A 'Squiggly' Path to a Career in Tech

Today is International Women’s Day, and this year the theme is Embrace Equity. I racked my brains about how to embrace the day and the theme this year, both personally and on behalf of Freestyle. I sat down with our founder (and 2022 WOTY Business Woman of the Year) Suzanne Linton , and we got in to some fairly deep and interesting conversations, from the impact of hormones…everything from periods to pregnancy, perimenopause and menopause to inspiring young women to pursue careers in business and specifically within the technology space and a whole lot more - did we land on a ‘thing’ that we should do for IWD this year? Not specifically no. However it did affirm for us that we’d both like to do more to encourage and inspire more women to work in the tech space and to create an environment at Freestyle where passionate, young women can start their careers, thrive and feel empowered, included and experience a true sense of belonging.?

Freestyle is a digital transformation agency, we solve challenges and create digital products and solutions that deliver tangible business results. We employ a mix of skill sets from strategy, UX, design, development, project management, account management and business operations. Just over 47% of our workforce is made up of women, and the co-founder (Suzanne), Managing Director (me), Finance Director and Commercial Director are all women and all sit on the Leadership Team - and we’re proud of that. We’ve got fantastic women across all of our business functions, showcasing that a career in tech doesn’t automatically mean development and engineering.?

As we continue to look at ways that we can begin to support and inspire women to choose a career in tech, I thought I might take the opportunity to talk about my own squiggly route to running a digital transformation agency, if nothing else, it might inspire and encourage other women like me, that not only are leadership roles accessible, but that careers in tech don’t have to start with code.?

Right from school, I was destined to have a somewhat squiggly journey. I left school before completing my A-Levels and made the move to college to study a BTEC National Certificate in Equine and Business. The traditional education system didn’t suit me at that time in my life, so taking a year for vocational study that still enabled me to go on to university was the right approach for me. I then went off to uni to study Marketing and Advertising, and on graduating pursued a career in marketing. For nearly 10 years I worked in marketing, initially in B2B but more latterly in B2C, and in industries I am passionate about - largely across the rural sectors.?

After a while I knew that I wanted and needed a change and to do things slightly differently, and took a total gamble on pursuing a career in digital recruitment. It was here I was able to really hone my relationship building skills, gain a more commercial outlook and build my network. During my time in recruitment I became fascinated by the digital landscape and business strategy, getting countless opportunities to talk to business leaders about their direction of travel and subsequent resourcing needs, so it felt like a very natural move when the opportunity presented itself to join Freestyle. I joined Freestyle as a Head of People, a role designed to support people with their learning and development and build on the Freestyle culture.

I arrived at Freestyle with very basic knowledge of the digital product space, but a real eagerness and curiosity. What was and remains fantastic about Freestyle is the knowledge that had I had a real desire to develop a deeper knowledge or re-skill in a more technical role, the business would have looked at ways to support that. My role quickly became more of a people operations role, and overtime I became more involved in the overall running of the business, which led to my eventual promotion to Managing Director - and I am fiercely proud to be a young(ish!) female leader in an industry that is still heavily male-dominated.?

We'd love to support and inspire more women to pursue careers in tech, so if you’re a woman looking for some advice on how to either kick start their career journey or switch things up and move in to the tech space and would like to have a chat with myself, or one the other awesome Freestyle women, you can get in touch at [email protected], alternatively if you run any community groups specifically for women in tech, or perhaps run an initiative at a UK school and would like to chat about how we can work together to inspire and open up more opportunities for women in this space please don’t hesitate to get in touch, we’d love to hear from you!

#IWD #internationalwomensday #womenintech #womeninstem #squigglycareers #careersintechnology #embraceequity