Reading time: About 2 minutes
Why do you think it’s important to celebrate IWD
The software industry has historically been dominated by males, that’s blatantly obvious, even though the first computer programmer was female, Ada Lovelace! The role of women in technology needs to be highlighted and celebrate the achievements of women in the industry, IWD provides a great opportunity to do this.
In AI we have always been blessed with a fantastic team where ability to do the job has come first. This has led us to having more females than males on our management team, and we have benefited greatly as a result.
Our industry is expanding massively and impacting all our lives each and every day. As a result it is a very diverse environment with the widest range of opportunities available. It is crucial for the growth and success of our industry that we attract and retain female talent. Celebrating IWD is a great opportunity to promote this.
What advice do you have for organisations looking to build and support more balanced teams?
We need to be careful when building teams, as scaling companies we need the best people that we can get, gender shouldn’t be a factor in that decision.
We have been very resolute in our approach to building our team we hire those who can give us the best chance of success. That has resulted in a very balanced management team and opportunities for females to lead and work in key roles across the company.
We take a proactive approach to avoiding historical, industry and unconscious bias by having inclusive input across the business on decisions around hiring. We also provide as much flexibility and support where we can to ensure that external factors don’t influence our decision-making process. So for me, it not always about what we have done that has led to a very balanced team in an unbalanced industry it’s always been about fairness of opportunity and focus on the individual and their fit for the company and capability for the role.
