Today is International Women’s Day and to celebrate this last week the Capgemini’s Women’s Business Network held a special event where the guest speaker was Martha Lane-Fox. Martha talked about her work building lastminute.com, her involvement with Lucky Voice and her current work as Champion for Digital Inclusion. Sitting listening to her talk on how she helped to create one of the most successful online businesses inspired me to wonder why aren’t there more women talking about their roles working with technology regardless of industry.
There are champions I would like to point out: Rebecca Thomson journalist for Computer Weekly who does a great job of advocating and pushing the women in IT issue, Jemima Kiss technology journalist for the Guardian, Casey Coleman, Chief Information Officer for US Government department: General Services Administration to our very own Una Du Noyer, Liz Benison as well Christine Hodgson, Capgemini CEO for Technology Services Northwest Europe – but it’s not just about women in high profile positions.
It’s about women in all roles. I work in the marketing department and if I didn’t understand technology or use technology to do my job, then I wouldn’t be able to help market what Capgemini does, in fact this isn’t just true for me it’s true all the women who use technology whether they work in the Sales, HR, Finance, Legal, Marketing departments who wouldn’t be able to do their jobs – these are the current and future champions.
Just think, you could be working with, married to, living with or teaching the next Martha Lane-Fox.
Rena Patel is a Marketing and Communications Executive for Capgemini UK. You can follow and connect with her on Twitter.