Women Celebrating Women with VeeAM: Women in Tech

We are still in Women’s Month where women are given their flowers and celebrated. VeeAM and women in the technology industry came together to celebrate one another.

Technology is still looked at as something that women should not be looking at. These women plan to break boundaries and stereotypes surrounding women in the tech space.

Lisa Strydom Senior Manager of Channel and Alliances: Africa Veeam said, “A lot of times we underestimate ourselves [women], we never have confidence enough to actually go for what we really want.”

She touched on how we as women are always afraid to say the wrong things ad always want to be a good girl, which tends to prevent us from being the best of ourselves.

Elana Africa shared how we as women tend to inhabit one another, “sometimes we are always more accepting of male counterpart in our environment.”

The ladies touched on how we as women tend to be their own biggest inhabitants.

Head of channel, commercial, mid-market and SMB, at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Celeste Le Grange shared that when you are in the room you will always meet privileged people whether it’s religion or in the office. Someone in the room will be privileged and you will tick them off about something you said, so we need to start getting comfortable with being uncomfortable and creating that uncomfortable space.

Sometimes people make you feel uncomfortable and why is it not okay for you to create that uncomfortable space yourself?

People always say that women need to support one another, she went on to make an example about how women will smile with you then “the next day people in the office gossip about you, ‘did you see what she was wearing? How did she get to that skirt?’” she went on to say that women need to be the change we want to see and stop entertaining those who want to break other women down because “it starts with us.”

She added that “there’s policies within companies, is not always open to change, and they not always open to you opening and making calls that are not comfortable. If you can change it change it, if you can’t you have a choice to stay or leave, you are not a tree you are not planted, go and make your changes in your small world, you don’t need to have a manager or supervisor or any kind of a leader or title behind your name to actually start making it. Go and make a difference within your own company and when people start to see that it will stretch through to others.”

For women to have diverse voices at the table and make business innovative, “we had to make sure that these inevitable voices and diversity that our resistance make things interesting for us and bring some change and probably strategy.,” said Elana.

The ladies urged women to take their wins and not be afraid of anything and push boundaries and achieve their goals whether in IT or security and not limit themselves.

“We are our own sometimes enemies to bringing diversity because we can’t be ourselves. Diversity is bringing different people, thinking, and culture and today we specifically dealing with gender.”

Cathy Leso, CIO at the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy, went on to explain how we as females when we get to male-dominated spaces, tend to want to become male and act like them and kill the whole diversity, ‘I’m supposed to be in there and dilute them.” She added, “one our biggest problem is we try too hard to be like males and unfortunately with ICT specifically is it has become so diverse, CIOs are no longer technical people in my view. Business leaders need to understand business strategy and operation they need to grow people.”

Leso went on to speak about embracing the young generation and accepting their innovations and ideas such as AI.

Gone are those where we need to be “masculine leaders” and think of women as “soft”. Women are “collaborative leaders” who build and that is an acquired skill to become a successful leader you need balance and you will not make it if you are a masculine leader. Women need to embrace the natural gift we have.