A week-long series of workshops focused on addressing the lack of gender diversity in leadership across the digital and cyber security communities concludes today in Edinburgh.
“Empowering Women to Lead Digital Transformation/Cyber Security”, is a collaboration between leadership coaching consultants Empowering-You and communications consultancy I to I Communications, with the support of industry body ScotlandIS, The Scottish Government’s Digital Directorate and the Scottish Digital Academy.
The two programmes have the long term aim of building a community of emerging women leaders in digital and cyber security and information management/assurance roles across all industry sectors, in a bid to tackle the historic lack of women in the sector. Both 3-month programmes are free of charge to participants, with funding provided from industry partners ranging from The Data Lab, Head Resourcing, Sopra Steria and Scott Logic through to Adarma, Lloyds Banking Group, Morgan Stanley and NCC Group.
The Cyber Security group sessions conclude on Friday and in addition to forging new relationships and networks and starting their collaborative work on the challenges they’ve been set, the group have also been hearing from established female leaders in the cyber security industry about their own experiences.
Presenting on the final day is Joanne Gilhooley, the CMO of Edinburgh HQ’d Adarma, one of the UK’s largest independent security solution providers, who will be sharing her own personal leadership journey with the cohort, spanning over 15 years in UK and Global roles with tech industry firms including Microsoft, HP and DXC Technology.
Commenting on the support from Adarma for the “Empowering…” initiative, Ms Gilhooley said, “As an industry significantly underrepresented by women, we know that we can and must do better to ensure that a career in IT and cybersecurity is accessible to all. At Adarma one of our core values is to enrich our workforce with an inclusive and diverse set of skills. We are just starting on that journey and are committed to accelerating our efforts and partnering with this programme is one of the steps that we plan to take. We are delighted to be a part of this initiative and look forward to learning from these women as they progress their careers in CyberSecurity.”
The Autumn cohort runs from September to November, with a joint graduation and Challenge presentation taking place at Our Dynamic Earth on the 2nd of December. Further cohorts in the programme have now been scheduled to run in Spring and Autumn of 2022.
For more details on the programme and stay informed on developments for future cohorts, go to the Empowering You website.