Aubrey:
Hey, everyone, and a very warm welcome to Technology Now, a weekly show from Hewlett-Packard Enterprise where we take what's happening in the world around us and explore how it's changing the way organizations are using technology. I'm Aubrey Lovell, and the wonderful Michael Bird is still away so it's just me again this week. In this episode, we're following on from our last episode with Laura Stebbing of EQL:HER, in which we talked about encouraging women to break the glass ceiling and rise to the top in tech.
We decided to follow on from that by talking to someone who's done it all, Fidelma Russo, CTO at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. We'll be looking at where the tech industry is succeeding and struggling to improve diversity in the workplace. We're taking your questions to Fidelma as someone in the driving seat about what companies can and should be doing. And of course, we'll be looking at the books that are changing the way you, our audience, and some of our wonderful guests see the world. So if you're the kind of person who needs to know why what's going on in the world matters to your organization, this podcast is for you. And of course, if you're enjoying it, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out. All right, let's do it.
All right, so last week we started off by taking a look at some of the revealing stats around women in the tech workforce. And just to recap, according to research by Deloitte, in 2022, only 33% of the workforce in tech is female. That stat is mirrored in other STEM fields and in student numbers too. But to be honest, the most worrying statistic came from EQL:HER CEO Laura Stebbing herself.

Laura:
The situation for women in tech today is not good. Women make up only 26.7% of the tech workforce, and only 16% of C-suite executives at Fortune 500 tech companies are women. On top of that, just 17% of founders globally are women. Women are still paid less than men in the tech industry. Women in tech earn 82 cents for every dollar that men earn. Another thing that really contributes to this gender gap in the tech industry and for leadership is that women are much more likely than men to leave the tech industry. So 41% of women in tech leave the industry within 10 years, which is compared to 27% of men. And this was especially the case during the pandemic where we saw women leave the tech industry in droves -- it was known as the she-cession -- due to that pressure of childcare and work. So we have these kind of meta issues of less women entering the tech sector, then once they're there, nearly 50% of them leaving.

Aubrey:
So what can be done and what is being done? Well, here to talk to us is HPE's Fidelma Russo. Hi Fidelma. You're the first female CTO HPE has ever had, and you're also a female leader in a world which is really predominantly still male-occupied. So with your career, has this brought any unique challenges or opportunities?

Fidelma Russo:
It's been interesting. I think when I started out, I didn't really realize this was such a male dominated career and a male dominated environment. I think I was fortunate enough for a number of years to really not even realize that it was that way. And the numbers when I started of women in engineering are kind of like the numbers they are now, so that's a little bit sad. So what would I say? I think there are challenges that I have encountered where you haven't been part of the group, and so you miss out on cues.
I've learned to read the room a lot better, but equally well, I think, just because you're different, you're a different gender, you're always coming at it with a slightly different perspective. And so what I would say is for a number of years, I think I tried to fit in. Actually, I think I was happier when my female side came out and could lend a different perspective to the conversation as well as trying to gain respect technically as well as as a leader.

Aubrey:
When we think about diversity, how difficult is the fight to get more diverse voices in the tech industry as a whole? Do you think it's actually improving?

Fidelma Russo:
So as I said, unfortunately, the numbers are not moving as fast as we would like them to. When I think about this, if this were a project that we were running as an engineering project, I don't think that we would take the approach to it that we're taking today. I think we would have a call for a 911. We would all huddle and say, "The things we're doing aren't working, and so what do we need to do differently?" So I think there's a lot of fallout after we get people into teams, so we really have to encourage people to think about their bias, think about, in some ways, leaning heavier into diversity and move the needle. And it's the leaders who have to help move the needle.
If we wait for kids to come up through school, kids to come up through college, diverse talent to enter the workforce only to leave after four or five years because they don't feel like they belong, we're never going to make change. And so I believe it's up to everybody who works in tech companies to really question yourself every time you're making a decision on a hire, every time you're making a decision on a promote. And sometimes you just have to take a chance on diverse talent that you may not be able to measure them the same way, but they're actually going to knock it out of the park once people get a chance.

Aubrey:
You said something really powerful, like leaning into diversity and really being mindful of change. What is HPE doing to address this issue from your perspective?

Fidelma Russo:
Yeah, so I think really looking at when you have succession planning, do you have diverse folks? Are you really looking down into the organization and helping people have a safe place to even talk confidentially with other mentors in the organization, to talk about how to approach things in situations where they may be having difficulty? A lot of times in diversity discussions, it's uncomfortable for everybody. And so providing those mechanisms, which I've seen happen at HPE, where diverse talent has real mentorship programs assigned to them who can help them think through situations in a safe spot, I think that's one piece.
I think the other piece is in terms of when we're recruiting and bringing folks into the organization, we need to really lean on making sure we have diverse talent. Questioning the slate of candidates that we get. And then we've done a lot of work here at HPE on unconventional hiring. That's really blind screening of resumes and hiring people with different backgrounds into technology roles. And there, you'll get a much larger diverse pool of candidates. And over time, what happens is it's not diverse anymore, it's just the way it is.

Aubrey:
That's great advice. We'll be back with audience questions for Fidelma in a moment, but next up it's down to you. We open the floor for you to give your recommendations on books which have changed the way you look at the world, life and business in the last 12 months. They could be technology based, have changed the way you work, or they could just have made you look at the world in a totally different way. If you want to share your recommendations, there's a link in the podcast description. Just record a voice note on your phone and send it over.

Stu Franks:
Hi, I'm Stu Franks and I'm a development manager at Alces Flight Limited. I read a book called Occult London by, I believe his name was Merlin Coverley. And it's a fascinating deep dive into some of the more mystical, supernatural things that have occurred in London over the years. But it's given as sort of half tourist guide, half maybe this happened sort of discussion of that. More than anything, what I took away from it was, there's always more history behind something than you think. There is this extensive history and folklore around these places that you never see on the surface, and that's really neat. And I think it almost translates more to people as well. There's more going on than what's on the surface, right? There's so many complexities behind there that don't necessarily take everything at face value.

Aubrey:
Okay, it's time for questions from the audience. You've been sending in your questions to Fidelma on diversity in the workplace, and we have a few now. So the first question is, Melanie in Munich wants to know, "If you could give younger women advice on taking the same career path as you, what would you say to them?"

Fidelma Russo:
I would say be yourself and don't be afraid. And also the next piece is don't be afraid to ask the questions that you need the answers to. And don't assume that other people in the room know more than you, because it's most likely that they don't, but they don't want to speak up. So speak up, don't be afraid, and bring your whole self to work.

Aubrey:
Okay, second question. June from Wellington in New Zealand wants to know, "In terms of tech, there's a lot of news around AI gendered bias or gendered bias creeping into AI models. What can we do to remediate this?"

Fidelma Russo:
Models continue to train and they continue to learn. And so what we have to have is we have to have a way of auditing those models and making sure that bias doesn't creep in. Things like, the easiest one is gender bias when you're screening resume names. And so a lot of that has to get filtered out of the data. That's another piece around this technology where we could actually take the problems of the past that we're trying to solve, and because we've automated a lot of things with AI, actually continue to have a bias in the process. So really critical that you have teams that work in AI that are diverse, that you make sure that the data set that you're using to train it is not biased, and that you have an auditing process that starts to look at models and the outcomes in the operations and starts to detect bias and goes back and starts to remediate it.

Aubrey:
Thanks, Fidelma. And again, we'll drop a couple of links in the podcast description for more on these topics. We've also got a new series of our sister podcast Technology Untangled coming up. Episode one features Fidelma talking in much greater depth on bias in AI alongside a host of other amazing guests. So do check it out, it's launching soon. Right. We're getting towards the end of the show, which means it's time for This Week in History, a look at monumental events in the world of business and technology which has changed our lives. And sadly, I don't have my singing partner with me, but I look forward to when he's back so we can sing together. And for this week, the clue was four dots. Dot, dash, dash, dot, dot. Got it? It is, of course, Morse code for HPE. Oh, that's cute. Sorry. Our producer stuck that in there. Oh, that's cute.
It's Morse code for HPE, because this week marks the anniversary of the first telegraph transmission in the US. On May 24th, 1844, Samuel Morse sent a message over a cable stretching from Washington, DC to Baltimore, which his assistant then received and transmitted back to him. Next week, we're heading to 1999, and the clue is islands in the streaming. Know what it is? Keep it to yourself. That brings us to the end of Technology Now for this week. Next week, we'll be discussing digital transformations to do away with pesky bureaucracy, which sounds ideal, with Naveen Awad from Boston Consulting Group. In the meantime, keep those suggestions for life-changing books coming, using the link and the podcast description.
Until then, thank you to our guest, Fidelma Russo, Chief Technology Officer at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. And to our listeners, thank you all so much for joining us. Technology Now is hosted by Michael Bird, who will be back soon, and myself, Aubrey Lovell. This episode was produced by Sam Donapaulin and Zoe Anderson, with production support from Harry Morton, Alicia Kempson, Alison Paisley, Alex Podmore, and Ed Everston. Technology Now is a Lower Street production for Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. We'll see you next week.