Women in Tech forum is an inclusive community for women (and men) who want to succeed in their career. An online platform that hosts exclusive content, networking sessions, virtual events and opportunities for coaching and training.
The platform was founded in July 2019, by Angie Vaux who has more than 20 years’ experience leading large divisions of global tech organisations such as SAP, TripAdvisor, and Mimecast. It evolved out of a need from many requests to equip women with the skills, confidence and support to break through the glass ceiling and excel in their careers.
Today, under her dedicated leadership, Women in Tech forum collaborates and partners with some of the biggest tech companies along with rapidly growing start-ups, who are looking for additional support in developing their female talent and the next generation of female leaders.
Leveraging Insights Gained with Experience
In her 20+ year career with global tech companies, Angie held leadership positions across key markets including UK, Germany, South East Asia, Australia, China & Japan.
Beginning her 13-year stint with SAP at its UK Headquarters, before relocating to Asia for more than a decade, Angie was selected for SAP’s Top Talent program. This gave Angie the opportunity to work on stretch projects in addition to her core role, enabling her to develop her skills set in many areas across the business and build a strong network of peers and executives around the world. This led to her becoming one of youngest P&L holders in the company and guiding that business unit to becoming the best performing business unit globally in revenue and margin growth for two consecutive years.
Accelerating her career journey, Angie moved to TripAdvisor to lead the Hotel Solutions business across Asia Pacific. There she rapidly scaled and boosted the growth of the business, highlighting and rewarding her success in this role the Global CEO and Founder then asked her to run the EMEA business alongside APAC.
In addition to hard work, determination and a strong desire to succeed, Angie credits her accomplishments to senior executives who sponsored and coached her during the course of her career. Guiding Angie to develop a strong personal brand, which facilitated the opening of opportunities and advancing her career.
Along with building and leading Women in Tech forum, Angie is an accredited Executive & Sales Performance Coach, Mindfulness Coach, Yoga Instructor and mother of two beautiful children.
Creating Opportunities from Challenges
Angie recalls that early in her career she found herself to be the only female in the room. First sighting this as a challenge, she quickly learned to spin this into positive encounters by creating male allies who went on to mentor her.
At times Angie came across unsupportive women and bore the brunt of the ‘tall poppy syndrome’, she fortunately followed proclaimed senior female role models who tutored her to overcome such hurdles and self-evolve by facing such challenges.
In addition, observing that she was sometimes being talked over in meetings, Angie had to learn quickly how to counter this. One of her strategies is to gain the attention of the room – when she wanted to speak, she stood up, left the table and began writing her plans and ideas on the whiteboard (mostly in diagrammatic format). “This is an effective strategy which I still use today albeit for different reasons,” she admits.
Temperament of an Influential Leader
Angie cites the ability to remain authentic is a primary leadership attribute. Displaying authenticity will help in gaining trust. People buy from people they know, like and trust. Invest the time in building a relationship with people.
Leaders should always demonstrate that they are accessible. “One must make the time to connect with people in your organisation, whether with monthly coffee corners, ask me anything sessions and 1-1’s. Skip the levels meetings are still one of my favourites, gaining information and knowledge from the entire team”, she admits.
Additionally, one has to ensure that everyone feels included and heard by fostering an inclusive environment and encouraging everyone in the organisation to make a contribution or come up with ideas and suggestions. Angie advocates adhering to the ‘two ears and one mouth’ principle – listening twice as much as you speak or preach. As a leader, one need not have answers to every problem. Instead, build a leadership team with people who complement one’s strengths and are experts in the areas where one lacks.
Crafting Business Ideas from Invaluable Customer Feedback
Angie feels that the inspiration behind creating customer-centric solutions begins with one’s target audience and customers. Hence, she emphasises that business leaders must listen to their customers’ and end-users’ needs and develop solutions that meet those requirements.
At Women in Tech Forum, the team gravitates its efforts in constantly refining the strategy and offering to ensure that it meets the needs of the community.
Work across all departments in the organisation, as each has different prerequisites – whether it be employees, ecosystem, prospects, interns, and fresh graduates. To achieve this, leaders have to pay heed to understand the needs of different groups within the company to service their requirements.
In March 2020, Women in Tech Forum was an in-person event company with monthly events in London and an annual conference. The COVID-19 pandemic hit just 30-days before its first-ever full-day conference at Facebook’s new HQ in London. According to Angie, “The conference had sold out and I was devastated to see my dream disappear.”
To mitigate this, she quickly pivoted and reengineered the entire business to become an online membership and mentoring platform, incorporating monthly virtual events, a mentoring platform, Slack Workspace and on-demand content. The conference in conjunction with Workplace from Facebook went ahead and was delivered virtually every day over a one-week period with a refreshed agenda tailored to the new environment.
Complimenting Digital Transformation with Flexible Leadership
Angie explains that the rapid pace of change and innovation in the tech industry coupled with the global pandemic has encouraged organisations to re-look at their business models and where they are in their digital transformation journey. This constant change and innovation means that business leaders need to adapt their strategies and skills to meet the evolving needs of their customers and their employees. Skills such as adaptability, openness, inclusivity, empathy and resilience are no longer ‘optional’ skills for business leaders. They are critical skills needed for the environment in which we currently find ourselves.
Embracing Dynamic Trends to Progress Ahead
The pace of change in the technology industry will continue to accelerate. At the same time, organisations need to adapt their business models and offerings to meet the customers’ needs. Angie is confident that diversity and inclusion will continue to be a big priority with companies moving beyond simply diversifying the workforce to embedding a culture of inclusion across the organisation.
Words of Wisdom
Angie recommends budding leaders to aim for the stars and put a plan in place to get there. She suggests that people design their own future. “Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want and seek out sponsors, mentors, and peers who will help in reaching those milestones”.
“It won’t always be easy, but with hard work and perseverance, you will achieve your dreams. In the words of Henry Ford,’ Whether you believe you can or believe you can’t, you are right,’” she asserts.
The post Angie Vaux: Building a community platform for like-minded individuals to drive career progression appeared first on Analytics Insight.
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