 We would like to extend a big thank you to everyone who came along to the "Reach Up, Reach Out, Reach Within - Achieving as a Woman in Technology" event that we co-hosted with HSBC on Thursday 19th June 2008. The event had a great take up and there were just a few spare seats in the room which had absolutely fantastic views across to east London, the Millennium Dome (now the O2), City Airport and the Thames making its way to the coast.
After a short welcome and update from Maggie Berry, Director of womenintechnology.co.uk the evening's key note speaker was Lois Grady – retired Director of Information Systems and Services at Hartford Life, a Fortune 100-listed company with over 30,000 employees who provide financial services to over seven million global customers.
Lois gave a personal retrospective of her career in information technology that spanned more than four decades. She shared how she achieved her own career success and gave valuable insights into how others can do the same. She described how her non-traditional approach to career and family choices, whilst remaining genuinely true to herself, created her happiness. She very much believes in the abundance of extraordinary IT career choices and that the power rests within everyone to reach up and reach out and achieve success working in technology.
A quote from her presentation sums this up:
"We may not have the power to do everything we want to do, but we have the power to decide what to do with what we have... and that power is enough"
After Lois there were two speakers from HSBC: Kirstie Galloway, Global Head of Cross Products and Cross Utilities IT and Karin Cook, Global Head of Derivative Operations. They both talked about their careers and the paths they've taken to get where they are today as well as sharing top tips on achieving success.
The formal part of the evening finished with a panel Q&A with our speakers as well as Kim Toews, Global Head of HR, HTS Global Banking and Markets at HSBC. As ever there was not enough time to answer all of the questions but working from home and the challenge of being 'out of sight and out of mind' was discussed as well as how to leave your emotions outside of the boardroom and whether there's any difference in how men and women network professionally.
The evening finished over drinks and canapés with people having a great opportunity to network amongst themselves and to chat to HSBC staff. As the latter part of the evening progressed the sun set and the view from the room changed to a beautiful night scape across London - fabulous!
Thank you goes to HSBC for co-hosting this event with us and for their super hospitality and ongoing support of womenintechnolgy. Thank you's go to our key note speaker, Lois Grady and to our two speakers from HSBC, Kirstie Galloway and Karin Cook as well as Kim Towes for her participation in the Q&A.
If you have any questions about the event, please don't hesitate to contact Maggie Berry, Director, womenintechnology.co.uk on 020 7422 9214 or mberry@womenin.co.uk
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