Women in Tech: Yoli

Meet Yoli. Yoli is a senior product and project manager at Rakuten,? where she manages and involves the business stakeholders across the entire Rakuten Group to expand the product vision. This includes proposing and driving initiatives to promote the product’s growth and improvement, as well as coordinating production issues’ handling, driving investigations of root-causes and implementation of long-term countermeasures.

She moved to Singapore in 2013 and was attracted to Rakuten, where the people and atmosphere were friendly and working in a Japanese company piqued her interest in Japanese culture. As such, Yoli joined Rakuten in 2013 as a Senior Front-End Developer with over 5 years of professional experience in web-development.?

Q: How was your journey in tech??

My interest in tech started much earlier, when I was just 14 years old, and my parents bought my first computer. I started experimenting with programming and automating simple stuff for fun. During my student years I earned my first income by creating websites. And after graduation, I chose it to be my career, even though my university degree was in Cybersecurity.?

My parents have always supported my passion in tech, saying that I was following my father’s career (he used to be an engineer of nuclear-powered engines). Growing up, there were many girls with similar interests so I didn’t notice. But it was only in university that I first realised I was a part of male-dominated community - there were 4 girls and 33 guys in my group! Studies-wise, we didn’t get any special treatment. In order to get the same grades as guys, we had to know the subject exactly on the same level.?

“If you have passion in tech or any other male-dominated area, don’t let the prejudices prevent you from pursuing your dream. Women are absolutely capable of being equally qualified as men. Everything is in your hands.”?

Q: What do you love most about what you do??

Being an intermediate person between business and tech, I really enjoy that I can have a full picture of the product and can contribute a lot to its growth.?

Thanks to Rakuten’s flexibility, I could change the direction of my job twice (from Development to Project Management, and then to Product Management). So, for my entire career (14 years now) I was always doing what I am the most interested in at that moment. I believe I am really lucky to have such a journey.