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Hello, and welcome to this special Women in Engineering Day episode of Making Tech Better – Made Tech’s fortnightly podcast, bringing you content from all over the world on how to improve your software delivery.
My name is Clare Sudbery, and my pronouns are she and her, and I am a lead engineer at Made Tech.
On the 30th of March 2021 I spoke to Anne-Marie Imafidon, but then we saved the interview for a few weeks because we knew that Women in Engineering Day was coming up on the 23rd of June.
Anne-Marie is the CEO of Stemettes, and I originally met her via helping out with some tech events for schoolgirls in Manchester, put on by Stemettes. Their events are always great fun, and Anne-Marie is always inspirational. So, it was a massive treat to get to talk to her.
I have Anne-Marie Imafidon, the founder of Stemettes here with me. Tell us a bit about what Stemettes is.
Anne-Marie: So Stemettes is a social enterprise working to inspire, support and motivate the next generation into STEM technical fields, STEM being science, technology, engineering, and maths. We work with young women and non-binary young people age from five up to 25. We run intersectional programs, impactful events, and inspirational content platforms.
Clare: Fantastic. I love all of that stuff. And before I leap into all of the questions, I’m going to ask you something that I ask everybody, which is who in the tech industry are you inspired by?
Anne-Marie: So, there’s a couple of folks. I think the one kind of technically still in the tech industry is Dame Stephanie Shirley. She is definitely inspirational for me because she wasn’t a physician like me. We love maths ended up in a studying Git. I think she worked in the post office as a mathematician actually. Yeah, something like that. And she was active at a time, initially, when, if you gave birth, then automatically you stopped working, that was a thing. And so, she was a bit like, well, giving birth and the maths aren’t quite necessarily equating enough. I need to do other bits, and so ended up starting up this company. And again, she was a woman setting up this tech company, had other women working in their kitchen tables, kind of coding things and making things. And she did this at a time when, she needed her husband’s or her dad’s permission to open a bank account, let alone run a company.
She did so well, but by the time she ended up closing it down when the Equal Opportunities Act came in, because she had just been hiring with a preference for women, she kind of shut it down and ended up becoming a millionaire and making lots of other women wealthy in the process, because of the way she set the company up. And they weren’t just working on things, they were working on the flight receiver for Concorde, they were working on stock control systems, like quite serious stuff. So, I think for me looking back at that – and I always talk about Gladys West as well, who is not necessarily still in the IT industry, but you know, looking back, these women were doing that at a time when there were so many barriers, there were so many reasons why they couldn’t do or shouldn’t have done what they were doing.
And so was Stephanie Shirley, even changing her name to Steve so she could get into meetings. I think there’s a whole load of things where it’s like, okay, cool. I wasn’t born in that time. I’ve been operating at a time when I can open my own business and open my own bank account. What have I done with the situation I’m in? So, it wasn’t always even quite – what would Stephanie do, but what have I really done? I didn’t have those constraints. So, I think for me, that’s always someone that I’m like, yeah, if that’s what she did, that’s how she did it, if that’s the level that she was operating at, what am I doing?
Clare: Wow. I’ve got her book actually and I agree. It’s an amazing story. I highly recommend it. So, you founded Stemettes and by doing that, you’ve put yourself right in the public eye, you’ve taken on this clear responsibility for changing the lives of girls and women. I have to confess; I find that idea kind of terrifying because you’ve got this responsibility now. And I think that takes a lot of guts. So, what is it that drives you to be such a trailblazer? What advice would you give to others who would also like to be trailblazers, but don’t necessarily have the confidence?
Anne-Marie: So, to answer the first question, why do I take responsibility on? I took it on because it ties really nicely to a previous answer, I guess, what have I done? What did I do? I didn’t have any of those barriers. I can see what is coming. If we don’t have the right people in the room in these technical spaces. I’m a technical person. I’ve got this technical background, I’ve got this technical love, actually, I should say really. And I can see Black Mirror. I can see the dystopia happening if we don’t act now. So, I think I took on the responsibility just because I have that sense of – I was here and what did I do? And I would hate to look back on it – I always said initially, kind of my unborn children. I don’t want them to think that their mum is a weirdo for being the only woman left in tech.
If I have daughters, I don’t want them to – they might follow in my footsteps, and I don’t want them to be the only ones in. So, there was that kind of initial thing of those that come after me, I’ve got a bit of responsibility to make sure that they can access it in the same way I did. They can love it in the same way I did. Even more so that it can serve them better than it served me.
In terms of having the guts, I think it’s something where you can think about the long term and, you know, thinking that Terminator Two is not inevitable and being part of making sure that that doesn’t happen. I think change comes in different forms, change comes on different levels, change comes in different spheres. For anyone, there are things that you have got the guts for.
Start with that. What do you have the gut for, what are you trying to do? What’s within your sphere of influence? What are the things you know need to change? What are the skills you have that can help affect that change and improve things? If you concentrate on just what’s in front of you or these first two steps, then actually the 400, you don’t necessarily need to take that on, and have that hanging over your heads.
So, my advice is, you know, start small. Look at the small steps, look at the now. Also, there are so many problems. There’s a lot of problems, there’s a lot of things that need to change. And so actually, who else is going to do it? Why shouldn’t you be the person that brings that change about? There are so many things that it’s not even like you are fighting someone else to do that. If it’s a big enough change that needs to be done, then the more the merrier for getting that thing corrected as soon as possible. So yeah, I think you don’t need to bear the entire weight on your shoulders.
Clare: I love that thing of doing it one step at a time. I’ve heard that advice in various contexts. It makes it so much easier if you just look at what’s in front of you and just do the next thing, don’t think about all of the things, just do the next thing. Then that takes you to the next thing and so on. But another aspect of that idea of responsibility, and I’d be really interested to know if you feel the same because you might not, but I’ve been working with Charlene Hunter who is the founder of Coding Black Females.
Anne-Marie: Brilliant.
Clare: She’s amazing, yeah. Something that she said to me was that because she is a black woman in tech and because they’re so rare, she feels this responsibility for like all the black women, that she is helping to facilitate things for them. She’s paving the way for them. Then if she doesn’t do what she’s doing, that she’s letting them down. That feels like an enormous weight of responsibility. It’s hard enough that you’re already in two underrepresented groups, but to then feel that you have the responsibility of looking after all of the other people in that group. Do you feel that as well?
Anne-Marie: With black women in particular, no. Weirdly enough, not even with the girls and young women that we work with. I don’t represent everybody, and I think it is a personal perspective. Charlene does feel that she does, and that says a huge amount about Charlene and her motivations. That sense of responsibility that she’s able to take on. I think for me, I don’t speak for all. I’ve never felt that I speak for all. For me, it’s more about I speak for some. For me, it’s less about having to represent all black people when I turn up somewhere, or East Londoners when I turn up somewhere or, you know, headscarf people if I turn up with a headscarf on, or grey-haired people. Yeah. Because I can do my best to represent, and I can do my best to do certain people proud, and to use the agency and the power that I have.
It’s less about saying I represent all of them, but it’s more about saying with the power and the agency that I have and the influence I have, what have I done for those people? Or what am I doing to improve things for others? If I am able to access these spaces, who am I bringing into these spaces that isn’t there already? Then they can also kind of add to the representation that should be here, that wasn’t here. So, it’s something that I cling to quite a lot, actually. For International Day of Women and Girls in Science in 2021 this year, we had the reception or a zoom call with the Prime Minister and one of his special envoys on girls’ education, I think, I think is her title, and then seven of our Stemettes.
Clare: Wow.
Anne-Marie: It was really funny, because at the moment, the Prime Minister, there’s a lot of things on his plate. He’s kind of a divisive figure, I guess you could say, but someone commented to me, it’s really interesting how you can kind of stay apolitical in these kinds of spaces. I mean, I didn’t choose to be there on a Tuesday morning. There are a hundred other things that could have been doing. But actually, I was there because this is about opening that opportunity to those young people. It was about giving them a reception with the prime minister. It’s about what that’s meant for them and their schools and their families and the people around them. To know that their young person was chosen. The young person was able to share their love of STEM with the Prime Minister as a young woman.
So, for me, there’s so many opportunities where I don’t necessarily feel like I’m representing everybody, but it’s like, what have I done? What did I do? I had the opportunity, what did I do with it? Did I bin it? Did I say no? Did I say I was going to go and protest? Other people on Twitter were like, what hard questions did you ask him? Well, okay, this wasn’t about me, actually. This is bigger than who the current Prime Minister is. The problem I’m trying to solve is much bigger than most things now. There’s a lot bigger than that. I have to look at the bigger picture, I have to look long-term. And after a second, in the grand scheme of things, if we look at that bigger picture, where is all of this going to fit? So, that’s always what I have to weigh up.
Clare: That makes a lot of sense.
Anne-Marie: It’s a bigger picture, rather than just how I feel about the Boris right now.
Clare Sudbery: Yeah. Something that you touched on as well, is this idea that not everybody, not every black woman, not every woman might want to be in STEM. And that’s something that I find really interesting because I want to open up opportunities to all women, and to all underrepresented groups in tech. I want to make this industry open and inclusive and diverse. Of course, not everybody’s going to want to join me. And I notice there was a quote about your upcoming book, and it said, Anne-Marie’s skills in science and maths are awe inspiring but – and this is the key message – these are skills we can all learn. I was thinking, well, is that true? Can anybody learn any STEM skill? Or is it more that there’s such a variety in STEM, that anybody can find something in there that suits them.
Anne-Marie: It’s a bit of the second and a bit more. The idea with the book, this is something that I’m kind of exploring now with different folks. It starts off by setting the scene for this. I think it’s one of those things where, you can get by not knowing English. I have written this in the book, let’s see if it makes it for the edit, but you can get by with not knowing English. I mean, if you were in the English-speaking country, it makes things harder. But if you’re in a Spanish speaking country, you can get by, very much so, with not speaking a word of English. There are elements of this where actually digital has become the fourth literacy. I know this is something you are fully familiar with, where to understand the world, around you, yes, you need scientific knowledge. There’s a lot of things that you need to be able to interpret what’s going on. The same way as you need English to interpret what’s going on if you are in an English-speaking environment.
I think with the tech, with the science, with the STEM, the day is coming when we’ll no longer be able to say, it’s something I don’t get. It will be one of those things where you have to find the bit of it you understand, and you have to lean into that. Otherwise, your Wi-Fi fridge you’ll be at the mercy of. Your driverless car, you’ll be at the mercy of. There are all these things in the normal, right? I think there’s an interesting progression where you’re a developer, not everyone needs to be a developer, but you do need to appreciate what it means to develop, what it means to have a digital system.
If I take another analogy, it’s like immigration, everyone has a perspective on immigration. We’re not immigration lawyers, but you have a perspective on immigration rightly or wrongly. You still have a perspective. It drives elections, what kind of stuff. So why has no one said, oh, I don’t get immigration law, I’m not going to have an opinion on that, I’m going to sit back from it. No one said that you said, oh, I hate immigrants, or I love immigrants or whatever else, or something in between. I think it’s the same thing with digital tech and STEM where, okay, maybe you don’t know the ins and outs of nuclear fission, or you don’t know the ins and outs of loops or whatever it would be, but there’s still got to be a base level understanding that you have, in order for you to then be able to get by and not be at the mercy of the tech.
On a personal level is that thing of you lose your power, you lose your agency. That’s why the book is called She’s in Control. You lose an element of the control over what happens for you in your life. Not everybody will write, you know, the world’s most efficient code, but being able to have done it once, have tried it, have seen what it’s like and have an appreciation for it. Not, oh, I don’t get that code thing because my maths teacher was awful to me – because ultimately, for a lot of people, that’s what it is. It’s like, okay, cool. Your maths teacher is not here anymore. And you are with your fridge, and you are trying to figure out this Wi-Fi fridge and how you can get your food so you can eat and survive and live.
The choice that you have to opt out, the idea of that being a choice is kind of shrinking and shrinking and shrinking as time goes on. So why not get on board with it ahead of time? So, then you can use it to your advantage, but you can also use it to the advantage of others. You can use it, very importantly, to solve the problems that we have because there are so many problems that we do have.
Clare: Yeah. So, we’ve mentioned the book, but I haven’t officially said that you are writing a book and it’s called She’s in Control.
Anne-Marie: Sweating commences.
Clare: It’s really interesting, kind of neatly packages all of the stuff that’s really interesting about your journey and the things that you represent. One of the things that I saw in the promo, it says it’s time to get into the room where the decisions are made or better still create our own tech rooms. Exactly. That’s really interesting to me, which is more important or effective, getting into the room or creating our own rooms? What’s the difference?
Anne-Marie: Both, both of them are effective. It comes back to this point, is it too much responsibility? Everybody’s different, right? There is an existing hierarchy and existing system. And sometimes the system works for folks and sometimes it doesn’t. And I think that one of the beauties of tech is you can create your own room if you’re not able to get into the rooms that are there at the moment. And I talked about this a little bit in the book. You’ve got the options. Knowing you’ve got the option to be in the room, to create your room or to be both and be bringing people into the room, it’s definitely something for folks to see and to help break down this idea of this just being for techies. This just being for people that go on with their maths teacher, which with my podcast, Women Take Charge, is the same thing. These are all women taking charge of particular things using tech.
If you listen to the stories, if you listen to the different types of people, there’s all kinds of different backgrounds, all kinds of training, all kinds of entry routes. I think it’s really important for folks to understand there are many doors to that room, but also you can build your own room and all of those are completely fine. And all of those things are still you, making the most of technology itself and the tool that tech is. Ultimately, it’s a tool that in the right hands can do amazing things, and in the wrong hands, doesn’t do as much. And in more hands does the best thing, many hands make better tech work. Maybe that should have been what I called the book.
There’s a lot of gatekeeping. I talk about this a little bit in the book. There’s a lot of gatekeeping going on, which might have been okay beforehand, but now the implications of that gatekeeping are so huge that it can no longer be kept out of this. So, whether we build our own rooms or we break into those rooms, we need to be in a tech room. We need to be there.
Clare: Yeah. And another quote from the promo is that “technology is too important for women to be left out and left behind.”
Anne-Marie: Far too important. Far too important.
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OK, just to remind you, before the break we were talking about how technology is too important for women to be left out and left behind.
Clare: What are the negative impacts? What do we already see as a result of women not being equally involved in the creation of tech?
Anne-Marie: So, Invisible Women is a great book for this, to talk for lots of the different examples. The ones that I kind of tend to share with folks is things like seat belts and airbags, which if you’ve read the book, actually, you’ll see this. I’ve been talking about this for years where, you know, early teams of engineers were supposed to build safety devices for people. When we moved from horses to cars, they ended up building these sexy devices for who they thought would be the typical user, who was men. And so early seat belts and airbags killed women and children, which is the complete opposite of what they’re supposed to be building. But by not considering women exist – how can you kill somebody with a safety device? That’s awful, but also unnecessary, but even more so today, our safety standards still are based on that 50th percentile male.
I’m never going to be in that 50%. I’m out. It’s not something I’m working towards, it’s not something I’m aiming for. It’s just not going to happen. How crazy is that? I’ve never used a seatbelt correctly. I’ve never been 50th percentile male. You’ve got things like that, through to every couple of years, a tech company discovers the period for the first time. One particular company that do fitness trackers discovered the period for the first time ever two years ago.
They did their – I put in air quotes – research, they did their development, they did their testing, they did the implementation, they rolled it out across the device. They did a big fanfare. They had a big marketing campaign. Then it got out into the open and you know, everyone was like, what have you done? This is useless! It turned out it tracked 10 days of a period. Okay, if you’ve ever had a period, if you’ve ever met anybody that’s had a period – you know, they do what they want.
So, you setting an arbitrary 10 days doesn’t work. Because what if I’ve just given birth? What if my period is doing funny stuff, what do I do then? And none of you in that research team, in that dev team, in the implementation team, in the marketing team, in the whole team, none of you have ever had a period or met someone that ever had a period. Yeah. You’ve got to think either you had all these people in your team, and you didn’t hear them. That’s awful because you didn’t hear them. The period has been around for ages. It’s not a new concept by any stretch of any imagination. If you couldn’t hear them on that, so fundamental, then what else are you not hearing them on?
Clare: Yeah, there’s so much in there. But I think just the basic thing about periods, I mean there’s loads of other things as well, like miscarriage and menopause and so many things that affect women. Being a woman in the workplace, to be honest, not just working in tech, it’s just stuff that happens. It shouldn’t be a big deal. It shouldn’t be embarrassing or shameful or anything. It’s just what our bodies do. But somehow, we can’t talk about it. We can’t acknowledge it. We can’t acknowledge the impact it has on our lives. And therefore, on our working lives. Yeah. Drives me mad.
Anne-Marie: It’s ridiculous. Because like you said, it’s a universal thing that happens. If technology is about solving problems and these things have implications and cause problems for us, then why wouldn’t you use technology to do that? This is the other thing that the book. Take some technical control, take control. You’ve got some agency in this brilliant tool, let’s use it to solve where it hasn’t been used to solve, where it hasn’t been used to solve. Where we haven’t researched. Endometriosis is another one. You know, there’s all these things that haven’t been explored. And if we’ve got this tool, why wouldn’t we use it to help with that? And the blokes aren’t gonna be able to do it on their own. They’re really not going to be able to solve it properly.
Clare: Yeah. So, another quote that I noticed from the book promo is that it’s an inspirational narrative about how women must play a part in ensuring a future that’s evenly distributed. And that that’s interesting because I noticed the word must in there. Do you think women must play a part? And if that’s the case, is the onus on them to seize those parts or on allies to facilitate those opportunities?
Anne-Marie: I think we have to. If you’re alive now, these things are coming and it’s in your interest, it’s in the interest of others like you, that are coming to do it. I think there has to be a bit more compulsion put on it. And as controversial as that may be, and everyone’s got their own free will and the rest of it, so if you don’t want to, that’s fine. But I think it does come back to – it’s in your own interests and why fridge driverless car, these things are coming. You can’t run away from them. If you don’t want to be there for it, then you’re born at the wrong time, essentially. It’s affecting us the most. It’s affecting our health. This isn’t just about money, right? So, I think there is a must in that we don’t have the choice. We don’t have the option.
It might have been “should”, right? If technology wasn’t as ubiquitous and wasn’t as impacting, but we do have to be there. We have to stand up, you have to be counted. We have to push it. We have to bring the average back to the right direction, whatever we are doing. I’m not saying you must work in tech at all. I’m saying you must have some sort of technical literacy, which, which is very different. So, I think it definitely is a must. It’s a must. Who is the onus on? I think it’s on both sides. There is something of, if you know the capacity, if you know the potential, if you know what you can do with the technology, then it’s definitely something you need to go after, you need to take seriously and hold with two hands.
Of course, there is so much gatekeeping. There is a rich patriarchal heritage that has hidden the rich matriarchal heritage that we have in these technical spaces. And this is why I do talk about getting in the room and creating your own room, where the men, boys not going to let us in. Then we can make our own, we create our own spaces. It’s something we’ve done century of century, time and time again, where we’ve not been part of something, we’ve made our own. Whether it’s women’s clubs, you know, there’s all these things that we’ve created as our own institutions and as our own organizations and we’ve self-organized and done things along those gender lines. As well as other lines, you know, of course, women aren’t a monolith. The allies have so much work to do. The system has so much further to go in terms of actively supporting women in particular into this space.
It’s the two sides of you break down the doors or someone opens the door but either way, you’re going into that room. You have to be at the door to get in if someone is going to open the door for you. It is getting to that door, and it is pushing, and it is having a broader motivation or broader impetus that we can take on to say, here’s why we have to be here. here’s why I have to understand this. Here’s why I have to bring others in so we can all contribute to this. Otherwise, you will be there when your grandchildren are marrying robots or when Terminator Two is happening. You want to be able to look back and say, yeah, I did something. If you tried and you were kept out, that’s one thing, but if you’re not engaging because of conditioning, all those other things that are happening that have happened, you still have to stand up and be counted. You still have to get involved. You have to be there if you’re going to be alive now. This Wi-Fi fridge is going to get you.
Clare: So, what does that look like? If there’s a woman listening to this podcast now, what are we asking her to do?
Anne-Marie: Well, there’s quite a few things. The book is a kind of a shorthand of this. Each chapter, I do have like a couple of things that folks should try and folks should do, and folks should look into. I think the beginning, the first step I’m going to say is to be curious. Have a read, have a listen to this podcast. You’re already kind of partway there in terms of having the curiosity for what it is when people talk about tech. What does it mean to have a Wi-Fi fridge? What does that look like? What Wi-Fi enabled means, what happens with your fridge? Bluetooth is what? Virtual reality is what? Bitcoin, blockchain is what?
What are people talking about when they’re doing these things? Having the curiosity is going to allow you to then start to understand how this might map onto your own life; the problems that you have, your own perspective on that you care about, that you’re interested in. Also, that you have experienced that, allows you to be a part of the solution.
For women listening, it is about what are the rooms that you want to get into? You know, are they talking about virtual reality? Are they talking about women in tech? Are they talking about civil tech? There are so many things, there’s so many options. It’s almost like rediscovering food, right? There are all these different things that you can try. What’s the food that you’re going to like, what’s the food that allows you to stay healthy. What’s the food that’s going to – if your nails don’t grow, what’s the food that’s going to help you with your nails? It’s that thing of taking this as a whole new world that you can delve into, you can explore, that you can use better, but also that you can influence. And you can say, actually, this thing I learned about legal tech because I was a lawyer, it means that I can apply that for my children, or I can apply that to the digital divide.
There are so many permutations. There’s not one route into tech, there’s not one space. Go learn to code, to be a developer. I mean, you could learn to code so you can see what it is, and if you like it, you carry on. If you don’t, you’ve seen it and go be a project manager, go be a teacher. There are all these things that you can do. There are so many options. It’s a lens with which to apply to things. And if we go back to the English analogy, you’ve learned English, so what are you going to do? You’re going to write a poem. You’re going to read more. You didn’t learn English to become Shakespeare, and maybe you will become Jane Austen or whoever else it might be. But there’s all these other things in between that you can use English to communicate with others. You can use English to support people. There are all these things that you can use. Technology becomes another tool. What tool, what part of that tool are you going to use? How are you going to hold it? Where are you going to apply it? There’s a whole new journey of discovery that flights can go on with tech.
Clare: Fantastic. I noticed that you mentioned food just then, and I’ve never forgotten when we were both doing some work with some schoolgirls, in Manchester. There was an event, to do some coding with some schoolgirls. I remember you saying that you had learnt that one of the ways to get girls involved and motivated and engaged with whatever event you happen to be putting on, is to make sure that there’s food. Food is a really good motivator. Everybody loves food. Everybody’s interested in food. Food matters. It’s interesting, because I also noticed – I was reading a blog post of yours recently about to do lists, and about having too much to do. And you used food as an analogy there. I love that. I love that food is this universal uniter.
Anne-Marie: We’ve all got to eat. I love food. I think it’s so funny. Free food has been the thing. It’s all about free food, free food does taste better. And I think it is a leveller. You sat having lunch in the same room as those girls means that in that moment, you’re the same as them. Even though you’re a developer, even though you’re the same gender and all the rest of that kind of stuff, I think it becomes a leveller, If I’m an event and we’re eating the same lunch, that’s the thing we’re doing together. In that moment we’re the same. It’s breaking bread, isn’t it? There’s something unifying about it, something levelling about it. There are all the things that are delicious and nourishing about food. It’s the same, my maths book. I wrote a kid’s maths book. The first chapter has got to be about food. And they’re like, okay, cool, here’s the syllabus and food aren’t actually part of the curriculum. And I’m like, well, here’s how it is. And so, the first and longest chapter is about food and maths for those kids.
Clare: Fantastic.
Anne-Marie: I love food. There’s that. And the other reason why we centred on food was, um, it was pancake day. The day I launched Stemettes, we had unlimited pancakes at the events, which was great. Coders turn coffee into code. At hackathons, normally you have beer and then people kind of turn the beer into code. Right? If we’re working with children. We can’t give them beer or coffee. What can we give them? Sweets was the nearest thing. We would bulk buy Haribo to kind of just fling out these events. Luckily, the kids loved it, because they were hyped up on sugar and then coding and building these things, and it was great. And um, we’d have Haribo of course, Haribo aren’t halal or kosher, so we ended up having like Maltesers or some kind of chocolate biscuit alongside the Haribo.
Then a couple of years later, it kind of hit me. We ended up having this partnership with a vegan sweets company and I was like, hang on a second. We just need these sweets around, we don’t need halal sweets, we don’t need kosher sweets. Everyone just gets the vegan sweets and everyone’s partaking again in the same sweets and that same thing. And so, for us, it’s a leveller like, there’s so many things that you can do through the medium of food, why not? I’m making myself hungry thinking about it, but why not?
Clare: Yeah, I’ve never forgotten the advice I was given when I was a teenager about how to meet women and start new romantic relationships with women. What she said to me was, the way to a woman’s stomach is through her stomach. The point was if you want to meet people, if you want to get to know people, if you want to break the ice, use food, invite people to eat with you.
Anne-Marie: The other thing we found as well with our events, which I think you said at the beginning of the question was, if there’s free food, what you got to lose? Nothing else, you turn up, you eat the food, and you leave. And I think it’s one of those things, right? Like you don’t have to come because of a love of tech. We’re not assuming that you have that love of tech, but you can come because you want to eat food.
Clare: There are definitely people who I’ve heard talking about just going to a lot of tech events, just for the free food, being able to find a new event every night of the week and therefore not having to feed yourself.
Anne-Marie: Yeah, I do. I miss that. I’d say there’s one thing I miss about leaving the house. I mean, there’s not many things I miss about leaving the house.
Clare: I know, I was thinking that over the last year.
Anne-Marie: There’s no free food at home.
Clare: We’re running out time. So, there are some questions that I ask everybody. I ask people to tell me one thing that’s true about them, and one thing that’s untrue. And then people who join our mailing list will find out which was the true one, and which was the untrue one. Which is a bit mean, but there you go.
Anne-Marie: I like it.
Clare: We won’t publish the right answer in the podcast. I’m making you lie on the spot, that’s what’s happening.
Anne-Marie: So, two things that may or may not be true about me. Um, one is that I’m vegan and the other is that I live in West London.
Clare: Tell me about West London. What’s your favourite thing about West London?
Anne-Marie: Hammersmith station. I’ve actually always liked Hammersmith Station. I’ve always been a bus and station kind of person, but I like Hammersmith Station, the way that it’s set up because it feels a bit like America. I don’t really like America, but it just feels different. You don’t feel like you’re in London when you’re at Hammersmith station.
Clare: Why does it feel like America?
Anne-Marie: I don’t know. It’s the way that they’ve set up the parade, so that when you come out the Piccadilly or District line, those two are platforms together. You’ve got booths almost, in the middle. It’s paved. This country is kind of cold. So, the way we design buildings and do things is very different from how it is in hot countries or hot places. It’s paved like it’s a hot place, so you feel a little bit like you are on holiday. Also, the way that they have set up the shops, it just feels very different to me from like anywhere else in London That I end up in.
Clare: How interesting.
Anne-Marie: So, Hammersmith station, I quite like it. It feels like home.
Clare: And you said you’re a bus and station kind of a girl.
Anne-Marie: I’m a Londoner through and through. I love stations. I love London. I just love our transport system. It’s the weirdest thing, but I will sit and watch YouTube videos about a station. Like, Aldridge is a closed station or those kinds of tools where you get to go behind the scenes. I love all of that. I love it.
Clare: Last two questions. What is the best thing that happened to you in the last month or so? It can be either work-related or non-work related.
Anne-Marie: Best thing that happened to me in the last month or so. Gosh, we’ve got new partners coming on. That’s actually pretty awesome because it has been a tough time. We have our responsibility to our community. So, we’ve stayed kind of providing content and providing support for them, but it’s been really great to have really good reassurance or recommitment from particular partners. To say, yeah, we’re going to support you even more. It’s partly actually why we just closed the recruitment round at Stemettes, our biggest recruitment round ever, which is a crazy time to be hiring people right now, but we have. Yeah. So that’s been really good. Really, really good actually, because it means this year, we’re going to be able to look up rather than look down. We’re moving things along in quite a big way.
Clare: Do you want to say who those partners are?
Anne-Maire: Mercedes is the one I’m going to say. The other ones aren’t necessarily public. Well, actually one of them is talking about allyship. One of them is a guy whose company we’ve worked with. For the last three years he’s been an individual donor to Stemettes. So, he’s been contributing. If we talk about allyship, this is someone who’s kind of literally put his money where his mouth is. It’s a funded program, funded members of staff as well, in the Stemettes team over the last couple of years, He continues coming back in and is very supportive and very active in helping us out. So yeah. That’s good. Yeah. Shout out to Jim. His name’s Jim.
Clare: Hello Jim. So, the last thing is where can people find you? And do you have anything coming up that you’d like to plug?
Anne-Marie: Oh, you can find me on Twitter. I spend a lot of time on Twitter. Let’s say these days, I guess as with everyone, we’re all trying to use social media a little bit less and look out of our window a bit more since we’re at home a lot.
What I have coming up, I have the book, as you mentioned, She’s in Control, but we haven’t talked about when it’s coming out, that’s coming out next March. You’ve got a year to keep an eye on things and follow me and know when it comes out. I’m super excited about that.
With Stemettes, what isn’t coming up? Every half term, we’ve got things. There’s lots of opportunities for folks to volunteer, to donate, to get involved, to help out. So Stemettes.org, you can head over to. I have my podcast, which is the moment where you can kind of listen back to old seasons. That’s called Women Tech Charge and I’m AImafidon on Twitter. I think that’s why I’m NotYourAverageAMI Instagram as well, which is a bit of a mouthful, but it might be easier to spell than AImafidon.
Clare Sudbery: AImafidon is A I M A F-for-Freddy I D O N. Isn’t it? Fantastic. Okay. Thank you so much for talking to me. It was lovely to catch up with you again, good luck with all of your many, many things. And I hope to see you soon.
Anne-Marie: Thanks very much, Clare.
As always , to try to help you digest what you’ve just heard, I’m going to attempt to summarise it.
For Anne-Marie, being an inspirational trailblazer is about having a legacy she can be proud of. It’s about making the most of the opportunities that she’s had by making a real difference for others. And part of doing that is recognizing that digital has become the fourth literacy. You need it to fully understand the world around you. Not everyone has to be a software engineer, but everyone needs at least some idea of what’s involved and to have an opinion about it. Because of gatekeeping in our industry, women have to actively seek and seize those opportunities. It’s time for women to get in the room where the decisions are made, or even better create our own tech rooms. Because if women aren’t in the room, the consequences can be as serious as women being killed by safety devices because nobody considered their needs. And you can read more about that in the book, Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez.
We need women to be involved. So that periods, menopause, miscarriage, endometriosis, all become understood and taken for granted. Women most play a part in technology because this Wi-Fi fridge is going to get you. There are many options for getting involved in tech. It’s a tool, it’s a language like English. And once you learn it, there are lots of different things you can do with it. Be curious and know that food unites.
Okay. That’s not all! Stick around for some extra Women in Engineering Day content.
Every other episode, this last short segment will be devoted to story time. Storytelling is useful for teaching, for unlocking empathy, and for creating a sense of shared connection and trust in your teams. I love telling stories to both children and adults. I’m actually a lapsed member of the UK Society for Storytelling. So, the plan is that I’m going to be using stories to illustrate various points about effective software development.
For this special Women in Engineering Day episode, our story comes from Tess Barnes, one of our senior engineers here at Made Tech.
Clare: So, Tess, Hello!
Tess: Hello.
Clare: Can you tell me about the time that you were making notes in a meeting?
Tess: So, to set the scene. I’m sat in a meeting. I’m the only girl, there are 10 other engineers here and I know I have a terrible memory. So, I’m sat with a notebook and I’m there happily taking notes of things that I’ve said, and other people have said, and lots of ideas that have come up. And one of the engineers sat next to me, turns to me, and says, “It’s okay Tess. You don’t have to feel that you have to take the minutes in this meeting just because you’re a girl.”
Clare: Okay. And you weren’t happy with that, were you?
Tess: I was floored. It really wasn’t what I was expecting to hear. I had my own reasons for taking notes. I expect people to take notes for themselves if they want to in a meeting. So, it did take me a couple of minutes to react, to work out what I wanted to say. And I seem to remember that I thanked the person for thinking of me. And then I asked them why they thought that I needed to be reassured? Because I might’ve been the only girl in the meeting, but that’s normal for me. I’ve been in tech most of my career. And I wasn’t thinking that I was going to be disadvantaged or put upon or asked to write minutes. I wrote code.
Clare: So, what was it about his response that bothered you?
Tess: I felt patronised. Yeah. I felt tapped on the head and told that it was okay to be an engineer. And this isn’t my first week in the company. It’s not even my first tech job. So, it felt unwanted.
Looking back, I think, well, this person felt that it was with the best of intentions. He declared himself to be a feminist. But I always ask of my allies that they talk to me about what I need. So, it really did knock me for six because it was so unexpected.
Clare: Yeah. Because we’ve talked already in this episode about being an ally and we absolutely do want men to be, to understand the situations that women in tech face. We want them to help us, but there are good ways and bad ways of helping, aren’t there?
Tess: Very much.
Clare: So how could he have behaved differently? What can we say to other people who also have good intentions and want to be helpful and also run the risk of in fact not being helpful?
Tess: I really liked the idea that this person had stopped and thought about the situation, I thought that was really positive. I would have preferred it if they’d come to me afterwards, say over a cup of coffee or at the water cooler and spoken to me directly on a person-to-person level. Just one to one. I think the thing that shocked me most is that it was a statement that came out of the blue in front of all of my colleagues. So that felt undermining rather than empowering. I think it’s awesome that everyone has good intentions to support each other, no matter what their background, but it does need to be on a slightly more personal level in my opinion.
Clare: Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you.
Tess: You’re very welcome.
Working in the public sector means that at Made Tech, we really care about making a difference. For this final, Making Life Better segment, myself and my colleagues will be sharing suggestions for small things we can do to make the world a better place.
In this special Women in Engineering Day episode, I am going to bring you four pieces of advice from three of my colleagues.
The first piece of advice comes from Elle Vilinaite, who is one of our senior engineers. This advice is for all of the engineers out there who identify as female. Elle says, “Stop seeing yourself as a woman engineer. You are just an engineer like everyone else.” She says she got this from a book called Women in Tech: Take your Career to the Next Level with Practical Advice and Inspiring Stories. The content comes from seven contributors, so I’m not going to list them all, but we will put a link in the description.
Our second piece of advice comes from Alex Herbert, who is another of our senior engineers. She says, “Gender diversity isn’t a binary. Small things like pronouns matter to less binary people. Trans-inclusive policies must be considered as a part of a company’s values and reflected in their behaviours if you want a gender-diverse staff to be retained.” Alex also has advice about being an ally. First of all, she talks about the experience as a woman of being ignored or talked over in meetings. She says that she can come up with an idea, be talked over and then one of the men will say the same thing a few minutes later. Her advice is that whether or not you yourself identify as a woman, you can be an ally to those that do. Call out sexism that is directed towards women. Support women in tech. Make sure they are being heard and support their ideas in meetings.
Finally, I have some advice from Rebecca Fitzimmons, who is another of our senior engineers. She says that in her experience, a lot of sexism in the workplace is subconscious, subtle and nuanced, and is therefore difficult to articulate and point to. She says that she has found that speaking to the person, who is often completely unaware of what they’ve done, helps them to realise their biases. Most of the time, they are happy to have it pointed out to them and will make a conscious effort to change their behaviours.
She does make the caveat though, that obviously, what she is describing here is very different from blatant, deliberate sexism.
I really enjoyed all the extra content I got in this episode from my colleagues, so thank you again to them.
And that’s the end of another episode. If you’re enjoying the podcast, please do leave us ratings and reviews because it pushes us up the directories and makes it easier for other people to find us. Speaking of which, thank you to Laura Plaga, who recently left us a wonderful review.
I’ve got a few talks coming up. You can see the details on my events page on medium, which is linked to from my Twitter profile. And you can find that at @claresudbery, which is probably not spelled the way that you think. There’s no I in Clare and Sudbery is spelled E R Y at the end, the same as surgery or carvery.
You can find Made Tech on Twitter at M A D E T E C H. Do come and say hello. We’re very interested to hear your feedback and any suggestions you have for any content for future episodes, or just to come and have a chat.
Thank you to Rose, our editor, and to Richard Murray for the music. There’ll be a link in the description. Also in the description is a link for subscribing to our newsletter. We bring out new episodes every fortnight on Tuesday mornings.
Thank you for listening and goodbye.
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