'I love big issues that other people would probably run a mile from' says Joanna Drake

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Joanna Drake reflects on how she built a career on a love of problem solving and on how to get more children from all backgrounds to imagine a tech career.

Joanna Drake has always been drawn to technology.

"I started very young and didn't really think anything of it. I used to build Informix databases in my school holidays," she says.

When Drake was in her late teens, a friend of the family with an IBM consultancy background started his own consultancy business and she started working there.

"He specialised in very expensive 3D modelling software from IBM," recalls Drake. "He would build bolt-on applications and features for that platform and you need very high-powered machines to do that sort of thing so I built those. I'd go and install the hardware, get the software up and running and demo it to big engineering businesses like Lotus Engines and Westland Helicopters."

Due to a sporting injury Drake was forced to take some time out and found slim pickings when she returned to the labour market.

"I took a tech helpdesk job initially because I was desperate, but I absolutely loved it. I realised I loved fixing problems and the problems just got bigger and bigger. It's when I realised that I love problem solving. I love really big issues that other people would probably run a mile from."

Drake worked her way up at the beverage manufacturer Diageo, moving across departments in service delivery managerial roles. Growing employers like this provided Drake with the environment that she needed to thrive, and she realised that she enjoyed working with businesses that are relatively young and where she was familiar with the product.

"I'm passionate about working for businesses that are teenagers. Apart from the BBC and Wood Mackenzie [a consultancy and analyst] all the businesses I've worked for have been young, with a product that I know and can get behind and be passionate about. I've only ever worked at one place where I wasn't a customer, and it took that to realise how important it was for me to have a connection with the product. I'm very customer centric."

Being the only woman in the room

Women at the early stages of their technology careers are often given advice (plenty of it unsolicited) about the best way to progress in organisations where they still often find themselves the only woman in the room. Much of that advice focuses on adapting to fit into prevailing cultural norms, and Drake was no exception.

"As I started getting more senior in tech I got some terrible advice about how I needed to change and what I needed to be," she says. "I was advised to stop being so friendly."

The problem with this sort of approach is that it's very difficult to sustain, and it places enormous pressure on the individual who is trying to reshape themselves to fit someone else's idea of what a person working in tech looks like.

"It leads to people thinking it's too stressful, that there's too much pressure, that they can't switch off so people end up leaving," says Drake. "It can be difficult to stand up to that sort of pressure, to do things differently and realise that sometimes you don't have to answer every email instantly regardless of when it's sent.

If you feel you're outnumbered don't try to become the people you're outnumbered by. You're there because of who you are.

"I always talk to the team about inclusivity. We must build a culture that includes everyone because if we don't, we'll hire people from different backgrounds and not be able to retain them. Everybody in a team needs to feel that they have a place and a contribution to make."

Normalising women in tech

It's a good job that Drake enjoys finding solutions to seemingly intractable problems, because the gender imbalance in tech is proving incredibly difficult to change. However, Drake is not convinced that some of the solutions frequently discussed as a way of encouraging more women into tech are as effective as their proponents might hope.

"A previous employer decided that the way to attract more women into tech was to offer more part-time jobs. Not a single woman applied!"

Drake is also doubtful of the merits of women's enterprise resource groups in tech, particularly if they focus on activities unrelated to work. In her view, the problem should be tackled at source. The Women in Tech group at THG (which Drake proudly mentions contains almost as many men as women) works with the Tech She Can charity to visit schools and change the perception that most of children have about what tech workers look like. The goal is to normalise women in tech.

"We set ourselves an objective last year to visit 100 schools in a year and start normalising school children hearing about careers in tech from people from lots of different backgrounds in tech. We have just launched the partnership at THG and plan to smash that original goal over the next year. We would like to end up nearer 500 which would be incredible.

"We're trying to communicate the incredible variety in tech careers and all the different things you can do in a way they can relate to. We're trying to change their perception of tech. If you ask children draw a picture of someone working with tech the picture will be of a white man with screens all around him. The goal is to get them to draw a picture of themselves. What we want to do is champion the work of women in tech without even mentioning that they're female. They're just people doing an interesting job."

Attracting more girls into tech is part of what motivates Drake to undertake all this outreach work. Another part is her equally fervent desire to increase the socioeconomic diversity of the sector morw widely. She shares an anecdote about a former employer, which illustrates the degree to which organisations limit themselves when they keep recruiting one type of person.

"They were very strict that you had to have a computer science degree to work there. I didn't have one and I felt some stigma when people found out. I remember sitting in a meeting, looking around the table, and it looked like it had been filled with a load of cardboard cut outs. I asked who had a computer science degree and all the hands went up. I asked then who had been to either Oxford or Cambridge and lots of hands went up again. Then I asked about tutors. We ended up establishing that half the table had been taught by the same three tutors. That is not healthy for a business.

"They had to develop an app for family travel but virtually none were parents, so they had no understanding of their needs."

Whilst Drake is a passionate advocate of diverse thinking in businesses, like many women CIOs and CTOs, she isn't convinced that executive quotas are the right tool to break the deadlock. In her view, the quotas need to be set at an apprenticeship level.

"This is where we fix it - at the beginning. It fits in with our work in schools and it's a big part of our sustainability strategy. If young people can hear about what a great career tech is from people that don't all look or sound the same, they'll be able to more easily imagine themselves in one."

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