Zaizi receives 4 nominations at the Women in Tech Excellence Awards

Zaizi

We’re very proud to announce that four members of Zaizi staff have received nominations for the Women In Tech Excellence Awards. 

The Women In Tech Excellence Awards was founded in 2016 to recognise top-performing women in the UK tech industry and inspire young people into a career in the industry. 

According to Tech Nation, nearly three million people – that’s 9% of the UK workforce – work in the UK tech industry. But the stats show that tech is still male-dominated. While 50% of the UK labour market are female, women make up just 26% of the tech workforce. 

“With women still hugely in the minority in the tech industry, we feel it is important for Zaizi to both hire and promote women working in tech.”

Tracey Robinson, Head of People and Culture, Zaizi

At Zaizi women make up 32% of our permanent workforce. That means we’re doing better than the wider sector. But we’re determined to do better. “With women still hugely in the minority in the tech industry, we feel it is important for Zaizi to both hire and promote women working in tech,” says Tracey Robinson, Zaizi’s Head of People and Culture. “We have a solid career progression framework at Zaizi. It gives everyone the opportunity to be promoted and move up into senior roles. A recent case in point is a female graduate who joined Zaizi. She has been promoted twice in her first year with us at Zaizi, and is now a fully fledged superstar cloud engineer.”

Meet our Women In Tech Excellence nominees

We asked our four nominees to reflect on their journey through tech and what industry  recognition means to them. 

Christine Thompson, Principle Agile Lead

Nominated: Woman Of The Year, Role Model Of The Year

“I have been very fortunate in my career. I have never felt like I have had to prove myself as a woman in tech. But I know many women have. One thing that is very important to me is authenticity. That means showing up as who I am and always behaving in a way that I expect others to behave. People don’t follow leaders because of their rank. They follow them because of their personality and their alignment with their values. Being nominated as a role model tells me a lot about how I am showing up and how others can align with my thinking.”

Maria Eleni Tsirpanli, Junior Software Developer 

Nominated: Rising Star of The Year, Hero Of The Year

“I am a career-changer, coming from a legal academic and professional background. Having worked in the field of criminal defence for several years, I decided to move towards the technology sector. Initially, I was planning to make this career move as a legal professional within the field of legal tech. However, in the process I fell in love with programming and the career change became bigger than anticipated!

“Both the tech sector and Zaizi have felt like home from very early on. Over the past year I’ve been given opportunities to work with cutting-edge technologies that I could never have dreamt of a few years ago. Along with my colleagues in the apprenticeship program, I’ve laid the groundwork to improve the experience of Zaizi apprentices in the future.”

Megan Roach, Security and Compliance Officer

Nominated: Team Leader Of The Year, Role Model Of The Year

“Next year I will have been working in IT for 30 years. I fell into tech with no real plans. I failed my latter years of school, pretty much, but despite that have managed to carve out a great career in an industry I love. I’ve been involved in many different areas over the years – general support, infrastructure, databases, testing, service management, training and security – and I’ve managed various teams.”

“I’d love to say I have come from a time where women made up a very small minority of the IT workforce and how great it is that it has changed so much. But in reality, it’s only really been the last few years I have started to feel a shift in the culture towards something that is more encouraging and appealing for women.  I am committed to helping women see tech as an option. I think the key to this is all about building individual confidence – something some of us have, and some of us get over time.”

Monica Yost, Digital Service Manager

Nominated: Outstanding Transformation

“It means a lot to be nominated and be recognised within the tech industry. I have learned so much in my time working within different technologies, and I am grateful for the opportunities and knowledge my mentors have given me. It’s so important that more women enter this industry. We need a woman’s perspective within the technology sector. And we need to build a more diverse planet for our future generations.”

The Women In Tech Excellence finalists will be announced in August. The awards ceremony takes place on Tuesday 22 November. Find out more at their website.

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