Making an Impact: How the tech landscape has changed throughout my career and how I’m still learning and growing today

Like many people, I fell into IT by chance after returning from living in New Zealand for 2 years. I was offered a position working for an IT Consultancy Company at the London Stock Exchange in 1990s, which seemed a great way to re-start my career.

My 1st role was in Service Delivery. Back then, Change Management was paper based with Fax machines and a tannoy to announce service incidents! Excel spreadsheets were used to track the status, and no automated tooling was in place. I would physically walk each Change Request around the office to be signed. The concept of virtual meetings did not exist, and I had to physically chair and host daily change management meetings. I could not hide behind technology, but it was an excellent introduction to everybody in the organisation.

To me this was a great opportunity to work in the city and to gain excellent experience. I never really considered that the banking industry was male dominated, however, initiatives for women were not on the table, and over the 1990’s I gradually worked my way into Project Management initially focusing on Service Readiness.

In 2000 I got married and started to expand my Project Management experience by managing a Y2k Project and a Business Continuity Initiative for an Investment Bank before moving my focus to Application Implementation Projects.

In 2005 I became a Mum and the company were very flexible around my working arrangements. I continued to advance in Project Management and increased my experience by moving on to Public Sector Accounts, managing major Application Transformation Programmes with diverse project teams of up to 30 people with TCV of over £5m. To be truthful, I found the school playground and Mums more daunting then work! Work was, and still is, important to me. It gives me an identity not only as a Mum and I see myself as setting an example to my daughter as to what women can achieve.

The IT world and PM profession were and still are male dominated, but I’ve never given much consideration to women being in the minority, I did not see it as a hindrance to my career, and I worked hard and did not let it stop me from progressing, through EDS, HP & DXC and finally joining Capgemini in 2019.

Since joining Capgemini I have been provided with more opportunities to further expand my career, which I did not think were possible for a woman of my age. I’m still accepting new challenges and not letting my age be a barrier and feel invigorated to be surrounded by younger people and hopefully I can bring my experience to the workplace and help to motivate and mentor younger women in the Company.

Our Making an Impact blog series will feature stories from women across Capgemini UK and how they’ve made an impact on the technology sector.