Celebrating more brilliant ‘Women in Digital’

In June 2020, Think Digital Partners launched its interview series focusing on the career journeys of some of the leading women in tech based roles from the public and private sector. Our first ‘Women in Digital’ interview was with Cheryl Stevens, director of shared channel services at DWP Digital, who regularly speaks at our conferences and works with us on digital content.

To date we have published 83 of these interviews and are working on more for the coming months. The interviews provide great insight into part of the career journeys, experiences and challenges faced by some great tech leaders. The levels of engagement for this feature have been huge with most interviews being read at least 3,000 times.

Our most read interview was with Julia Glidden, who at the time was the VP for global public sector at Microsoft with over 30,000 people viewing her interview. We recently asked Julia why she felt it was important for her and leaders like her to share their stories. “Despite all the gains female leaders have made in the workplace, for all too familiar reasons, serious challenges and obstacles remain.  ‘Women in Digital’ immediately caught and captured my attention for the simple reason that the chance to hear from colleagues candidly sharing their own stories made me feel  less alone and, more importantly, more determined than ever to help create a better workplace for tomorrow’s generation.”

Here is a list of all the interviews that we have run in this series since the last time we celebrated International Women Day. The job titles and organisations of those featured may no longer be current but were correct at the time of the interview.

Silka Patel, social value manager at Leidos & founder of Scotland Women in Technology

Dr Jacqui Taylor, co-founder of FlyingBinary

Nico Celaj, head of innovation at the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS)

Dr. Joye Purser, CISSP, Ph.D. and field chief information security officer at Veritas Technologies

Christine Bejerasco, CISO at WithSecure

Emma Presley Abbott, deputy director, head of enterprise insight, head of data practice and head of digital sustainability at Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)

Natalie Cramp, CEO of data company Profusion

Jaime Reid, director, consulting services at Central Government CGI

Ash Finnegan,  VP GTM & transformation at Conga

Polly Cook, design lead, TPXimpact

Sarah Peña, head of emerging technology & business improvement at Swindon Borough Council

Helen Mott, head of digital government at Netcompany

Tina Churcher, head of digital at DVSA

Em Eldred, director, consulting services at Central Government CGI

Arifa Chakera, engagement and programme director at Axiologik

Jacqui Leggetter, Head of Integration (deputy director) at DWP Digital

Edafe Onerhime, executive director, intelligent automation lead at JPMorgan Chase & Co

Lexi Sydow, head of insights at Data.ai

Hayley Roberts​, CEO at Distology

Susanna Parry-Hoey, chief marketing officer at SoftwareOne

Robin Sutara, field chief technology officer at Databricks

Claire Norburn, UK ads privacy lead at Google

We are always on the look out for more brilliant female leaders to feature so if you want to nominate someone you know or work with please do get in touch. Happy International Womens Day.