When we look back on tech in the UK in 2018, it's a greater emphasis on women in STEM that will stand out. That’s accelerateHER’s hope anyway.
The initiative, born out of the annual Founders Forum tech event, focuses on promoting and celebrating women in tech - because with only 25 per cent of the UK’s tech workforce identifying as female, and only 17 per cent of its founders, much more needs to be done to encourage women to join this predominantly male-dominated industry.
It is because of this, that the Inspiring Fifty UK list was conceived: a comprehensive 'who's who' of the women breaking ground in technology.
A partnership between accelerateHER and diversity non-profit Inspiring Fifty, the inaugural list features founder and CEO of Stemettes Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon MBE, co-founder and co-CEO of Decoded Kathryn Parsons MBE, vice president EMEA of Facebook Nicola Mendelsohn CBE and Tabitha Goldstaub, co-founder of Cognition X.
To celebrate the list's release, members of the Inspiring 50 gathered at a prestigious event in London yesterday, where talks by such VIPs as Sharmadean Reid MBE - founder of WAH Nails and Beautystack, the app which enables women across the world to set up beauty profiles and start their own beauty businesses - took place.
Physicist Dr Jess Wade made a speech too, explaining her mission to get women in science around the globe properly represented on Wikipedia.
But it was a conversation between Dr Hayaatun Sillem, the first female and ethnic minority CEO of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and Tracy Chou, software engineer and co-founder of Project Include, that so demonstrated why there is the need for lists like these.
Dr Sillem revealed she regularly gets asked if she is Dr Sillem’s personal assistant - the assumption being that CEO of the RAE could only ever be a man. Or if not a PA, it's a member of the hospitality team - for this reason, she no longer wears dark suits to formal events.
“People are surprised when I tell them I’m CEO – it gets a bit warring sometimes,” she said. “But it’s also why it’s worth doing – the fact people have that moment where they are shocked they made an assumption, helps them to not make assumptions the next time around.”
Here's hoping initiatives like the Inspiring 50 list - which aims to highlight women doing extraordinary things in tech - leads to a future where it's no longer a surprise for a woman to be CEO.
You can see the full list of Inspiring 50 UK names at accelerateher.co.
