I recently had the privilege of being one of the judges for the inaugural Women in the City Future Leaders Awards. These awards aim to identify women with the potential to be the leaders of tomorrow. And what an amazingly talented and inspiring group of women I met during the judging process.
When developing this new award, Gwen Rhys, the founder of the influential networking group Women in the City, stated that she was looking for "women with sophisticated, wide-ranging skills; women with the self awareness to understand the impact they have on others; women reaching out beyond their comfort zones; women to be ambassadors and actively support others to reach their full potential".
Felicia Trewin, the winner of the award, excelled in all these areas, and, what is perhaps most gratifying, which some may find surprising, Felicia has spent her whole career in one of the last bastions of male domination; the IT sector. Felicia is a senior manager in Deloitte's Technology Consultancy Practice which she joined in 2006 after five years at Microsoft. Prior to joining Microsoft, Felicia worked in the high-tech practice at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) in the US and her home country of Australia.
I caught up with Felicia a couple of weeks after the awards ceremony to find out what winning the award meant to her and what struck me was her passion for her role, for the IT sector and for getting more women into the industry.
"The IT sector's brand is not seen as very creative, people think that it is dull, mathematical and somewhat binary, but actually this is not the case. Women should not be scared by the brand perception of IT, and the more women that enter the industry the more we can change it."
Felicia believes that the industry is reaching a turning point as those studying for careers that traditionally pave the way for a career in IT, such as engineering, is reaching a more equal split of men and women, and as the old guard in the industry retire they are replaced by a new generation of leaders that judge individuals on their ability not their gender. This trend will accelerate as Generation Y individuals rise through the corporate ranks and demand greater equality of opportunity.
"IT careers have changed dramatically over the last few years as IT has begun to permeate everything we do, and become a key element of society," said Felicia. "The days of being a pure techie boffin are over. To succeed in IT today you need to be a great communicator who can speak both "business" and "technology". Only a few decades ago computers were huge, ugly machines viewed as commoditised products that were purely functional. Now, the likes of Apple have morphed them into stylish objects of desire that are a key component of an aspirational lifestyle. This is the future of IT and it is somewhere that talented women with a mix of creative and people skills that complements their technical knowledge should gravitate to for work."
I absolutely agree with Felicia that more women should be going into information technology careers, as each generation passes IT is playing an ever more important role in our lives, and it is critical that women are key in the design and decision making processes of the future of IT.
