Emily Perowne

"Becoming Director of QA meant finding a new rhythm without the immediate feedback of solving a resourcing puzzle or putting out a project fire”

Part of the Tech Women Celebration 50 – a curated list of some of the most inspirational women working at all levels of tech

As Director of Quality Assurance at WPP, Emily Perowne loves working with people, building teams and running projects while driving innovation and quality initiatives. She has a keen interest in quality assurance (QA) for AI-generated and AI-augmented systems, their impact on software delivery, and the efficiencies they bring to QA. She has built a truly global, integrated QA function spanning India, Poland, Portugal, Hungary and multiple UK locations.

Emily also has experience with internal projects and business processes, as well as working closely with clients on large integrated system rollouts and the implementation of quality processes. She enjoys change, and the pace of the tech industry has kept her engaged for the past 18 years. She currently balances a demanding part-time role with family life and raising her two children.

Tell us about the nominee's biggest achievement to date

One December morning, an unexpected meeting dropped into her calendar. The strategic direction of the business was shifting; simpler structures, and a move from distributed offshore teams to a single delivery centre in India. For Emily, this was a bombshell. The business had a mature QA capability in China that she had nurtured over 15 years. But the structures were now disjointed, complex, and hard to scale.

Emily crafted a detailed approach, covering options across cost, people, risk, clients and timelines, to present to her new CEO. It went well and became a blueprint for transformational change elsewhere. The results speak for themselves: all positions requiring replacement were aligned and ready for handover on time, with only one client-billable role lost after the client declined a replacement. Like-for-like QA resource costs fell by 12%, while the India team grew by 110% over the following 12 months.

She is most proud of how the transition was handled: with confidence in difficult conversations, fairness, discretion and cultural sensitivity. Closing a capability she had built over 15 years gave her the confidence to build something stronger.

What is the most significant challenge the nominee has overcome?

When Emily became Director of Quality Assurance at VML Enterprise Solutions (the previous incarnation of WPP Enterprise Solutions), the biggest challenge was not the title but the shift in identity. After around 15 years of hands-on QA work, team leadership, client management and running a department, she had to let go of a manager’s day-to-day tasks and step into a less defined, more strategic role.

She had to become more purposeful and find a new rhythm without the immediate feedback of solving a resourcing puzzle or putting out a project fire. The role came without a blueprint; it was hers to shape. That meant driving improvements across the function, integrating parts of the business that had operated in silos, and understanding emerging technology and where QA needed to go next. As daunting as it was, it was also exciting, particularly the opportunity to empower the leaders around her and trust them with responsibilities she had previously held close. Learning to lead through others, rather than doing everything herself, has ultimately been the most rewarding part.

Tell us something about the nominee people would find surprising

Reading this application, people would probably conclude that Emily is a people person. She understands how to motivate individuals and help them grow while bringing people together to build high-performing, collaborative teams and leading from the front.

It may therefore come as a surprise that she is also a champion of AI tooling and personally presents to the whole business of more than 500 people on how to get the most from the tools available. She is an early adopter and participates in AI guilds and working groups spanning business units well beyond QA.

Looking to the next five years, she is considering how agents and people will work together, which skills and roles will flourish, and how to build the very best agentic teams.