, I was always surrounded by science and technology. A technology enthusiast at work in the 1980s, my dad was hopeful that I or my older brother might benefit from working in the tech world, and he brought home early computers to get us interested. We were lucky enough have an Atari and later a Spectrum 48k and I remember my brother teaching me basic C prompt coding to make the Spectrum’s screen flash different colours. Plus, I was inspired by writers like Douglas Adams’ and the 1980s popular sci-fi culture that was all over TV.
It was perhaps not such a surprise then that I ended up working in this space. My first three months as a consultant at Price Waterhouse were effectively a crash course in coding. Today, I focus on enterprise-wide transformation – but always underpinned by all things digital.
Making change a reality
As I told the Wominspiration audience, what excites me about the work I do is how we can change things for the better – and to see organisations turn technological theory into operational reality.
Years ago, I was working with the insurance industry, and although it was a rather old-fashioned sector, I was on a mission to excite them about the future of insurance: including the opportunities presented by the “internet of things”, robotics, drones and automated vehicles. That was a genuinely exciting time because of the sense of possibility that existed. It’s the same now with AI. Today, I can’t imagine having a conversation with senior executives where the topic of AI doesn’t come up – and at a practical level rather than just as a far-off futuristic concept.
Again, that’s exciting; helping those executives to crystallise their thoughts about their vision and strategy and how technology plays into that – and then (and this is the really energising bit) shaping that into something that will actually get done.
With so many new technologies – and with organisations typically having so many change initiatives ongoing at the same time – the challenge can lie in knitting everything together and making things happen. That’s when I can feel like I’m making a difference.
I feel very fortunate to have been involved with some really interesting projects as a result of working in technology. One of my earliest coding jobs was on a project to help Lloyds Bank set up internet banking for the first time. Today, every time I tap into my Lloyds’ banking app, I feel proud to have been there in those early days.
Years later, I was at ITV, working on a company-wide transformation that incorporated everything from overhauling their entire IT estate, acquiring content production companies to compete with the new digital streaming platforms, and launching the ITV Player and ITV online news to respond to customer’s changing expectations of ITV. Again, a game-changing transformation.
A force for good
But there’s more to this work than ‘just’ going digital, making operational efficiencies, or improving customer service. Over the years, I’ve also seen how our technology work can be a force for good. And focusing on the public sector, as I do in my role today, really brings that home.
At the Wominspiration event, Jasmine talked about a project where she’d used her expertise to raise awareness of cybersecurity in countries across Africa. In a similar vein, another colleague of ours, Sarah Codling, undertook a massive piece of work to help the Government with its energy price guarantee programme in 2022. This meant rapidly building a system that could analyse 1.7 billion rows of industry data! A project that made sure everyone’s energy bills were reduced for a time, and protected both vulnerable members of society and the public purse.
When you get that sense of purpose in the work you do – no matter what it is you do – that’s where you’ll typically find people who are passionate about their work. It’s no different in the technology world.
Same questions, different answers
Increasingly, I realise that there are no new work problems – just new and different ways of solving them. Organisations will always be looking to grow, innovate or reduce costs, for example. Today, it may well be AI that provides a new solution. Tomorrow it could be quantum computing.
To paraphrase Douglas Adams, in our day to day lives, we only really notice technology when it doesn’t work properly. Once it works near-perfectly and is seamlessly integrated into our lives, that’s when we stop being aware of it. AI will undoubtedly make a huge difference for all organisations – but the time may already be drawing near when we don’t really notice it that much.
That pace of change makes my work incredibly stimulating. That and the fact that I’m fortunate enough to be surrounded by so many talented men and women at KPMG; technologists, coders, data scientists, ethical hackers, cyber and cloud experts, transformational specialists; the list goes on.
I hope that Jasmine and I may have been able to do our bit for inspiring more people to come and work in this area. Passion, purpose and excitement. Make the difference.
