How do you describe your job?

I would say I am a storyteller. The stories I tell are about how technology is helping people connect, share or make life easier. It’s humanising technology and taking the fear and complexity out of it through stories. 

I work to make technology less intimidating and encourage curiosity, especially around computer science and education. I feel that this is important, because everything is moving at such a pace and there is so much potential to still be released - for people and technology!

To stimulate continued curiosity is a really powerful thing to do and it’s why I love doing this and stay restless about it.

It’s interesting that you and your sister both work in technology

She works in silicon-chip manufacturing and she’s at the absolute top of her industry but there’s still only a handful of women. Great progress has been made - but we still have a long way to go! There’s still not anywhere near the right level of diversity in the tech sector.

The struggle for so many - engineers and non-engineers is a key part of many career journeys - that’s just a fact. It’s interesting that our experiences differ though. She feels she has to conform to fit in. She’ll often note that I express myself by wearing what I want but she doesn’t feel comfortable doing so. I certainly don’t worry about feeling like I need to present myself in a certain way and that’s in part to do with the inclusive business I work in and the field of marketing is much more creative and in some ways diverse than more traditional tech businesses or roles.

Although I am (sometimes annoyingly) positive and optimistic, I do have that sense of realism that the experience of working in tech is not shared and equal. The fact that she feels that she is very much in a man’s world and is judged for how she chooses to present herself demonstrates the work we need to do to change the diversity of teams in technology and ensure they reflect everyone in our broader society. Women are 50% of society - we need to be hold 50% of the roles.

I’ve got boy/girl twins who are now 14. They are of course digital first and it’s been fascinating to see how they have both been influenced by the world around them in the way that they think about technology and future careers.

Role models in education are an important issue along with providing open opportunities. There are so many roles that kids should be able to see as related to technology, you could be a coder or an entrepreneur and a business owner, it’s not just about engineering. Charlotte Tilbury (a leading beauty business) has a team of engineers. Not many expect a beauty business to have engineers and yet these roles and how they overlap so many industries are never talked about. A diversity of role models need to be highlighted, we need to show the breadth of skills needed to work in tech - which go beyond engineering. People who are problem solvers and communicators are just as important and kids need to be able to see the range of opportunities available to them and the breadth of relevant skills.

Do you think there was something in your upbringing that brought you and your sister to work in technology?

We’re rule breakers. My parents were immigrants and they lived through partition in India. My dad came from a very humble background and when they arrived in the UK in the 60s they had nothing. My mum and dad were both very creative though and so my dad worked in an advertising agency. He was paid a pittance and so had to move on to make ends meet. He went on to pursue a more colourful entrepreneurial career in a multitude of roles and businesses with my mother in a variety of business/leadership roles alongside him.

Growing up there definitely seemed a lack of opportunities because of our immigrant status, being not white and also because as girls we were not seen as valuable in Asian culture. However, my mum and dad didn’t sign up to that and from a young age they would always say ‘my daughters are just as brilliant as sons’. I got used to seeing them rail against their community and dismiss it as nonsense that there would not be equality for girls. 

These experiences and observations helped me recognise that you have to embrace difficult things head on - never shy away from them or walk past a problem. My sisters and I went in to every situation with great bravado and belief. The challenge gave us energy and being brought up this way encouraged resilience and independence from a very early age.

Where do you think women in tech are today in comparison with the start of your career? 

There is undoubtedly progress - but the numbers have only moved a few percent and so the pace of change is slow. I see the behaviours and the visibility of a more diverse workforce changing. Women in technology themselves have changed, it’s not just a case of how many women there are, but there’s a focus on what they are working on, leading and creating. The roles they occupy are evolving and I believe this will also help accelerate change.

Before it felt like we were trudging through treacle. People didn’t want to listen and women and girls were being sidelined or entertained. It was belittling and it was so frustrating. 

It’s not that women didn’t fit in, it was that we didn’t create space for them and we didn’t appreciate the breadth of skills available when we include women in technology.

Now we are asking what we can do to create a healthy, inclusive environment and to support diverse teams, to retain talent and progress them. I felt like we were trying to tear down walls that didn’t really exist, someone else made them and male colleagues thought this was reasonable. Now we have managed this shift where there is better appreciation and awareness and our male colleagues have the opportunity to learn how to be our allies. 

I’m a woman in her midlife and this shift makes working in this sector exciting. I feel like I’m in the second spring of my career and I am embracing it. But I see my responsibility and motivation now is to keep working to kick down the doors and throw down that ladder, creating pathways and opportunities to ensure women do not give up and keep pursuing their careers and dreams. We need women in all roles across the technology sector to ensure we design, build and create a future that is suitable for all. That’s my own ambition, not just for women but across the breadth of diversity in our society. I’m so excited about the next ten years because I’m seeing a new reality for my daughter that I wasn’t convinced would happen back when progress was so slow.

There are still so many women who have not been able to take the credit for the work they have done. They fought against challenges to ensure we had more opportunities and we are standing on their shoulders. It’s important to know where we have come from, where we are now and how to use this knowledge to grow a passion and determination to determine what should come next. The future is bright - as it’s one that will be more representative of our world and there will be room for everyone. It’s our job to make sure that happens!

Have you worked on things that help organisations be better? 

One of the things we’ve done is created a tool that anonymises CVs. It strips out all the details that can trigger bias in the hiring process, such as where the candidate went to school, career breaks and their gender. We also take out gendered terms in our job descriptions so we attract more people. 

Many of our clients use AI and we always work with them to think about why, what it is, and about the outcome. Some people assume that there’s no harm in using AI in marketing and advertising, but there are situations, like targeted ads on social media, where you have to be cautious. 

On the gender side, if you consider how some platforms approve ads for men's health versus women’s health, it’s fundamentally different. They still won’t approve a lot of ads around period products, they won’t let you show blood. They’re very reactive around nudity, even with pregnant women because historical data has linked naked women and blood to pornography and abuse. But if you don’t normalise things around periods or getting a breast exam, there can be horrific knock-on effects. Big advertisers don’t have problems with this, but start-ups need lobbying to get their ads through. 

Another example is from 2016 when the first global beauty competition judged by artificial intelligence software, Beauty.AI was launched. Nearly all the winners were white because the AI had been trained on data that established lighter skin as a sign of beauty. It’s just marketing, but in both of these cases the outcomes and impacts are detrimental. This is why we work hard to make our clients aware of the possible outcomes and rigorously work with them to make sure they are making the right choices about technology. 

It’s not just about getting a bad reputation for not thinking these things through, this is a business decision, where getting it wrong can have a financial impact, or a legal risk. 

Does the perception of science need to be changed to attract and retain women? 

There are studies that suggest that by the time girls get to a certain age they’ve already started to be convinced that STEM is not for them. It becomes ingrained because we give little boys toolboxes and Lego and we give girls dolls, but this is where problem solving should be nurtured. All kids love these things but if we keep reinforcing a message that it’s not for girls, we perpetuate the problem and it’s no wonder girls get to higher education thinking they don’t want to do a STEM subject. 

There are some great programmes for kids and teens that can help get them interested in coding and data topics, such as Girls who Code and Goldie Blocks, which is targeted at really young girls. Then we need to make sure that teenagers see women in these roles so they can be inspired. 

What can be done to eliminate bias?

I believe three things need to happen. Firstly, it starts with data practitioners because we can identify the biases that exist in data. I think young people, too, care about the impact of their work a lot more. It’s a knock-on effect of not waiting to do harm in the world, but also knowing that if your output and data set is full of bias, it’s not a good model. 

Secondly, non-practitioners need to learn too. When they ask their data teams for something to do with AI, they might not understand the implications of what they’re asking for. Not everyone in the C-suite needs to be able to code or build something themselves, but they do need to understand the implications of what they are asking for and what they will be putting out into the world. 

Thirdly, government regulation. Technology moves so fast, and it’s hard to regulate but we can do more. The EU has developed some guidance and the UK is catching up, but it is everyone’s responsibility to eliminate bias in tech. No one person can do it alone, it can’t just be the government, or just practitioners or companies, everyone has to get on board to stop harmful things from happening.