SODA Social: Recent Episodes
SODA Social
Come and join our networking revolution. SODA Social.Our aim is to empower and bring together a diverse community that represents the digital world. We strive to innovate, educate, and inspire future leaders of technology.SODA Social is our pioneering, innovative networking platform and online networking platform, created to bring together digital experts for networking and knowledge-sharing. It allows us – and you – to engage with us and our digital world in a relaxed, informative, and light-hearted way.Our SODA Social initiatives enable our community to discuss and debate hot topics, market trends, opportunities, threats, and all things related to technology. Over-subscribed and cutting-edge, our events are aimed at digital professionals across the Design, DevOps, Software Engineering, Product Management, and Data sectors. Join our social movement to become part of a networking revolution.Sign up today here:http://www.soda-social.com#SODASocial
Episode 33! SODA’s Managing Director, Oliver Perry, caught up with the insightful Andrew Holmes, author, management consultant, business partner, humourist, the list goes on. Tune in to hear all about unintended consequences in the corporate world.
Andrew Holmes is a non-executive director at Birmingham Bank and All Africa Capital Limited. His decades-long career spans a multitude of sectors, and roles, ranging from survey and mapping, software development and IT, project and programme management, consultancy and more recently establishing new banks and bank branches.
Andrew has spent the bulk of his career leading and delivering change into blue chip organisations nationally, regionally, and globally, including BP, British Gas, UBS, National Express, Ministry of Defence, Ordnance Survey, Silicon Valley Bank, EY and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
In addition, Andrew has been an active author since 1999, writing on a range of topics including risk management, IT, consultancy, lifelong learning, and more latterly the unintended consequences of decision-making. He has also written four humour books focused on the annoying attributes of people on trains, at work, and in public (the “painspotting” series).
Andrew holds a bachelor's degree from Newcastle University, a master's from the London School of Economics, and a postgraduate diploma from Said Business School, University of Oxford.
Get yourself on the SODA Social podcast! Contact the team here: https://www.trustinsoda.com/get-in-touch
In this episode of the SODA Social podcast, we sat down with the wonderful Tim Morris, veteran of the live music industry-turned software developer. Tim shared his thoughts on transferrable skills, changing expectations, bootcamps, and the power of problem-solving (involving gaffa tape and drummer's head). Happy listening!
Tim is a Backend Software Developer working at Tillo, a global Fintech based in Hove. Spending the first 15 years of his professional career in the music industry, he’s toured the world with artists such as Enter Shikari, Freya Ridings, and Hundred Reasons, as well as recording the likes of Keane, Young Guns, and AJ Tracy across multiple top-charting albums and singles.
Following a pandemic-inspired boot camp, Tim now has his feet firmly set in the tech industry and is putting his experience and problem-solving mindset to good use, delivering innovative software solutions for a fast-growing and dynamic company in the Fintech space.
Want more insights? Need support from specialist tech recruiters? We've got you covered. visit www.trustinsoda.com to find out more.
In this episode, Trust in SODA's Johann Nathanielsz caught up with The Cloud Therapist himself, Richard Simon, to discuss what it takes to level up in tech. From building a personal brand to the difference between a job and a career, listen in to hear the latest insights.
Richard is a Cloud Native, Open Source and AI advocate with over 34 years of IT industry experience. For the past 14 years, he's worked in various roles related to Cloud Computing.
He is a highly structured, respected, and opinionated IT leader who's accumulated a vast set of experiences in roles such as Systems Engineer, Field Engineer, Cloud Architect, Principal Consultant and now, CTO.
He has worked for many prestigious IT vendors and service providers, such as IBM, SUSE, Mirantis, Heptio, World Wide Technology, Contino and now T-Systems.
Richard runs the YouTube channel, Cloud Therapist, and enjoys challenging his audience with thought-provoking content, as well as during his public speaking engagements at various conferences and webinars.
Whether you're hoping to hire or get hired in the world of tech, Trust in SODA has you covered. Check out our community-led approach to recruitment here: https://www.trustinsoda.com/
In this episode, Trust in SODA's Donell John-Baptiste sat down with the insightful Mirela Mus to talk about what it means to be a people-first business in the world of Product recruitment.
Mirela is the Founder & CPO of Product People, the premier destination for Product Management in Europe. Mirela worked with companies like Zalando, Omio, DeepL, and The World Health Organization. Her background is in Computer Science plus an MBA. She's been doing Product Management for over 12 years, half of them in a leadership role (50+ people headcount). Based in Berlin since 2015, Mirela spends her downtime hiking, reading Sci-fi like the Culture Series, playing board games, and painting. Mirela is also a top Product Management voice on LinkedIn with 30k+ followers.
Looking for a new tech career? Check out our live jobs: https://www.trustinsoda.com/jobs
In this episode, SODA's Yessenia Martinez sits down to pick the brains of the incredible Marlon Opigo.
With an academic background in finance and economics, Marlon kicked off his career as a junior broker in the financial services sector before becoming a program consultant at GUS, helping international students study abroad.
He is passionate about all things diversity and inclusion as well as global food systems - after interning at Growing Communities (a not-for-profit charity in the food sector), he decided to take on a new challenge - Partnerships Manager at The People, a social impact agency breaking down barriers to make brands and companies more inclusive and representative.
Check out our recent SODA Social podcast with Dagmar M. Schuller.
Dagmar is the CEO and co-founder of audEERING, the innovation leader in AI-based audio analysis.
Among others, audEERING was awarded the Innovation Price Bavaria in 2018, was named European Top 5 Deep Tech company for Digital Wellbeing by EIT Digital and won the VDE Bayern Award as well as the Vision Award in 2019.
Since May 2021 Dagmar Schuller is a member of the plenum of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce for Munich and Upper Bavaria (IHK), Germany’s largest Chamber of Industry and Commerce. In June 2021 she was elected Vice President of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce for Munich and Upper Bavaria (IHK). Her focus points are innovation, new technologies, technology transfer and data economics. Further, Dagmar Schuller is Deputy Head (Politics) of the Bavaria Chapter of KI Bundesverband e.V. and with her expertise supports public institutions and different companies as an advisor.
Visit us at www.trustinsoda.com
In this episode, Luchele Mendes was joined by Martin Musiol, Principal Data Science Manager at Infosys Consulting.
Long before the buzz surrounding generative AI, Martin Musiol was already advocating for its significance in 2015. Since then, he has been a frequent speaker at conferences, podcasts, and panel discussions, addressing the technological advancements, practical applications, and ethical considerations of generative AI.
Martin is a co-founder of generativeAI.net, a lecturer on AI to over 1000 students, and publisher of the newsletter 'Generative AI: Short & Sweet'.
As a Data Science Manager at Infosys Consulting (previously at IBM), MartinMusiol helps companies globally harness the power of generative AI to gain a competitive advantage.
Luchele sits down with Julia Kruslin, co-founder of beatvest, to discuss the conversation around the 'Feedback Revolution.'
Julia is the co-founder of beatvest, an investment app that helps beginners learn how to invest easily and playfully. The company has raised 1.3 million EUR from prestigious angels and VCs. Before founding beatvest, Julia worked for the strategy consulting firm Strategy&. Her passion is to work on the intersection between tech and business. She holds a Master's degree from WU Vienna and is trained as a full-stack web developer.
check out the link to Huberman, which Julia referred to: https://open.spotify.com/show/79CkJF3UJTHFV8Dse3Oy0P
In the latest episode of SODA Social, Luchele had the pleasure of interviewing Diya Roychowdhury, COO at Taplasolutions. Diya brings over 14 years of experience in enabling teams and organizations to perform efficiently and with integrity. Despite starting her career as a tester in tech, Diya quickly rose through the ranks and became a C-level executive in a data product tech startup in just 1.5 years. She is also well-versed in digital transformation and product development across various industries.
Originally from Mumbai, Diya has lived and worked in Vienna, Belfast, and now Düsseldorf, where she has been exposed to a diverse range of people and cultures. Diya's personal mantra is DIY, which stands for "Do it yourself." She believes in being your authentic self, learning from failures, acquiring necessary skills, and going after what you desire.
Diya's ultimate goal is to promote cognitive and emotional empathy in workplaces, as she believes it supercharges innovation and creativity.
Listen to our latest SODA Social conversation, hosted by Harry Murray. In this episode, we explored Product and Ageism in technology with Kavya Kaushik.
Kav is The Joy Club's Head of Product. She brings experience across startups, scale-ups, and FTSE 100 companies in education, publishing, and hospitality to the role, having most recently worked at FANZO to bring sports fans together to create memories. Creative, commercially minded and strategic, Kav enjoys working across our teams to build the best experiences for our Joy Clubbers. Before joining the world of tech, she worked across politics, journalism and as a dancer, facilitating Indian dance workshops with UK older people’s charities. Kav is motivated by using tech to solve socially impactful problems and is really excited to work on bringing joy to retirees.
In this episode, Luchele Mendes chats with Stefanos Christoforou about AI Excellency. Stefanos is co-founder and CTO of skillfill.ai, a Berlin-based company which transforms the way recruitment is done by bringing accuracy, speed and efficiency to the applicants’ screening process powered by AI. He’s been passionately programming since he was 12, and has been working professionally with web & software technologies for over a decade, most recently with a focus on NLP products.
Stefanos is not only obsessed with technology, but also a true entrepreneur at heart. He’s always looking for new and exciting opportunities to turn his ideas into reality, driven by the thrill of taking a concept from zero to hero.
When he’s not coding, you would probably find him running, chasing the limits of human endurance, with the most recent achievement of running 105 km in 12 hours.
In this episode, Luchele and Dr. Mulang' Orando discuss the rise of the tech landscape in Africa, and the opportunities this can provide for data and AI specialists.
Dr. Mulang’ is also passionate about Artificial Intelligence and its application as a solution to human challenges such as Health, Natural language Understanding, and accelerating development goals; mentorship of future leaders and tech professionals; and reducing the inequality divide. He currently works as a research scientist and challenge lead at IBM-Research Africa where he is involved in creating innovative AI methods for accelerated discovery in science, specifically in health care, and applying his experience on Foundation Models to build models of biomedical and clinical health solutions.
Our latest podcast features the fabulous Dr. Dmitrij Achelrod (PhD). Dmitrij is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of the Evolute Institute. His personal journey of transformation was catalyzed by an unexpected and life-changing entheogenic encounter in the Brazilian forest several years ago. Ever since, he committed to exploring the path of the heart and learning about science-backed and traditional modalities of personal healing and growth. Prior to starting Evolute, he has been combining his expertise in healthcare and data science to create AI-powered solutions for a rapidly growing US tech startup. In this role, he provided strategic consulting to top-level executives of multi-billion dollar corporations. He is an advisory board member of several digital therapeutics companies, an entrepreneur in the healthcare field, and a university guest lecturer. Dmitrij holds degrees in Business and Health Policy (London School of Economics). He obtained his PhD in Health Economics while researching at Hamburg and Oxford University and received numerous distinctions for his academic work. Dmitrij's vision is to be of service at the intersection of human and planetary well-being by helping people to deepen their connection with life and to actualize their potential through deep inner work.
At Evolute Institute, they create profound learning and development experiences using the power of altered states of consciousness. They welcome those entrepreneurs, change-makers & leadership pioneers to our programs who would like to deepen their practice of self-exploration and who are ready for re-orientation and personal renewal.
Take a listen to our last SODA Social podcast. At SODA, our aim is to empower and bring together a diverse community that represents the digital world. We strive to innovate, educate and inspire future leaders of technology.
In this episode, Alfie Rice, Marketing Executive here at SODA Social, is joined by the fabulous Lina Yassin. Lina is an entrepreneur, organisational designer, and data enthusiast. She has recently co-founded start-up Numo, and is on a mission to reduce organisational debt by empowering middle managers and tech scale-ups to own and monitor their career growth metrics and KPIs.
Alf chats with Lina about her untraditional route into technology, and how data can empower people and workforces.
Check out our latest SODA Social episode featuring the wonderful Camille van Hoffelen.
Camille is the co-founder of Watergenics, where he builds a sustainable future for our Blue Planet. He graduated with an MSci in Physics from Imperial College London, specializing in nanotechnology. He then spent 6 years as a machine learning engineer developing state-of-the-art NLP systems for legal AI. Today, he leads the technological development of the water quality data platform at Watergenics, and its smart data products for automation systems in agriculture, aquaculture and mining. He is driven by the impact of cutting-edge AI technologies and strives to put these big ideas to use in the real world.
In this podcast, Camille and SODA Squad member Luchele Mendes discuss all things machine learning, from data annotation to productionisation, as well as advice on how you can kickstart your career in ML.
What will the future bring for women in data science?
Take a listen to our latest SODA Social podcast episode featuring Selma Hadzic. Selma is a senior data science manager/tech lead with 10 years of experience and 4+ years of experience leading and scaling international teams. Additionally, she is a professional coach and diversity & inclusion consultant, guiding tech companies to close the gender gap.
In this episode, we discussed Selma’s journey into technology, as well as her experiences acting as a manager and why more women should pursue a career in data science.
Visit Selma's website at www.selmahadzic.com and connect with her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/selma-hadzic-9630625b/
Take a listen to our latest SODA Social podcast episode featuring Sam Becht.
Sam is one of the founders of Deliqs, where he is setting up a digital ecosystem for psychedelic care and research. With their ecosystem Deliqs proposes a paradigm shift where we do not refer to psychedelics as medicine, but rather catalysts for change. That's why Deliqs' focus is on optimizing the therapeutic journey of psychedelic patients, both by giving them sovereignty over their own healing journey, and by easing the therapeutic relationship with their practitioner through an online infrastructure. Deliqs helps psychedelic users to track their journey, educate themselves and gain actionable mental health insights. For practitioners, Deliqs is creating a platform that allows them to manage patient journeys and get real-time access to client journey data for better health outcomes.
Take a listen to our latest SODA Social podcast episode featuring Julia Hoxha. Julia is co-founder and CEO of Zana, a German company developing Conversational and Voice-AI solutions for healthcare. Her journey as a tech entrepreneur started at 21 when she founded her first startup followed by other ventures. She obtained her PhD at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and worked as Postdoctoral Scientist at Columbia University in Medical Informatics.
Her mission is to drive healthcare innovation through human-computer interaction technology. She leads the Working Group “Health” of the German AI Association. As an AI expert, she acts as an advisor and mentor for startup accelerators, and government and research institutions.
Happy listening!
This panel discussion is a pre-recorded webinar, but we felt the content was so impactful, we decided to share it with our podcast listeners. Our SODA Social community came together for our webinar panel discussion, ‘It’s Time to Close the Gender Gap,’ with our wonderful friends at Code Institute, sponsored by Deloitte. Led by our very own Ronan Connell, the discussion touched on a plethora of topics, which included:
🌟 The importance of visibility and encouragement from a young age
🔎 Simple changes matter: the value of reviewing job ads and scrutinising terminology
🔥 Tackling burnout and the advantage of flexible working
👩💻 Imposter syndrome is real and can impact the progression
🙏 The power of mentorship
💡 Code Institute’s Springboard programme: supporting women through training schemes
🌐 Developing confidence, leveraging your network and having faith
🌈 Why a diverse hiring process and recruitment process matters
From all at SODA Social, we’d like to thank our excellent panellists Jessica Cregg, Jane Gormley and Julieanne Fleming for their eye-opening and comprehensive insights.
Check out our SODA Social podcast series. During our latest episode, our very own Harry Murray spoke with Haz McQuade and Ayla Erimer to discuss what constitutes a Product Manager in today’s digital world.
Haz is a Product Lead at Motorway, the UK’s fastest-growing used car marketplace. With almost a decade of leadership experience across a wide range of products and industries, Haz is passionate about all things Product Management. An advocate for equality in tech, Haz regularly leads and participates in initiatives to promote diversity and inclusion across the technology sector.
Ayla is the Product Director at Love Home Swap, an award-winning home exchange platform. Interested in how technology can enable and enrich in-person experiences, she is passionate about leveraging membership networks to drive new sources of value. She has previously worked on some of the world’s biggest travel experience products, such as Priority Pass and LoungeKey.
This conversation explored a plethora of topics relating to the role of a product manager; from outlining what exactly is a product to product discovery and the desired traits one may possess when working as a product manager. The discussion also explored advice for getting into the product industry, as well as the importance of company culture and learning from failure along the way.
This panel discussion is a pre-recorded webinar, but we felt the content was so impactful, we decided to share it with our podcast listeners.
The discussion delved into an array of topics and insights, which included:
- Pride is about belonging and recognising we are all human
- The importance of being your true self at work and creating a sense of freedom for an individual
- Collective activism and emphasis on ‘walking the walk’
- From volunteering to company policy making: ensuring Pride is considered all-year round
- Tech’s supply and demand issue, and why this is good news for LGBTQIA+ members
- Removing biases to attract diverse top talent
- Social media’s role in collective activism
- Be loud – share your opinion and engage with the conversation
- Pride month meaning: celebration or political revolution?
Duygu Altinok is a senior NLP (natural language processing) engineer with 12 years of experience in almost all areas of NLP including search engine technology, speech recognition, text analytics and conversational AI. She authored several publications in the NLP area at conferences such as LREC and CLNLP. She also enjoys working on open-source projects and contributes to the spaCy library.
She has also published a book on her area of expertise Mastering SpaCy: an end-to-end practical guide to implementing NLP applications using the Python ecosystem, available through Waterstones, here.
Duygu earned her undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering from METU, Ankara in 2010 and later earned her Master’s degree in Mathematics from Bilkent University, Ankara in 2012. She spent 2 years at the University of Bonn for her PhD studies. She is currently a senior engineer at Deepgram with a focus on speech recognition.
Originally from Istanbul, Duygu currently resides in Berlin, DE with her cute dog Adele.
The world is feeling the impact of the climate crisis. Destructive wildfires take over Australia and California, severe flooding in Western Europe, glaciers melting at accelerating rates and devastating droughts in Eastern Africa. There is an increased demand for innovation in technology, and drastic action to fight climate change.
Discussion points:
- Human-induced warming right now has reached about 1.1 degrees above preindustrial levels
- The protection of human lives is at risk
- It's not always the big global changes that can make the most impact
- An impactful network based on trust is key to building a solution
- Transparency is key to overcoming ‘greenwashing’
- We need to educate and translate the climate change risk efficiently
- Climate protection has evolved into aiming for a sustainable climate-adapted future for our planet
My name is Tom Carmichael. I am 33 years and have been working within recruitment now for the past 12 years and this is me sharing my journey of my struggles with mental health.
I was just your average 29 year old man, wondering what was coming next as I approached 30 and feeling significant pressure that I was behind in life, constantly comparing myself to friends and peers. I’m very fortunate to have a very huge family who I am very close to, lots of different circles of friends and always busy socialising. I guess I had an awareness of mental health and seen first hand what it can do to someone close to me, but I never considered for one minute that I could be affected. I’ve always been a worrier, an over-thinker and have put massive pressure on myself in various situations and unfortunately during June 2018, shortly after my 30th birthday I had a complete breakdown that was not only to affect me, but everyone I cared about. It spiralled and I spent countless days, then months just stuck in my room seeing no way out. If it wasn’t for the constant support of family, then I dread to think what could have happened. It took time, it took the right medication and now I am happy to see that I have never been in a better place. I want to give people hope, that they WILL get better, and I hope by doing something like this will be a source of support for someone who is struggling right now and unable to see a way out. I now make it my mission to reach out to friends and just ask that simple “how are you doing?” and try and use my experiences to help others.
Is the age of 80-100 hours a week a thing of the past? The pandemic transformed the workplace, bringing awareness to unrealistic expectations. More mindful initiatives such as the four-day work week, hybrid office models, shorter commutes, and flexible and inclusive work perks have been implemented to encourage more of a balance. Do you live to work, or work to live?
Our panel:
- Francesca Pollard - Host @ Women in DevOps
- Kate Richardson - Chair & Head of Diversity & Inclusion @ G Network
- Temi Olukoko - DevOps Engineer @ Funding Circle UK
- Amy Allen - Junior Infrastructure / DevOps Engineer for Feeld
Ritika Wadhwa is a Director at the Cultural Intelligence Centre. She is responsible for leading the Centre’s work in the UK and beyond. Ritika has over 25 years of extensive experience in client retention, marketing, business development, and project management. Experience she has gained by working with senior stakeholders across continents, the private and public sector.
Born and brought up in India, Ritika has the unique experience of living, studying, and working in senior roles in several multicultural countries. She is passionate about Cultural Intelligence and is a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion champion. Ritika is part of BT’s Ethnic Minority Mentorship programme and also sits on the Independent Advisory Board for British Transport Police.
When looking to achieve our goals in a busy environment, it's easy to neglect mental, physical, and emotional health. How could technology help an individual, in a work / educational environment, to better manage this?
Tackling burnout and prioritising mental health and wellbeing are fundamental to ensuring the workforce stay happy, healthy, and supported.
Discussion points:
- Why is mental health and well-being awareness fundamental
- How to avoid burnout
- How to build a resilient workforce and the role of the employer
- The importance of anti-stigma mental health campaigns
- How to combat cultural barriers
- Predictions for 2022
Ann is the Chief People Officer of Flo, the #1 most downloaded Health app on a mission to improve the health and wellbeing of every girl and woman worldwide. She is responsible for the strategic development of Flo’s global people and growth strategy, leading talent, engagement, people operations and performance management as the company ramps up for significant growth as one fo Europe’s fastest-growing tech unicorns. Prior to Flo Ann was the Group HR Director at Bumble leading up to its acquisition by Blackstone Growth in 2020 and IPO in 2021. Prior to that Ann was in Lebara Mobile leading up to its exit to Palmarium in 2017. Her earlier career includes heading up HR for Future Cities Catapult, and a series of corporate roles in Rolls-Royce and Goldman Sachs spanning Europe, Middle East and APAC. She gets a kick out of helping businesses solve their trickiest people challenges, operating at the intersection of modern People practices, emerging technologies and commercial business results.
Ann has a bachelors degree from the London School of Economics and an MBA from Imperial College Business School. She is a member of the advisory board at Nimbus Ninety, a judge at the UK Employee Experience Award, was the HR Professional of the Year Gold Award Winner in HR Brilliance Awards 2019, and is a regular contributor to a variety of tech, innovation and HR publications.
Ann is born and brought up in Estonia, educated in Bangkok and for the past 15 years calls London home.
We discussed what Susie has been up to at the BBC, the importance of closing the gender pay gap and tackling gender bias in the workplace. We then went on to uncover the significance of flexible working, sustainability in technology, Susie’s role models and the importance of creating policies on discrimination to support the LGBTQ+ community.
Susie has the vision to see the tech world reflect the real world and the general population, which is far beyond gender. There needs to be a cultural shift throughout the tech industry, particularly at the top and organisations need to be doing more on how they attract lots of different groups of people. Equality in technology is fundamental in creating people and planet-friendly technology.
We passionately believe that a balanced diverse and inclusive workforce will drive innovation. It improves performance, enables creativity and has the ability to transform the world. We are committed to the pursuit of ensuring diversity and inclusion, join us to celebrate the achievements of women.
EachForEqual
We interviewed Ivana Bartoletti a Technical Director at Deloitte, Visiting Policy Fellow at Oxford University and Co-Founder of Women Leading in AI Network. Ivana Bartoletti has established herself as a powerful force within the technical landscape; from starting her career journey in politics, she eventually fell into technology due to the unlikely similarities between the two. Ivana has worked for large powerhouses such as Sky, Barclays – and now, Deloitte. She is also a public speaker, author, and media commentator – her passion for ethical AI is incredibly important to her and has even seen her win various awards such as ‘Women of the Year’ at the 2019 Cyber Security Awards. Ivana has recently written a new book, ‘An Artificial Revolution: On Power, Politics and AI,’ and we were thrilled to speak with her recently where she discussed her career journey, the bias in tech, surveillance and recognition systems and the future of artificial intelligence.
Alexander is a perception lead at Kopernikus Automotive GmbH. He started his career as a software test engineer and worked in a big variety of fields primarily related to Machine Learning topics like OCR, NLP and Big Data processing. Around 3 years ago he discovered a beautiful world of autonomous vehicles and decided that he wants to be a part of this field that will change our future. After successful participation in the robocars competition in 2018, he was invited as a Machine Learning Engineer in the company Kopernikus Automotive GmbH and soon took responsibility for the perception topic in the company. He developed a perception system that is used to drive cars by external cameras. This system converts images from statically located cameras into a map with objects list: their positions, orientation and dimensions. He is passionate about everything in the AD and CV fields and loves to share his knowledge.
‘There is no ceiling, anything is possible.’
We interviewed the inspirational, warm and passionate Aubrey Stearn otherwise known as Bree, an Interim CTO. Bree is the first trans-CTO in the UK and has previously held interim roles at Oakam, Nationwide, Arcadia, PizzaHut and Travel Lodge. A developer at heart and former head of IT Operations, she understands the synergy possible with DevOps.
Bree’s passion for technology sparked when she played video games with her father, which enabled her to learn the basics of computers. Bree talked about technology overall as an accepting, progressive industry and she is proud of its accessibility; with communities such as the Women in DevOps. A community that enables people from all walks of life to come together.
She touched on her experiences of transitioning in the workplace, and how employees, employers and organisations can create an inclusive and safe environment to support and become allies of the LGBTQ+ community. Bree mentioned the importance of creating a safe workplace and reiterated the significance by saying, people may not be able to understand what you are going through; not all illnesses or things that people are dealing with are visible. Inclusive allyship supported by kindness is the foundational building blocks to creating an inclusive work environment.
Bree discussed the relevance of nailing external factors such as gender pronouns because it means a lot to the LGBTQ+ community. Be understanding that not all have nailed masteries in their assumed genders so always allow space for that.
Bree touched on the trans community, with one of the most prominent being Caitlyn Jenner, as she transitioned in front of the world and helped make the trans cause more visible. Bree aspires to use her presence as a platform for other voices to be heard. Bree is an inspirational figure and influential leader who is committed to driving positive change and unknowingly redefining leadership.