International Women’s Day: Female tech leaders on how businesses can help women reach the top

Posted on by Rebecca Miles

The theme of International Women’s Day’s on March 8 this year is ‘Give to Gain’. With the share of women in leadership at top performing companies having risen seven percentage points since 2021, it may seem like the playing field is levelling out, but the reality is far more complex.

The most recent Lovelace Report reveals that women account for around 20% of the tech sector in the UK. It also shows that 40,000 to 60,000 women working in tech leave their roles each year, with the number of women in information and communications roles falling 7% over the past five years. Although female representation is increasing, more needs to be done to ensure that roles are retained and career progression is clear for women.

If we want to truly change this trajectory and make the tech sector an environment where women can thrive, more support for women entering the sector is crucial. We must foster environments in which women feel supported and see the opportunities to progress in their careers.

To highlight this need, several female tech executives weigh in on how organisations can encourage and support women choosing to progress a career in tech.

Breaking down barriers to entering the industry

Research shows that women tend to undersell themselves and are less likely to promote their work. Katie Lyon, Senior Director Partner Sales UK&I at Genesys, sees this pattern with applicants on a regular basis and believes that women need to be encouraged to apply to roles within the tech industry.

“The truth is that tech isn’t just for people who can code or have a technical degree. It needs all sorts of skills to thrive – problem-solving, creativity, communication, leadership, empathy and the ability to understand customers and communities. These are areas where women often bring huge strengths. Your experiences, perspective and ideas matter, even if your CV doesn’t match every technical requirement on paper,” she said.

“My advice to women thinking about a career in tech is simple: go for it, and back yourself. Talk to people in the industry, connect with mentors who can offer guidance and encouragement. Take time to explore the wide range of roles out there and think about how your own skills and experiences could make a real impact.”

For Lisa Topliss, Director of Strategy & Operations at Ricoh Europe, prioritising applying to organisations which invest in female talent is essential.

“When businesses create inclusive cultures and open pathways for development, it makes a real difference – all the way to the boardroom. I’ve seen this first hand at Ricoh with the initiatives and programmes we have in place and how we actively encourage female interns to start a career in STEM while also training the next generation of female engineer apprentices,” she said.

Sarah Hoffman, Director of AI Thought Leadership at AlphaSense, believes that AI has lowered barriers to joining the industry.

“Today, you don’t need to be an expert programmer to test ideas, build prototypes or explore complex questions. The ability to experiment quickly, learn fast and iterate has become more important than mastering a single technical skill.

“My advice to young women and girls interested in STEM: embrace this moment. Follow your curiosity, even if you don’t yet see a traditional pathway. The future of science and technology will be shaped by those who are willing to explore, experiment, and keep learning.”

Creating opportunities for women to climb the ladder

It has been predicted that it will take another 30 years to close the gender pay gap. Speeding this up requires dedicated mentorship and the deliberate creation of opportunities which are accessible to women.

“I began my career without a strong female mentor, and while I had incredible male mentors, I believe that seeing a female leader in the workplace would have helped me to understand how I could shape my own career,” said Faye Ellis, Principal Training Architect at Pluralsight.

“Then when we look at how AI is reshaping businesses, women must also be involved at every stage of its integration, to make sure outcomes are inclusive and equitable. AI can automate many manual tasks and this needs to deliberately create pathways for women into more strategic, decision-making positions.”

Establishing a culture which allows women to advance fuels professional development, which is important to Jessica Guistolise, Evangelist at Lucid Software.

“By investing in mentorship and inclusive collaboration, we create a space where curiosity thrives and ordinary ideas can become extraordinary. When women thrive, we move beyond simple representation and begin to catalyse a collective experience that is as resilient, thoughtful and impactful as the people who define it,” she said.

It’s also an opportunity for women to lead, according to Laura Heisman, Chief Marketing Officer at Dynatrace.

“AI is not only reshaping roles, but entire career journeys. Traditional paths are breaking down, opening doors for women to step into emerging opportunities – and redefining what’s possible for soon-to-be graduates and school-aged girls alike.

“When we support women and future generations through mentorship, intentional recruiting, training and shared learning, we don’t just advance opportunity – we build better technology, stronger businesses and a more inclusive future.”

Turning conversations into action

For Oana Jinga, Chief Commercial and Product Officer at Dexory, discussing these issues isn’t enough – real, actionable steps must be taken for the system to change.

“Innovation accelerates when we draw on the full range of talent, experience and perspective available to us. In AI, robotics and warehouse automation, fostering a culture that actively supports diversity is not just the right thing to do. It is essential for building better technology and stronger businesses,” she said.

She continued: “The conversations are happening. Now they must lead to action. Inclusion cannot be treated as optional. It is fundamental to innovation, growth and ensuring the next generation sees AI and robotics as industries where they can belong.”

The importance of different perspectives

As the tech industry continues to evolve at a rapid pace, bringing a wide range of perspectives and experiences into organisations will help, rather than hinder the sector. Regardless of the career stage that women are at, they must be reminded that their voices are essential in a sector which builds products and solutions for everyone – not just men.

“The tech sector’s future success depends on a range of perspectives and experiences. Different backgrounds broaden how we think, strengthen decision-making and support meaningful innovation,” said Laurinda Pang, CEO of Sinch.

“For women in tech, especially those early in their careers, it is important to know that different perspectives are needed and valued. Continued progress depends on creating an environment where more voices can contribute.”

Sonia Hernandez, Chief Commercial Officer at Vantage Towers, agreed: “To equip businesses and communities with the connectivity and services they rely on, we need a diverse workforce that truly reflects the people we serve. This International Women’s Day, we celebrate the achievements, resilience and leadership of women everywhere, and reaffirm our commitment to accelerating progress. Empowering women and girls in every field, from on-the-ground roles to boardrooms, is essential to building inclusive, innovative and resilient organisations.

Creating supportive workplaces and reducing attrition among female employees in tech is a complex issue which requires dedication from every company to mentorship and improving their culture. Breaking down barriers, creating accessible opportunities and taking actionable steps are all crucial in creating a fair workforce.

VIDEO: Driving business growth by improving customer experience

Posted on by Rebecca Miles

Zurich Insurance Group was founded more than 150 years go. It has individual customers and businesses all over the world which use its insurance services. It is prioritising customer experience and transforming the customer journey through data, AI and human-centred design to drive tangible business results. Conny Kalcher, Group Chief Customer Officer of Zurich Insurance, spoke to Intelligent CXO about how the customer is at the heart of everything the company does. She also discusses changing customer expectations and the technology which will stand out in the future.

Can you give me a brief overview of Zurich and the services it offers?

Zurich is a global insurer, and we insure both individuals and companies around the world. We serve 75 million individual customers and 320 businesses. We insure most of the big brands and companies in the world, and we have a broad portfolio of insurance products.

How have customer expectations changed within the insurance industry?

I think there was a time where you could say that your industry was special, but that doesn’t exist any longer. No matter what industry you’re in, you’re being disrupted by customer expectations going up. The customers are used to dealing with companies like Netflix and Amazon and companies which can react very quickly on their demands and queries, and the rest of us in other industries, we just have to live up to that.

Have you noticed that change quickly?

I think the industry has been a little bit sleepy for many years. The banks were faster to cotton on that they needed to change. But the financial industry has been a bit slower in changing. I’ve been in the industry now for a little bit more than five years, and I’ve seen radical change in expectations in those five years. Every insurance company around the world is going through this process of upgrading systems, tools and processes, because we have a lot of legacy systems in the industry that we need to replace with newer systems. And that’s a journey that takes maybe 10 years, and some industries have been on that journey far earlier than us.

How is Zurich transforming the customer journey?

In our corporate strategy, we have three priorities; customer focus is one, simplification is the second and innovation is the third. Transforming a company that’s been around for 150 years, and it’s a bit of a supertanker into more of a speed boat, that is arranged to serve customers rather than to sell products is a big journey. The strategy was done in 2016 and then I joined and created the customer officer in 2019 and since then, we have been really transforming everything from the customer value proposition: Who are we? Why are we here? What is our purpose in life to the visual identity and the tone of voice? How do we speak with our customers? How do we look in communication?
Insurance used to be formal and not really relevant to customers of today. We’re working through different elements in order to make the brand more relevant for customers. It’s not just the standards, it’s also how we digitalise the experience and how we train our people to serve our customers in the right way. We do a lot of capability building, empathy training, so we move away from selling what we have on the shelf to understanding customer needs.

Can you tell me more about how Zurich is embedding customer focus into every level of the organisation?

We do it with capability building. We also do it with implementing processes that help people act their way into a new way of working. You can’t just tell an organisation, ‘Now you need to be customer-focused’, and then everybody understands what that looks like. They really don’t.
And that’s why we defined an ambition for what our customer experience should be, which is about building meaningful relationships. It’s not about interactions. It’s about every time you have a contact with a customer, you need to use that opportunity to get to know them better, service them better, understand them better.
We also look into how we how we segment our customers and address them in the selling and engagement process, depending on what kind of needs they have and what kind of segments they belong to.
We also have it in our customer KPIs. People are getting rewarded based on how well our customer KPIs are performing. The Transactional Net Promoter Score has gone up seven points from 2022 to 2024 and we will soon be clear what happened in 2024 as well. So you can see that if we measure satisfaction and we take actions based on what customers are saying to us, we not only improve the experience, we also improve the score.
The other thing we measure is brand consideration, which is all about measuring whether the Zurich brand is relevant for our customers when they look to buy insurance. We want to be up in that top five set, so that we have been considered.
And finally, we’ve been measuring net new customers. So how many new customers are we attracting? We’re turning that into something called NRR, which is a financial measure of how well we are loyalising our customers.

How do you see customer experience evolving within your industry?

I think it’s a key differentiator in the industry that the people who get this right will be the people who win in the future, because by getting the CX right, you can demonstrate to your customers that you can serve them on a more individual level, you can satisfy their needs and you can do it in a way that is seamless and engaging. You can even do it in a way where if you want to be serviced digitally and do your claims fully on WhatsApp, then that’s your choice. If you want to talk to an agent, that’s your choice. It needs to be more of a customer choice, not forcing everybody to do the same journey. We know, since we’re in a low touch industry, 45% of our customers we don’t even talk to during the year. So the more we can provide services, help prevention and better service when it matters, when something has gone wrong, the more loyalty we can we can earn from our customers, because they can see the value we’re providing.

How do you serve those customers who don’t make a claim?

What we’ve started to do in some markets is to do cuddle calls, so even if they don’t have a claim, we will call them, hear how they’re doing, whether they are getting the right service from us, whether they need additional things or need changes in some of the policies we have with us and just a simple thing like that proves valuable.
We’re building in more preventative services into our value proposition as well. We’re just working on a weather alert app, for example, in Italy. In the customer app we have, which is called Zurich One, you can actually sign up for getting weather alerts. If a hailstorm is coming or a flood is predicted, you can take caution and you can take action to prevent things from happening.

Which technology will stand out this year in transforming customer experience, and why?

We all talk about Generative AI. We have areas of the business which uses Gen AI and it’s really powerful. For example, in the process of redefining the brand, we also redefined the tone of voice. It’s not good enough just to change the way we speak in adverts if we then send people letters they can’t understand. We defined a policy, which is all about being much more simple and direct, to not use jargon. For that policy, we have created an AI tool that the business units can use when they transform all the written communication that we have today. They can put the existing communication, for example, an offer letter, into the tool, and then the engine will give them back a new version of that based on our principles. And then they can edit it.

Deep Dive: Robin Ferris, Enterprise Architect – Pulsant AI Lead

Posted on by Alix Pressley

In this Deep Dive discussion, Alix Pressley, Director of Strategic Content at Lynchpin Media is joined by Robin Ferris, Enterprise Architect – Pulsant AI Lead, who talks about AI inference and how to create a digital infrastructure that strikes the right balance between cost, speed and availability. Robin also offers valuable insight into the key regulations organizations should be aware of when practicing AI inference and the steps should organizations take when planning for scaling.

Deep Dive: Wendy Shearer, Director Partners and Ecosystems, Pulsant

Posted on by Alix Pressley

In this issue of our CXO Vision, Deep Dive series, Alix Pressley, Head of Strategic Content at Lynchpin Media chats with Wendy Shearer, Director Partners and Ecosystems at Pulsant. Wendy discuses Pulsant’s Edge Partner Programme, collaborative ecosystems and how they might be impacted by AI and Edge compute and why ecosystems are relevant today and the into the future.