- First List Item
- Second List Item
In this video from Computer Weekly’s annual diversity in tech event, in partnership with Nash Squared and sponsored by NatWest, Suki Fuller, intelligence advisor and fellow at Miribure, gives her acceptance speech as the 2023 Most Influential Woman in UK Tech.
Everyone has influence, Fuller reminds the audience, encouraging people to band together to push for change and make a difference – alongside death and taxes, change is a constant which we all need to embrace.
As well as highlighting the importance of education in developing a well-trained and diverse future workforce, Fuller points out being a woman in tech should not define someone – what we do and how we identify are not the same thing.
“Being a woman in tech is not a job,” she says, hoping in the future there will be no need for events specifically aimed at subsections of the tech population.
Below is a transcript of the video:
“As much as I do often get to speak in front of global audiences, it’s always a lot easier when you haven’t actually had coffee with the people, hung around and chatted with them, and broken bread, you know. A room of 20,000 is a lot easier and being on BBC way easier than this.
“So I did write a few things down, but I probably will forget them. I do want to start out first of all by saying thank you so much to Computer Weekly, and to Nash Squared, and for everybody that voted with me, because it’s always a little overwhelming when you see the support that you have.
“I’m gonna take the flowers because I feel like saying I don’t deserve this, but I do. Take the flowers. A lot of people know me and they think I’m very much an extrovert. And I have this personality that when I am in public, I am an extrovert, but I am not by any means an extrovert. I’m an ambivert. I’m a programmed extrovert from childhood, I was always very introverted, you wouldn’t even know I was in the room, I was reading a book.
“But you learn how to do this. And that’s the other thing that you can learn how to do is influence, it’s about making a difference. It’s not something that you just do one day, you learn how to do it from childhood. And that’s what we really need to teach our children, and those that are growing up in the world is how they can make a difference, and how they can be the influences to change the mindset of people understanding how we can be equal. And so learn how to do that. Teach how to do that, what can you do, and it is really education.
“If there is one thing in the world that I think is needing to be done,
