Our panel The Unbreakable Rise of Women Leaders provided a stimulating session to round off two days of great content at BIMA House, one of the fringe venues for SXSW London.
The discussion, sponsored by Propeller and chaired by our Chief Client Officer Rose Bentley, brought together a cohort of female senior leaders to discuss how to help bring more women through the ranks and what we all need to think about when it comes to AI and diversity.
The panellists included Rebecca Crook, CEO at MMT & 26DX, Collette Philip, Founder of Brand by Me, Sally Keane, Director of Sales at Spotify and Nishma Patel Robb, Founder and Chief Sparkle Officer of The Glittersphere.
The discussion ranged over the positive attitudes and behaviours being brought to the industry by a new generation of women leaders, the need to be brave in telling your story, allyship and the approach we should take to AI.
Sally highlighted the diversity found in the recent WACL Talent Awards and the drive to create spaces where women could feel comfortable “whether a new DEI space or a new space in the office.”
Collette added that it was pleasing to see so much “dual purpose” coming through in the WACL interviews with future leaders who want to do the best for their business but also show up for diverse communities.
Rebecca referred to how she found her own experience in non-exec director and trustee roles as sometimes quite isolating as they used to be very male dominated spaces - but she added that things are changing and they are valuable things to do for the “breadth of different people you have access to that you don’t in the day-to-day.”
The theme of overcoming fear, telling your story and putting yourself into positions and places where you might not naturally be invited was picked up by Nishma, who stressed, “Visibility is not vanity, it’s actually the most important currency we have now … if you don't tell your story, somebody else is going to tell it for you.”
When it comes to allyship and the criticism that women don’t always help female colleagues, Collette underlined that it’s the patriarchal system that forces women into competition for a perceived scarcity of opportunity. Nishma added that there’s more than one seat for women at the table – and if not, create more.
Turning to AI the panel urged everyone to use it so AI is built on what Nishma calls ‘authentic intelligence’ – if it’s not used by women and other diverse communities, then the current existing repeatable patterns on which Large Language Models are based are just reinforced.