Women ‘must be taken seriously’

Ahead of International Women’s Day, top Australian tech executives say now is the perfect time to make the industry more welcoming.

Jane Livesey, CEO for ANZ, Cognizant. Source: Supplied.

Australia’s technology industry still has significant heavy lifting to do if it’s to become truly inclusive and welcoming for women, several top women executives have told The Australian ahead of International Women’s Day.

Reflecting on their careers to date, executives from Twitch, Cognizant, Commvault and Travis all say that while progress has been made in recent years, Australian tech companies are still largely male-dominated, and present unnecessary hurdles for young women looking to crack into the industry. According to recent statistics, 50 per cent of women in tech leave the industry before the age of 35.

Jane Livesey, Cognizant‘s chief executive for Australia and New Zealand, says she will always remember being told by a senior leader that clients would not take her seriously as a technologist because of her gender.

“He made me determined to prove him wrong,” Livesey says.

“It is human nature to have biases, but I am buoyed by how much change has occurred in the past few years as we learn to embrace difference. Through all of the digital transformation work we do for our clients at Cognizant, our teams have to represent the community that we live and work in; if not, we are missing an opportunity.

“How can we design and build digital experiences for our community if we only understand a part of the picture?”

Livesey says that in her role, she‘s aiming to create an environment where everyone feels they can contribute and have an equal opportunity. “This requires open dialogue, flattening our structures, empowering our teams, enabling them to experiment and most importantly, bring their authentic selves to work,” she says.

Sara Clemens, COO, Twitch. Source: Supplied.

“My focus is on creating an environment that enables us to mentor, respect and provide a fillip to each individual’s inherent potential without biases. This includes an ecosystem of practices, programs, investments, and metrics aligned with the vision to ingrain gender equality as a business and ethical imperative across the value chain.”

Rachel Ler, Vice President and General Manager for Asia Pacific and Japan at Commvault, says she’s encountered numerous challenges over her career from studying IT in a 90 per cent male class, to working for companies with few women in senior leadership.

“I have made a number of very deliberate career moves to overcome these and prepare for the job I wanted.

“Personally, I benefited tremendously from having a mentor early on in my career. Ruth Seah at IBM started as a mentor and has become a good friend, she helped me unravel my blind-spot views and provided invaluable career guidance when I was starting out in technology. I always recommend that women in the industry identify mentors and work with them to build their career path.

“Unfortunately, as we fight against gender bias in the industry, there is a persistent view that women are being handed opportunities just for diversity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Women that I work with have all the right skills as well as a different background and set of experiences.

“It is by bringing together the best fit and skilled professionals with a diversity of thought and experience that we can bridge the gender gap, drive innovation and achieve revenue growth at our companies.”

Sara Clemens, chief operating officer at streaming giant Twitch, says that at the start of her career, it was some time before she wasn‘t the only woman in the room, and longer still before any women were present in leadership roles.

Clemens says a lack of representation in the tech industry forced her to look elsewhere for inspiration.

Travis co-founder Nicole Tj. Source: Supplied.

“At that time, seeing data that proved gender ratios were evolving in law and media gave me hope that the tech sector would follow suit. Now, I see incredible women leaders in tech challenging the status quo every day,” she says.

“In the ‘90s, leadership was defined by a very specific style, reflective of who held management positions at that time — primarily men — and what they deemed to be appropriate and effective. The definition didn’t accommodate different leadership styles and made it onerous for women to show up in an authentic and productive way.

“As we see more female representation in the C-suite, society is shifting its thinking of what great leadership looks like. Looking ahead, we must continue to challenge gender inequity and celebrate diversity in leadership to open both executive and boardroom doors.”

Nicole TJ is the co-founder of travel start-up Travis, which helps users build moodboards for their next trip.

She says that she faces constant challenges around backing herself and being taken seriously, particularly when still surrounded by men close to twice her age.

“I’ve learnt to navigate this over the years, and thankfully I’ve never had any ‘in your face’ condescending incidents that I know a few other people have had,” she says. “This I owe to having great female role models to relate to who ‘carved their paths’ ahead of me, and great male mentors who have helped me navigate through challenges – whether or not it was explicitly related to being a female.”

The start-up executive, a former consultant, says she now aims to pass it forward and play the role of mentor to younger females that she works with, through university mentorships, speaking events and as part of her team.

“I think more and moreso, whether in a large organisation or a smaller start-up, and especially in an innovative and forward-thinking workspace, there is so much more appetite and expectation to carry yourself or build your career in your own way,” she says.

“Now at Travis I have the opportunity foster this inclusive, empowered culture from the start – and what I aim to do really in all my interactions, is to help open a sense of possibility earlier, empowerment and quiet confidence, so that in any (or most) situations, the consideration of you as a female versus you as a male, doesn’t even need to become part of the conversation at hand.”