Diane Gilpin

One of the Tech Women Celebration 50 - women changing the ratio of the tech workforce

Diane has worked for over 30 years at the cutting edge of technology, innovation, communications and systems design. In the 1980s she was part of the Cellnet team that launched the first cellular telephone in the UK and went on to become the first woman to manage a Formula Three racing team in the 1990s. Diane was also on the launch team for the first ever Windows-based financial information system for the newly deregulated City of London. She then managed offshore yacht racing teams before finding her way into the shipping industry as head of B9 Shipping - a company working to create the world's first 100% fossil fuel-free cargo sailing ships.

Since founding Smart Green Shipping in 2014, Diane made it her mission to unlock wind power for shipping by building and financing autonomous, retrofittable wind technologies to help reduce emissions. Her climate efforts were recognised in 2015 when she was chosen to speak at the Paris Climate Conference and when she received a lifetime achievement award by the International Windship Association during COP26. Diane was also named on the BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour Power List in 2020.

Diane is driven by her belief that even making a small dent in reducing emissions in the multi-trillion dollar global shipping industry, which emits about 3% of total GHGs (a third of the whole of the UK's emissions), will fundamentally move the needle on climate change.

During the pandemic, Diane lost her business partner, Jeff Zie, to suicide. There is a very real human cost to growing a climate business, with climate anxiety and mental health issues that Diane believes deserves much more attention. One of the things she and Jeff found most challenging when speaking with investors and potential partners was that conversations focused only on the financial risk involved in green businesses and not the climate risk and very real emergency we are facing.

With Smart Green Shipping's first product nearing its launch, Diane has remarked how Jeff's legacy lives on with the tech solutions they are creating to address the climate emergency.

To help inspire more girls to believe that they can make it in any business she presents to school groups, girl guides and industry. With female colleagues, SGS has been engaging with local primary schools in Glasgow developing classroom projects about how tech can reduce emissions and create quality jobs.

She aims to inspire her women colleagues by recognising their strengths and to dissuade them from false modesty - "There are enough people who will talk us down that we don't need to do it to ourselves," she says. Diane was awarded a Women in Innovation Award from InnovateUK in 2018, has mentored young women entering engineering and tech jobs and puts herself forward to speak to the media on technical issues to try and get better gender balance in this area of commentary.