Women in Tech North East - March 2025
About
Women in Tech North East held their Spring Meetup at The Catalyst in Newcastle upon Tyne which was open to all genders to celebrate allyship and explore how can work together to build a more inclusive tech community.
Why I want to learn more about allyship - James Bunting - Leighton
I want to learn more about allyship because I want to be a better ally. I want to understand how I can support my colleagues and friends in the tech community, and how I can help create a more inclusive environment for everyone.James is the CEO at Leighton who make the improbable possible, they want to help their customers solve difficult challenges. They want to help people build careers at Leighton, they want to be known as the North's leading AWS software developer. They care about their customers, each other and community and they include, include, include. They want to create exceptional software that is inclusive and want to create a culture at Leighton that is really inclusive.
They currently employ 100 people and have consultants that work with their customers and they are the more technical roles but they have a long way to go as a business and it is important to show that workplaces in our industry are accessible and role models are incredibly important and they don't want to build software only designed and built by men, they have a model obligation to promoting allyship and a great opportunity to learn. Software engineering is a team sport and need lots of people and different capabilities and if they have male oriented teams, it won't be fit for all they need female perspectives.
They can help support events like this and females on their journey and what they want to learn, and a few things is that they are CEO of Leighton, and they want to make a difference for the whole sector and help grow the businesses and help females in technology. They want to learn things in business to help people to be the best versions of themselves and they have a daughter where they want to help them on their journey and help their sons be the best allies.
Panel Chaired by Jo Larby - Leighton with Nichola Armstrong - HMRC, Robert Kealey - Accenture, Kirste Worland - Newcastle Building Society & Joe Swan - Syntessera
Nicola currently works at HMRC as an enterprise architect and has been there for over three years and they set comm strategies on how to organise their infrastructure and in terms of women in tech they have been involved in a few things at HMRC.
Rob is a project manager at Accenture doing large scale digital transformations and came from a STEM background, this is their first Women in Tech event but was recognised for their work at the Northern Power Women Awards.
Kirste works for Newcastle University and started their journey in 2004 with Sage software and has had a variety of different jobs and they look after 200 people who are very clever and do amazing things and their job is to unblock things. They are a neurodivergent woman who aims to remove barriers.
Joe Swan was engineering director at Compare the Market, and they have been in technology for over two decades and in their early forties were diagnosed as Autistic and have been involved with Women in Tech and has been part many groups and they founded a small consultancy Syntessera.
What does allyship in tech means to you?
Kirste got kicked out of school at 18 for being pregnant and were at a Catholic School and her parents told her to get married but after three years of being in a toxic relationship left that. She later worked for Virgin Records, she is able to take the patterns she sees due to her neurodivergence way before AI and then got a job for Sage in customer services and then got an opportunity to work in IT and were lucky enough to have a mentor who saw potential in them who gave them a job in IT without any experience, it doesn't matter who the ally is if you see potential give someone a chance to flourish.
Kirste and another colleague went for a leadership role but they didn't get it as they didn't have a degree so their mentor supported them through a HNC while working full time and were able to secure a HNC and worked with another ally when they decided to move from Sage and they sat them down and listened about their career direction and what they wanted to do and supported them to do a degree and got a first. Managed to myth bust women working and found a third ally that they had to earn the respect of, and he supported them to do a master's degree and sought out opinions and gave credit when gave suggestions.
Rob had taken up a team leadership role with an even split male to female but in the first month they noticed voices on calls were mostly male as the stronger louder voices came to the fore and asked them to give the women on the calls space to have their voice. Be able to give women the space to have their views and have their opinions.
Tech is making strides in diversity, but women are still being held back and Nichola talked about representation is that they noticed there isn't a lot of female leaders or those with regional accents but is great to see their journey. The architecture community in HMRC is quite male dominated so seeing leadership roles occupied by females is good to see, career accelerators can help as things weren't explained to them about their career paths and the roles that were available and were surprised how broad roles were in IT.
Kirste talked about making sure voices are heard and sometimes aren't in the room when decisions were made, they were often made in the pub or golf course so is important to challenge the voices in the room and who are excluded from the room and change those voices. We're not good at talking about all the roles in IT so there is that stereotype of you have to be a coder or IT. There is about 27% of women in tech, but leadership roles is around 5% especially when see how many women are in tech so need to make sure those voices are carried along and hold the door open for other generations, it is not just about male allies it is about female advocates too.
What actions can be taken to support women?
Joe mentioned the key thing is to try and make sure everyone in the room is heard, especially the noisy voices and those who speak first and they may feel aggrieved if told otherwise so make sure all opinions are heard and often the person who speaks last is listened to the most and if taking everyone's voice you are taking something that everyone can agree on. Hard truths are done in a kind way, criticise in private and praise in public so tell someone in a situation where someone can hear you can make that more impactful.
Rob talked about finding the boundary between villainisation of someone who is saying something out of line or saying something that is culturally ingrained. It is about letting people saying how they are feeling and if they say something that is not right and calling that out in public and say that something isn't fair or right and let someone know who has been knocked down there is support for them.
How can leaders and companies ensure that allyship is embedded in their company?
Joe mentioned it is looking at how people contribute and how they look at their contributions and looking at challenges of motherhood and menopause and at certain times of year for school holidays. Do the decisions that happen without people around really need to happen and are they really important. One thing they eliminated was getting people together and some people weren't there so it is important to see who isn't in the room and does a decision have to happen now or can you just send something out as an email and there are a lot of decisions that are made when they don't need to so think about who is there. When it comes to decisions there is a demographic that we need to make sure are there and the more people involved the better.
Nichola talked about once of the things that organisations could do is mentors, you can have flexibility about choosing who that is and use them as a soundboard and the other is organisations to facilitate events and allowing people the time to go for female and male attendees as if they can't go along then it won't work.
What gives you hope in the future for gender equity in tech?
Rob talked about there is more universal acceptance that things on the internet are more inherently biased such as large language models but there is great research being done on bringing non-biased LLMs to the fore so we are not propagating misogyny and sexism of a generally white men led internet. Being a supporter for those who are male being able to put yourself forward as a mentor or reverse mentoring from female colleagues helps learn the pain points, what works well and what barriers they came across helps you give the support you need as a male can't know what it is like for a woman in the workplace.
Kirste talked about building conversations and mentorship is great and take this to the next step to sponsor people and identify opportunities to help build them and around inclusion by putting in some reasonable adjustments for all so the disparity in the workplace is less evident and need to amplify voices and give credit when someone has done an amazing job regardless of their gender, religion etc and that's how you can amplify other's voices.
Joe talked about being diagnosed with Autism means they think literally so think about 20 years in the future and think of a place where something has happened and what did you do to make that happen. They are looking forward to the day when are in a room that men shouldn't be put in pedestals and can be mediocre, and women can be the same or more dominant. Want to be in that place where everyone has the right to just “be” in the workplace and fight the idea of imposter syndrome which is often driven by someone saying they don't know how to do something, the nice things being said is not their internal reflection but instead say what can you do and what skills do you do different to everyone else and what can you do to learn and however it feels go for it. Always try to be curious rather than judgemental but start to understand why people are doing something, change is always a good thing, look into anxiety about this and try to challenge it in a positive way.
Nicola talked about things can be tackled at an early stage so talk about attitudes and responsibilities for jobs at schools and colleges and have people that look like you and talk like you be represented.
Panel Q&A Chaired by Jo Larby - Leighton with Nichola Armstrong - HMRC, Robert Kealey - Accenture, Kirste Worland - Newcastle Building Society & Joe Swan - Syntessera
Adjustments in the workplace, how important is for leaders to recognise that men aren't doing enough outside the workplace, how important is it to challenge this?
Kirste has always used their house as not the normal house, they earn more than their husband so quite often they would flip between of being home when the children are sick but what purpose would it serve to call someone out which may make a stigma out of the male and there may be many reasons why they don't do something. You can have a more flexible working environment, it is about giving permission for people to resolve a crisis in a supportive way.
Joe said that work can be challenging so it is about role modelling and about the standards that you set, if you see a leader doing it then it is generally alright, this sets the tone for what is acceptable. You can have kids running about in the background in a Zoom call.
Allies want to do good and want to support women but may need to have the confidence to do this?
Joe talked about when doing things in an organisation is to just get people to talk over a coffee but if try do this too formally it doesn't work, they worked at Sky and had flash cards about starting a conversation about allyship, they had a case when someone talked about maternity as holiday.
Rob mentioned one way to bring men into the conversation is to have them come along to events like this, helping to destigmatise conversations about allyship and it isn't something out there and radical but normalise it, it is the right thing to do as everyone should have an equal right in the workplace.
Nicola mentioned that people might be scared of saying the wrong thing, so need to create a culture where people are relaxed or a framework for conversations to encourage allyship.
Two-way communication is fundamental for individual needs and method of collecting preferences differs between small and large organisations, what is they need or want to create a safe space?
Kirste mentioned they want to be a in a world where people can have a conversation about what works for them, but having questions and active listening to listen and understand is helpful, their mentors took time to understand them, they did have a lot of anxiety and worries or concerns and later found they were neurodivergent that rocked their world but having people they could have a proper conversation with someone and not be judged, is good to have a conversation and feel safe and supported, but if people are listened too they are seen or heard and it doesn't matter regarding the size of the organisation.
Joe mentioned the bigger the audience the louder the voice and the less feedback you get, some organisations fall over as they need to talk to a big collection or people and blast out a communication and find no one is complaining and people then go to their team who panic or are worried. Need to start targeting smaller groups and be aware and need to check in with the manager of that group about what is the right communication style should it be formal or informal and then say something over and over again and see what is wrong.
Rob mentioned on of the key enablers is asking each of their team members to say about who they are and fill this out and they would fill it out too even though they wouldn't feel the need to do that as it normalises it and this feedback helps make the workplace better for the employees and use gender neutral language which levels the playing field which can help normalise things especially for someone who doesn't feel comfortable in the workplace and is good to be sensitive to people in the workplace and could have something in an informal document which would help people understand what support people need.
Women in Tech North East
Women in Tech North East is volunteer led and the organisers really enjoy doing it and they have all had their own challenges, not to moan about it but try to make a change and saw a gap in the North East Tech community and weren't sure whether it would take off but have over 1,000 people in their online tech community and have had eleven fully-booked events with over 750 attendees and want to be a save space for women to be inspired with fireside chats and panels and have had people from CEOs to students but ever since its inception they've wanted to put on an allyship event and to encourage conversations and help make the change and need male allies to help make that impact, it is important to have these conversations and help organisations have these conversations and spread this across the region and can visit womenintechnortheast.co.uk for more information.