Here, at Women Love Tech, it is our mission to empower young girls and women to overcome gender biases and embrace careers in STEM. That’s why for IWD 2023, we asked trailblazing women to share their thoughts on this year’s theme, ‘Cracking the Code: Innovation for a gender equal future’.
Five of these women who were featured are Nicole Gardner, Aruna Pattam, Amanda Gilmore, Alison O’Brien, and Megan Woodbury. Have a listen to their valuable insights below:
Nicole Gardner
Nicole Gardner is General Manager at Advertising and Content Agency, Edge Agency. As a Brand and Communications Specialist, she is passionate about the new ways of working that transform businesses, attitudes and behaviours.
Nicole reinforces the importance of calling out biases and keeping everyone accountable, “I take responsibility for calling out non-inclusive or unequal behaviour, actions, or communications. Whether it be from colleagues or peers directly when it occurs, particularly when inadvertently due to unconscious bias or simply because that’s the way it’s always been done.”
Aruna Pattam
Aruna Pattam is the Head of AI Analytics and Data Science, APAC, at Capgemini. For over 22 years, she has been delivering digital transformation, analytics platforms and decision support systems using various technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, predictive analytics, data modelling and advanced visualization techniques to drive customer insights and business value.
She is a member of the Responsible AI Think Tank at CSIRO NAIC, which focuses on the responsible and ethical use of AI in businesses in Australia.
Aruna has a clear hope for the future, “we need more women to be involved in the development of AI technologies. We need more women to become AI engineers, Data scientists and Programmers.”
Amanda Gilmore
Amanda Gilmore is the Country Manager for Peloton Interactive in Australia. She believes that there are small actions in our everyday lives that can be taken to slowly change gender biases:
“The key to cracking the code is finding those moments throughout your day-to-day where you can break down and disrupt these deeply entrenched behaviours. And many times, they are smaller moments than you might think. They could be as simple as making a roster of who takes notes in meetings or brings the refreshments, activities that women far more often than men will just inherently pick up. It could be setting yourself small goals in how many times you are going to speak up in a meeting.”
Alison O’Brien
Alison O’Brien is the Director of Customer Success at Paypal, with a wealth of experience working in FinTech. She highlighted the biases that are embedded within everyday designs that people should be aware of:
“There are so many examples of male-centric design. From crash test dummies being designed for male bodies, to the height of shelves in supermarkets, and in tech, there are examples. There’s a study that found speech recognition software was 70% more likely to accurately recognise male speech”.
Megan Woodbury
Megan Woodbury is the Global Chief Financial Officer at Talent. As a financial expert for over 20+ years and a Chartered Practicing Accountant, she is highly experienced in audit, treasury, financial management, transformation, stakeholder engagement and people management.
Megan shared her call to action, “It’s time to demonstrate female leadership. It’s time to demand a seat at the table in every industry. It’s time to embrace multiculturalism and gender diversity. It’s time to be rich in inclusion across the board. Helping the young women of today realise their potential in any industry will help crack the code and create the gender-equal future of tomorrow.”
To watch the full compilation of insights on Cracking The Code from 50+ inspiring women, click here.
