EMPOWER: Holding Your Own As A Female Leader

We are hosting a series of Female Founders, in-person, intimate roundtables this year, where advocates & Female Founders will come together and discuss ideas including increasing female representation within the technology industry, how to navigate profitable scaling and how to optimise networking.

Our first session, hosted over at EY's offices in Manchester, was a great success. This was an exclusive event, allowing our attendees to expand their networks and bounce ideas off of other Leaders in the tech community.

Organised by Principal Director, Charlotte Smith, and Investment Manager Laura Sisson, CFA, we were joined by Manchester-based Founders, from the likes of Dream Agility, PLYTIME, Culture Shift, Zally, Hace & EY, who shared their experiences, journeys and support during the session. It was very insightful to hear about how we can better support more Female Founders and what more needs to be done to encourage the next generation of Female Founders.

The key takeaways from the discussions:

⭐️ The concept of imposter syndrome is often more associated with women, potentially reinforcing unnecessary self-doubt. Recognise that these emotions are universal, not unique to one gender, and approach them as opportunities for personal development. Embrace these challenges to foster growth.

⭐️ Transparency encourages trust and respect. Instead of shielding your team from difficult truths, provide them with the full picture to empower informed decision-making and resilience.

⭐️ Utilise your stakeholder network effectively to benefit your business. While it's super important to gather insights and support, ensure that these interactions are meaningful and that the process of keeping stakeholders informed enhances, rather than hinders, your company's progress.

We also saw the culmination of many months of work of the Women-Led High-Growth Enterprise Taskforce, led by Anne Boden and featuring YFM-backed Zandra Moore. 

Charlotte: "Like many others, I'm passionate about raising more support and opportunities for female founders and women in tech and whilst this may have been our first roundtable event, we will be hosting plenty more in the near future so please reach out if you want to be involved in our next meet up."

Huge thanks to Elizabeth, Lisa, Gemma, Lesley, David, Eleanor, Holly, Siân, Charlotte, 👩‍⚕️ Emma-Louise&Chris for joining us this morning and sharing your experiences as female founders and leaders – lots to take away from the roundtable. Massive thanks to EY for hosting us this morning, to Helen, Sophia & Helen for being a huge help and support in setting this up for us & Laura for co-hosting this initiative. 👏

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We also run a similar initiative down in our London offices, organised by our Senior Engineering Consultant Grace Duffy, bringing together leaders of Engineering from the likes of The Financial Times, Unmind, Gousto, Vodafone, Fluro, Healios, CBRE & Cazoo. The discussions revolve around closing the gender gap in Tech Leadership and impactful ways to increase female representation within the industry. To hear more about this, check out Grace's blog post below!

If you'd like to hear more and are interested in attending further events, please reach out to Principal Consultant, charlotte@burnssheehan.co.uk