Never giving up: An interview with Women in Tech Excellence winner Alina Timofeeva

Failure is not the word that comes to mind when interviewing Alina Timofeeva, Associate Partner at Oliver Wyman, multi award winner and judge at the Women in Tech Excellence Awards 2022. But failure is the subject of Timofeeva's recent TEDx talk, which has racked up in excess of 400,000 views and is now available in 20 languages. In it, Timofeeva, who grew up in post-Soviet era Russia against a backdrop of crime and economic turbulence, shares stories of her own failures and how, instead of allowing her ideas and ambitions to be made smaller by these failures, she used them as opportunities to grow.

Invisible barriers

Timofeeva is highly educated. After winning the Moscow State University Olympiad at the age of 14, she attended a school specialising in mathematics. She went on to win a scholarship to the same university at 16, completing both Bachelors and Masters in Mathematics. Further study bought Timofeeva to the London School of Economics where she gained a second MSc in Risk and Finance.

However, all the education in the world couldn't prepare Timofeeva for the difficulties inherent in navigating the elite post-graduate UK job market, where she found herself having to compete with the confidence and polish of graduates from backgrounds considerably more privileged than her own - graduates who had been trained for the type of role they now sought. By her own admission, the only training she had received, over and above her education, was by her grandmother for a life of domesticity - and that wasn't one she aspired to. 

"Nobody advised me on my style," she recalls, "or on how to talk, walk and behave."

When it comes to first jobs, these are no small factors. They often amount to the difference between candidates who look similar on paper, and they contribute heavily to the middle-class domination of elite professions, including technology and finance.

These unspoken codes, rules and expectations are tricky to define, but they form an invisible and frequently insurmountable barrier for those who haven't been trained to understand them. (In her TED talk, Timofeeva shares a wryly amusing anecdote about an occasion where she made the mistake of honestly answering the question, "How was your weekend?" Apparently, nobody asked her again for a year afterwards.)  

In Moscow, Timofeeva was continually told that what she wanted was impossible.

"Everyone told me it was not possible because I didn't have connections, I didn't know anyone, and the visa rules had changed and were difficult."

Timofeeva applied for 500 jobs from Moscow - and received 497 rejections. What encouraged her to persist in the face of continual rejection?

"When I would fly for interviews, I would sit in Canary Wharf. I would look at the people around me, who had jobs in investment banking, had nice suits, had the lifestyle I wanted to have."

Failing to fit

Eventually, Timofeeva's uncompromising ambition and drive paid off, and she won a prized graduate analyst place at a global professional services company. However, the same mould-breaking qualities that won her the job began to work against her when it came to promotion.  

"I didn't fit in. I was the only person who was not a British citizen in my group. I talked differently. I dressed differently. I said to myself that I'm going to do a good job, and people will recognise me. So after two years, I thought I would get promoted, but my career counsellor said no, you don't fit in. You don't fit into consulting. "

These experiences are a brutal reminder of how biases can intersect. Timofeeva is not the first and certainly won't be the last woman to make the mistake of assuming that hard work alone will result in career progress. It's becoming more widely understood that ambition is perceived more negatively in women than it is in men, with ambitious women being seen by colleagues as bossy or pushy. Throw in some old school British class prejudice on top about what exactly a successful analyst "should" look like, and you have a good explanation of why women tend to drop out of these sectors in such high proportions.  

However, Timofeeva wasn't about to give up now. After taking onboard advice and finding a more senior mentor within the same organisation, she rediscovered the confidence and sense of self-worth that she needed to progress. Exactly a year after being judged as failing, Timofeeva won a  promotion - the first of many.

Encouraging  others

Now an Associate Partner at Oliver Wyman, Timofeeva is keen to help others who are experiencing some of the challenges that she encountered, and her focus is very much on those starting at a disadvantage - often those from under-privileged backgrounds and immigrants.

Timofeeva works with several not for profit organisations including Migrant Leaders,  and YMCA Girls Mentoring and LMF Network. The opacity of the system strikes her - not unreasonably - as unfair.

"How are people from outside the UK supposed to know about these opportunities?" she asks. "It's still not very transparent. I don't think these opportunities are always well publicised."

As someone who has overcome many such challenges, and used failure as an opportunity to grow,  Timofeeva has a great deal of advice to offer.