Exceptional Male Ally Executives – Rob McCargow

Rob McCargow is Technology Impact Leader at PwC UK

Over the past decade, Rob has played a distinctive role in driving engagement with - and advancement of - the UK’s AI agenda, had the opportunity to deliver hundreds of talks in over 40 countries, and has established himself as one of PwC's key technology spokespeople and influencers.

Rob is an Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow at Bayes Business School, a Fellow of The RSA, and a founding advisory board member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on AI. HR Magazine ranks him as an 'HR Most Influential Thinker', Onalytica cite him as a 'Who's Who in AI', and he was voted 'Tech Community Leader of the Year' at the CogX Festival.

He strives to ensure that the technology workforce is equitable and inclusive, winning the Editor's Choice Award at the #TechWomen100 awards for his support of the women-in-tech agenda. He also drives PwC’s Tech-for-Good initiatives bringing together the firm’s technologists to work with charities for social purpose projects.

Can we start with your personal background?

I was born in Norwich to a Scottish father and a Yorkshire mother. I grew up and lived in Nottingham, not far from the City Ground during the Brian Clough Nottingham Forest era. My dad worked in IT for the county council and my mum was a midwife and health visitor. My parents divorced when I was around 10 and my brother and I subsequently lived with my mum. It’s understating things to say that she was a huge inspiration in my life, because what she went on to do was extraordinary. As a single mum she decided to put herself through business school and complete an MBA. She was an incredible person. She was a horse rider and a skydiver - she was always doing something crazy. She pushed herself right to the upper echelons of NHS executive management as Chief Nurse for a major health authority.

Very sadly, not long after returning home after completing my university studies and beginning my career, we received the tragic news that she had Motor Neurone Disease (MND). As many people will be aware through the powerful recent stories of sportspeople such as Rob Burrow and Doddy Weir, MND is truly a terrible illness. There is no known cure and its incredibly debilitating, leaving your mind intact to the last moment as your body fails. She took on this final challenge with the type of bravery, inspiration and determination that characterised the rest of her life by mentoring the next generation of nursing leaders and even embarking upon a Tall Ship sailing expedition in the Atlantic Ocean to raise money for the MND Association!

My mum's motto in life was about the concept that it’s not possible for one person to change the world, but you can make a significant difference in the corner of the world that you occupy. I think that's something that's always stuck with me throughout my life. To this day - two decades on from her death - I still hear from many, many senior people in the NHS that speak glowingly about the impact that Cathy, my mum, had on their own careers and lives. Now that’s legacy.

Tell us about how it all started for you, how you began your journey?

When I think of what makes me who I am today, you can’t help but be shaped by events. When you've lost a key person in your life and you stare grief in the face, you can drive through it or try and go around it. I'll be honest, I did everything I could to get around it, and that saw me push hard at work, play hard and not look after myself too well.

It all came to a head about a decade ago where the combination of not dealing with the grief, coupled with becoming a parent and, on top of that, wrestling with something that many people encounter in their careers - this concept of lack of purpose, mission and legacy - left me in a challenging space. Would I be able to look back at myself in many years to come and ask myself: ‘What have I actually done? How did I move things on about issues I really care about?’.

All of these factors collided to create a very difficult spell in terms of my mental health. I now openly talk about depression, how I dealt with that at the time, and to go through that process has been transformative for me.

Central to the transformation was the motivation to get myself out there, take some risks, climb out the rut, and turning up in places that I wasn’t used to. This process resulted in me speaking to an organisation who were seeking someone to go to West Africa to lead the HR resourcing for their Ebola outbreak response team. Before I knew it, I found myself hotfooting it between Senegal, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea supporting this humanitarian emergency. It was extraordinary to have the ability to prove to oneself that you could do more than one thing in life. I felt alive by embracing a bit of fear, escaping the routine, and trying something new.

What was your inspiration to begin your D&I journey and why is being an ally so important to you

I think it's always been there from having a mum that strived, challenged the orthodoxy, and succeeded in a very male-dominated profession. My auntie was the chair of a major NHS Foundation Trust, so I had some powerful female role models throughout my life.

It really kicked into a new gear once I found myself landing at PwC and ending up in a role driving a big AI project. This was my entry point into the technology domain and with it came the realisation of the duty of care around the implications of how this technology revolution continues to unfold; a challenge I was instantly inspired by. Even as long as a decade ago there were stories coming out in the press about how AI was directly leading to poor outcomes, and increased risk and harm. The sector was abuzz with news about algorithms, through either poor governance or oversight, leading to biased outcomes and unfairness (i.e. in hiring decisions).

It wasn’t hard to extrapolate that, as this technology became ever more powerful, there would be major questions to ask about whether appropriate safeguards are in place, and are the right people at the helm of this to shape and govern it securely. That was the moment for me where I could really see the importance of this: the opportunity to help develop best practices could really lead to positive impact downstream on equity and inclusion.

Good technology can only be built if the people developing and deploying it are representative of the people that will use it.

What about your journey from how you started educating yourself, to what you started doing more (or less) of

It's fair to say I've never had a strategy or a detailed plan and I often follow my gut instinct: sometimes it's tilting towards head, sometimes it's towards heart. The one thing that I’ve always appreciated is the power of communication, but I just hadn't had the right themes to speak to. I found myself pulling together the multitude of insights around this technology, not just the tech itself, but the macroeconomics of this, the impact on jobs and workforces, the ethical frameworks and how we derive value from this technology.

It was just by chance that I was doing an AI briefing at a client event one day, and one of the attendees knew that the organiser of a TEDx event was looking for an AI speaker and invited me to apply. I threw my hat in the ring, went through the process and before I knew it, I'd been invited to deliver a TED Talk on AI!

My talk acknowledged that there are dangers with AI, that there is potential for bias and an array of risks. But it was also about evangelising about the positive upside, the prospects and possibilities of what this tech was already starting to do. We’ve got a lot of work to do to put the guardrails in place, and equity and inclusion are core pillars to developing AI responsibly.

That became my mission for several years, to engage with our clients, across governments, civil society, workers, and students and this saw me become one of our lead technology spokespeople globally. Having established myself on the speaker circuit, a key moment occurred when someone challenged me about appearing on an all-male panel espousing the need for responsible and ethical technology. It quickly dawned on me that there were so many things wrong in that picture. What’s the point in sharing a positive vision of the technology if only half of the population are in the conversation?

That saw me really lean into becoming an ally for women-in-tech and there are now a wide range of things that I do day in day out, such as being a judge of the ‘Tech Women 100’ awards since its inception, mentoring, coaching, and speaking at events.

What advice would you offer to anyone looking to take their first steps as an ally

Some of it is trial and error, and some of it is just being brave and open to discomfort; a classic example of getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. And for men walking into those conversations, it can often be quite uncomfortable. One thing you have to do is sit there and listen, and not impose your own view on topics that you may not have been all that attuned to previously.

You can't dabble with this mission. You've always got to be on, you've always got to uphold this consistently throughout whatever you do. You have to be constantly living it because it is really important.

I’ve also been to far too many women-in-tech events where it is 99% women in attendance. I think just turning up in the first place is important. Just take time to listen and observe, as it’s incredibly informative and instructive, and makes you a better leader.

Tell us about the influence role models and mentors have had on your journey

I'd never had coaching before, and there was a friend and former colleague of mine – Helen Croft - who offered me some at a really important point in my life. I still viscerally recall the challenge I had; I didn't know what to do, I was in a huge rut, and I was miserable. After half a dozen sessions, she looked at me in the eye and said,” I know what you're going to do”. I replied with “OK, what's the answer?”. To which she said “Well, if I tell you, it won't work, you need to go and discover it for yourself”.

I caught up with her several years later and asked her what she could see in my future at the time. She said “I had no idea, I just needed to rev you up and get you pointing out towards something that you're going to act upon!” And it worked!

I'm very privileged to frequently be in the company of some extraordinarily powerful, inspirational women in the technology field. Someone I have been working very closely with for the past eight years is Dr Vanessa Vallely OBE of WeAreTheCity . I have been a proud judge for their awards and I am constantly inspired by how she conducts herself, how she drives her purpose forwards, and - most importantly - the legacy and impact she creates. I personally know dozens of winners of their awards who have gone on to achieve important things, win further awards, or get big promotions.

Another person is Sheridan Ash MBE , the co-founder and CEO of Tech She Can I am a proud supporter of this organisation which is now in its third year as a charity, and having a substantial impact in encouraging girls from a young age to think about this a career in technology.

What’s the best piece of advice you've ever been given in your career?

It was about 9 years ago, when my first boss at PwC said that you’ve got to “work out what you're going to become famous for” which I found a rather interesting challenge. It’s important to do a stock take once in a while and identify what you stand for as you can't stand for everything. I settled upon three themes; I get the people agenda really well, I'm interested in the future of work, jobs, skills, careers, and education.

Whilst I’m not a traditional technologist, the ethics, governance, and risk agenda really resonated with me so it was a theme to actively embrace and champion.

And the topic that we're talking about today: being a high-profile ally for women-in-tech. I was very proud to win the Editor's Choice Award at the Tech Women 100 awards a couple of years ago which was a very special moment in my career and receiving public validation that my work makes a difference.

Any advice you’d offer to the next generation of Allies?

First things first, I would say that the external world does not care about the internal machinations and hierarchies of your internal organisation. Some of the most high impact, persuasive people driving things externally are not senior leaders.

I think that there's a way of identifying, establishing and living your purpose early in your career. It took me a very long time to work mine out. I don't regret that, people reach this destination at their own speed, but I think it's something that people can find sooner, and if I can be a route to help them identify that, then that makes me very proud.

Any final thoughts or insights you’d like to share?

I don't think you can exclusively just be an ally for gender equity. It might be great that we’ve improved gender balance in the technology sector, but where's the broader representation? For example, I’ve been increasingly actively working in the disability space, and within the social mobility agenda of late. How do we inspire kids from all parts of society to shape the technology of the future?