everywoman in Tech Forum Agenda
The 2024 everywoman in Tech Forum equipped delegates with key skills and knowledge necessary to become leaders and ultimately advance into senior positions within their organisations.
See below for the 2024 agenda. The 2025 agenda will be announced later in the year.
Thursday 14 March 2024
09:15 GMT
Registrations opens
09:45 GMT
Opening remarks and welcome
09:55 GMT
Keynote: What it takes to get into senior leadership and how to have impact once you get there
Multi-award-winning technology entrepreneur, seasoned CTO, accomplished author, podcast host, and cancer thriver Avril Chester shares her remarkable journey of resilience, determination, and innovation, highlighting the pivotal moments and key lessons that propelled her from the world of tech entrepreneurship to the prestigious C-suite.
This session explores the multifaceted journey to senior leadership, from the initial aspirations to the attainment of key milestones along the way. Delegates will gain insights into the critical skills, attributes, and mindset shifts necessary to navigate the complexities of senior leadership positions effectively.
This session promises to inspire, motivate, and empower you to reach new heights in your own career and leadership endeavours.
Keynote Speaker:
10:15 GMT
Keynote: How the next wave of AI will transform the workplace
There have been many reports and debates about what a general artificial intelligence might mean for humanity and for the future of our jobs, with predictions as wide ranging as a Terminator-esque future or a world of luxury and leisure for all of humanity. AI expert Roxanne Anderson will cut through the hype to paint a picture of what we can expect from AI in the workplace in the foreseeable future and how it is likely to affect tech careers.
10:35 GMT
Briefing: top tips for getting the most out of a mentee/mentor relationship
Led by IT leader and serial mentor Bebe Oladipo, this briefing will put you in the mindset for finding the right mentor or mentee at the forum and building a constructive relationship. It will challenge you to think about:
- What mentoring is and what it is not
- Determining the purpose and duration of the mentorship
- Setting up the frameworks for the relationship and making it sustainable
10:45 GMT
Mentorship circles
In this session you will meet likeminded mentees sharing similar challenges in areas such as leadership style and skills, career planning and advancement, and confidence. Come prepared with 3-4 questions you have that your mentor will be able to help you with. This is your opportunity to make connections and walk away with a new relationship that can boost your career.
11:15 GMT
Morning Coffee
11:30 GMT
Case study panel: How new tech is being used by the frontrunners
Short, sharp case studies from top innovators sharing how they have deployed new tech in the business, the lessons they have learnt and the processes and rules they have put in place to safely deploy and leverage cutting edge tools such as:
- Generative AI
- Web3/blockchain
- Digital twins
- IoT and smart devices
Opening presenter and Moderator:
Case Study presenters include:
12:20 GMT
Power hour: How to be strategic in your tech career
Tara Rule rose through the ranks at Adobe & O2 by playing to her strengths and writing her own Rule Book. She is now an international positive psychology coach and she’ll be leading this powerful and reflective session focused on giving you the tools so you can create Your Rule Book by developing:
- A personal brand statement
- A clearer understanding on who you are. Your strengths and your passions.
- Exciting goals you’re setting yourself
- A clear direction of travel and your roadmap
- Your pathway to success
13:20 GMT
Lunch
14:20 GMT
Panel: My secret weapon for elevating team performance
Tech leaders share their favourite productivity boosters in this hands-on demo session with live Q&A.
- How the tool was developed or selected and put to work in the business
- Different ways tech teams are working and how the tools enhance these processes
- Live demos of technologies and how they work for the team
- The impact of these tools on producing greater outputs or higher quality of work
- How I use performance data to publicise the team’s successes within the wider business
Moderator:
Panellists include:
15:00 GMT
Panel: Tech leadership styles: tapping into your strengths to become an engaging, authentic leader
- Do we need to emulate alpha male qualities to be leaders? How can we normalise diverse feminine leadership styles?
- Turning your strengths into leadership super powers
- Tackling affinity bias at the top levels of an organisation
- How to be a visible role model for other women aspiring to climb the corporate ladder
- Using seniority as a platform to enable other women to rise
Moderator:
Panellists include:
15:40 GMT
Afternoon coffee and networking
16:00 GMT
Closing keynote: Adventure Awaits – Stepping Up & Into the Unknown
As a professional adventurer Sally Kettle knows a thing or two about stepping into the unknown! Having rowed across the Atlantic twice, and then embarking on a career as a professional adventurer, she’s faced life threatening situations in many remote regions around the world. She also knows the path into leadership can be draughting – her story will demonstrate that, with a little bit of courage and boldness, you too can take seemingly risky decisions and change the course of your life.
16:25 GMT
Thank you and sum-up of the 2024 forum
16:30 GMT
Close of the 2024 forum
Early Careers Day
Main Tech Forum
Early Careers Day
Tuesday 7 March 2023
10:00 GMT
Opening remarks, welcome and the 2023 STEM early careers day
10:10 GMT
Keynote – How I use my STEM career to build a better and fairer world
Adama Ibrahim is a top digital leader in the Healthcare industry, a UK top 100 influential tech leader and a passionate advocate of diversity and inclusion practices. Starting out coordinating clinical trials for cancer, Adama quickly found her passion in R&D transformation, driving change through disruptive digital tech to improve drug development. Find out about the major factors in her success and how, as a leader, she has used her influence and energy to build a culture of inclusion and belonging for all in the workplace and in the Healthcare system.
Speaker:
10:30 GMT
Keynote – On the cutting edge of medical research: pursuing knowledge and fostering the future
Prof. Anna Randi is a clinically qualified haematologist whose potentially life-saving research into angiogenesis – the process of forming new blood vessels –has the potential to halt the spread of cancer and allow the growth of new healthy blood vessels in heart disease patients. Prof. Randi will share how she found her purpose in haematology and what drives her to keep pushing the boundaries of the possible in medical science.
Speaker:
10:50 GMT
Virtual café and stretch break
11:10 GMT
Keynote – Being the change: how supporting other women in STEM has supercharged my career
11:40 GMT
Panel – The many different doors into a top STEM career
Women who have landed enviable jobs in STEM share how they got there and their experience and challenges along the way. We will be exploring different avenues such as:
- Internships
- Apprenticeships
- Graduate programmes
- Courses and certifications aiding a sideways move into tech
Moderator:
Panellists include:
12:30 GMT
Speed Mentoring
Did you know that having a mentor makes you five times more likely to be promoted?
A mentor will challenge your thinking and can make you more likely to avoid mistakes and reach your goals in both your current role and your career. Come to our pick-a-mentor session and connect with a potential mentor with the knowledge and skills to support you into the next steps of your career.
12:50 GMT
Lunch break
14:05 GMT
PechaKucha
Employers’ advice: How to be a standout applicant for today’s STEM jobs
Senior managers present 20 images with 20 seconds per image, focusing on:
- CVs and headlines: what to include, what to leave out and how much to personalise your application
- What has impressed us in our entry level position interviews? What are the criteria for choosing a particular candidate?
- Top tips for getting the role you want
Speakers include:
14:40 GMT
Career Clinic
Join a virtual table of your choice to find out about what it’s like to work in the industry, job openings and what skills they are looking for in a graduate. Hear from companies such as:
- Lloyds Banking Group
- SSE
- Bupa
- QVC
- Addin365
16:20 GMT
Can tech save the planet?
Speaker:
16:40 GMT
Keynote – Discovering the first galaxies with the James Webb Space Telescope
ESA astronomer Dr Nimisha Kumari is making new discoveries about the formation and evolution of the universe’s first galaxies as part of the James Webb Space Telescope team. But how did she take her own giant leap from an early life in an underdeveloped state in India, to her current role on the cutting edge of galactic research? And what new insights is she discovering about these mysterious and distant galaxies?
Speaker:
17:00 GMT
Closing remarks
17:00 GMT
End of the 2023 STEM early careers day
Main Tech Forum
Thursday 9 March 2023
09:00 GMT
Opening remarks, welcome and our 2023 networking challenge
09:10 GMT
Keynote – My climb to the C-suite: 3 things that brought me here
09:30 GMT
Keynote – Innovating differently: A career in computer networks
Dr Radia Perlman’s inventions have shaped the internet. She is most famous for inventing the spanning tree protocol (STP), which allowed the internet to scale from a local area network to the international web that we use today. She has been inducted into the Inventor Hall of Fame and The Internet Hall of Fame and holds lifetime achievement awards from Usenix and SIGCOMM. What is her approach to discovering and developing completely new concepts, algorithms and technologies? And how does she inspire her team to push the boundaries of the possible?
Speaker:
09:50 GMT
Panel – Sustainability challenge: turning consciousness into action
- How to start small, driving sustainability initiatives in the workplace
- Green inspiration: what projects have your peers in tech taken on?
- Setting your goal: identify a sustainability project that you take back to the workplace and work on tomorrow
Moderator:
Speakers:
11:00 GMT
Specialist tech pathways – Session 1
Panel – Post-pandemic careers: where are the future tech jobs?
Which areas are companies investing in now and why?
What are the emerging job roles you will see more of in the coming years?
Industries on the rise and the skills the big players are looking for
Panellists include:
Panel – Being an authentic female tech leader
- How did other women develop their leadership styles?
- Dealing with the tension between the leader you would like to be and the policy/cultural constraints of the organisation
- 360˚ feedback: distinguishing between useful feedback versus voices that are reinforcing old leadership norms
- Navigating cultural differences and communications styles across a multinational company
- What additional qualities have you brought into your organisation as a woman leader?
Moderator:
Panellists include:
11:30 GMT
Specialist tech pathways – Session 2
Interactive discussion:
Time to pivot? Putting your transferrable skills to work
Have you ever wondered how somebody made a giant career leap, say from structural engineering to data science? Or from project management to cyber security? Women in tech share their stories of recognising their own technical and non-technical transferrable skills to help transition into new fields and what else they needed to do to take bold new directions in their careers.
Panellists include:
- Michelle Ohren, Detective Inspector, Director and Head of Cyber and Innovation, West Midlands Police
Knowledge funnel:
Tech leadership in the new world of work
Tech leaders share their one best piece of advice on leading a team as we move into unchartered territory in the post-pandemic work environment.
- Approaches to balancing team cohesion with flexibility
- Managing friction between remote and office based employees
- Re-engaging tech teams: initiatives for reinspiring and supporting your people
- What makes a good leader in the age of agile, data centricity and digital?
Moderator:
Panellists include:
11:50 GMT
Specialist tech pathways – Session 3
Panel – So, you want to be a STEM ambassador?
- Which organisations could you work with? What are they focused on?
- What time commitment is involved?
- How much experience do you need before you can volunteer?
- What are people’s experiences of volunteering for these organisations?
Moderator:
Panellists:
Courageous conversations
How to be a better leader and ally to specific groups in the workplace. We look at how managers can have courageous conversations around:
- Menopause
- Ethnicity & Race
- LGBTQ
- Neurodiversity
12:10 GMT
Comfort break
12:10 GMT
Specialist Track: Aspiring Leaders
Fireside chat with Maja Pantic: Emotional Intelligence in AI and your career
12:20 GMT
Specialist tech pathways – Session 4
Power hour – How to be unafraid of failure
Fireside chat:
How to move up to the top job
IT leaders share their career journeys, what they prioritised and the traits they have developed in themselves to shore up their paths into leadership.
Speakers include:
12:50 GMT
Specialist Track: Tech Leadership
Panel – Burnout and wellbeing for tech leaders: the ultimate guide
The constant pressure to be keeping up with tech can weigh heavily on teams, especially when it compounds with another health or personal problem. How can tech managers help themselves as well as their teams? We will be looking at:
- Avoiding and managing burnout in your team and in yourself
- How do other tech leaders approach the work/life tussle?
- Managing and communicating your own mental wellbeing as a leader
- What can we expect from the talent pipeline as graduates come through who were students during the pandemic?
Panellists include:
13:20 GMT
Lunch break
14:20 GMT
Specialist Track: Software Development
Nailing your software development
- Which programming languages are:
- the most popular,
- attracting the highest pay and
- easiest to learn?
- To specialise or to generalise: which is the best strategy for your long-term career?
- What’s your experience of moving programming languages or tech stacks? What advice would you give to someone who is thinking of taking this step?
- What challenges have you faced in your software development career so far and how did you overcome them?
Moderator:
Panellists include:
14:20 GMT
Tech roundtables
How do other industries innovate? Our roundtables will give you the ultimate cross-fertilisation of ideas between different fields, industries and thinkers. Forge new peer relationships that challenge your approach so you can view progress through an entirely different lens.
- Cyber security
- Healthcare
- Financial Services
- Data Science
- Technology
- Tech Innovation
- Electric vehicles and battery tech
- Climate tech
- Sustainable energy
- AI
- VR/AR
- Gaming
- DeFi (crypto and NFTs)
Specialist Leadership roundtables
- How can we develop a more diverse talent pipeline in tech?
- Recruiting more diverse talent
- How to make it to the C-level in a tech career
- How to encourage and support male allyship in the workplace
Panel – Piloting your own career in cloud
Gartner expects global cloud spending to reach $600 billion in 2023*, so how can you ensure your career benefits from this exponential growth?
- Which certifications are worth investing in?
- Career paths of other cloud professionals: what progression can you expect?
- Avenues for networking and mentoring with other cloud specialists
- How can you ensure you don’t box yourself into a corner in your cloud career?
- How to move up in your career from entry and mid-levels
Panellists include:
Lightning talks: New frontiers in cloud computing
Top cloud engineering professionals share their tips and experiences of the latest developments in cloud, such as:
- IaaS, multicloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud and serverless delivery models
- Enterprise-wide cloud migration
- Cyber security and data privacy for the cloud
Panellists include:
14:50 GMT
Specialist Track: Software Development
Lightning talks
Software development trends
A fast paced review of key innovations that have made their mark on software this year: what are developers’ experiences with them and will they be here to stay?
- DevSecOps: how is it being integrated into software development processes?
- Web 3.0: how will it impact different types of software development?
- Microservice deployment: to decentralise or not to decentralise?
- Cloud native application development
Moderator:
Panellists include:
15:00 GMT
Afternoon break and networking
15:40 GMT
Panel: How can we build equality into AI?
Panellists include:
- What research is going on in this area to avoid AI discriminating against particular groups of people and reinforcing old stereotypes?
- Breaking down the black box: methods for identifying which data columns the algo is focusing on and how it is influencing results
- What non-technical factors are important for ensuring we don’t create less equitable algorithms?
- How do we move forward with AI without building a less equitable society?
- Whose job should it be to eliminate bias from AI?
Panellists include:
16:10 GMT
Keynote – How I launched my own Space career
Speaker:
16:25 GMT
Closing remarks
16:30 GMT
End of Forum
19:00 GMT
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