Part of the IT Leaders 100 - a list of the most influential IT leaders in the UK
Bruna is an experienced IT leader in the law sector, with great experience delivering difficult change. Before joining Linklaters, her previous achievements already covered integrating former employer Ashurst's systems with Australian law firm Blake Dawson; forming a cross-law-firm working party to bring sector-specific issues to Microsoft's attention; and building a hybrid cloud model with Softcat.
At Linklaters, Bruna is in charge of reviewing and refining the firm's technology strategy and client-facing IT initiatives.
How do you ensure diversity is taken into account in your IT recruitment?
A lot of businesses continue to lack gender diversity and diversity in senior technology roles. People are generally unaware of the exciting jobs and variety of opportunities that are available in technology; as a result, we have a targeted approach to recruitment to encourage women to apply, as well as individuals from underrepresented backgrounds. We work closely with recruitment agencies to explain what we are looking for and our team culture, as well as what the focus of each role will be, so we ensure that together we promote our roles. We advertise in the right places, and we talk about the roles externally, openly, as they are exciting jobs. We also undertake other activities to promote diversity, including podcasts to answer questions around gender or race and ethnicity. We also have our EDIT team in technology, which meets monthly to consider Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in our Technology Team, as well as plugging into the wider Firms initiatives in this area such as our Race Action Plan.
The critical thing for me is to bring someone on board that has lots of enthusiasm, drive and ideas. We can then support and develop them and set them up for success.
As a technology team, we also work closely with DELTAS (set up by Frances Anderson at NetLaw Media) and host sessions for secondary school children, including helping them understand opportunities available and the rewards they bring, as well as helping them with interview and presentation skills. I am really passionate about talking to the younger generation about the opportunities available for all.
As a firm, Linklaters embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion to make it stronger. There is some fantastic work being done, from the firm's Race Action Plan and enhanced support for working parents to market leading work experience programmes reaching social mobility cold spots across the UK.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are core to our team strategy - diversity of thought in an inclusive environment is crucial for innovation and to tackle the challenges that businesses face.
Which technology are you currently most excited by?
All of it. There is some great activity happening in the medical field and health care, from remote patient monitoring and online access to medical assistance, through to machine learning applications and AI in medical image analysis.
It is great to see technology helping human beings - what could be better? From Microsoft's underwater data centres to AI and Autopilot in cars, to metaverse applications and virtual reality being applied in engineering and design, there is so much going on it is hard to choose one thing.
What do you to unwind?
Lots of different things: taking time to spend with family and friends, good food, yoga, and long walks and spending time in Italy.
If you were an animal (other than human), which animal would you be and why?
A dolphin, they're great in the water, unlike me 😉! They have highly developed brains, they are very smart, compassionate, sociable and cooperative, they work as a team and help each other. They never really sleep and rest their brain one side at a time remaining conscious at all times. Can you imagine, you would never miss anything…
What makes you laugh?
Lots of things, though mainly the people around me, my family and great friends, and great colleagues.
How did you get into IT?
I left school and got a job at JS Pathology in Harley Street as a Computer Operator/Trainee Programmer. I was at JS for 13 years, it was great fun. We were a small team and wrote software to help process samples and keep accounts. In those days we used BBC Micros, Amstrad 8512 and a Wang VS100. It was a very long time ago … a time where if you didn't initialise your variables your computer would run out of memory and everything stopped.
