Women in Technology: Spain Celebrates Big Ideas 2019
by David Vindel
EMEA Practice Leader Technology
On March 25th at CaixaForum Madrid, the #SomosMujeresTech Big Ideas 2019 event will bring together the Spanish innovation ecosystem around an innovative format. Seventeen technology sector directors will present ten major proposals aimed at improving companies, institutions and society as a whole over the next twelve months. The organizers, national media partner La Razon Innovadores and Hill+Knowlton Strategies Spain decided on Innovation with the Voice of A Woman for the event's motto, demonstrating that technological revolution is the backbone of these Big Ideas.
The Spanish Minister of Territorial Policy and Public Service, Meritxell Batet, will be in charge of opening the day. Those responsible for preparing the #SomosMujeresTech proposals will be Ana Maria Llopis, Founder of Ideas4all; Emma Fernández, independent director at listed companies in Spain and France; María José Miranda, General Director for NetApp; María Vila, General Director for Medtronic; Noelia Lázaro, Marketing Director for Packlink; Paloma Real, General Director for Mastercard; Mónica Villas, New Technologies Consultant and Professor of ICEMD; Patricia Núñez, Director of Commercial Channel for Lenovo Spain; Pilar Torres, Head of Public Sector for Amazon Web Services Spain; and Rosa Díaz, cybersecurity strategic advisory.
The event will encompass dialogue and discussion panels about one of the great questions of our time: "Robots and people, necessary coexistence." The members of the #SomosMujeresTech initiative will be Patricia Urbez, Director of Strategic Markets at Fujitsu Spain; María José Talavera, General Manager of VMWare Spain; Mariona Vicens, Director of Innovation and Digital Transformation at CaixaBank; Paloma Cabrera, Marketing and Communications Director at Accenture; and Montserrat Calleja, a scientific researcher at the CSIC. Save the Children CEO, Isla Ramos, will close the event in a conversation with Hill+Knowlton Strategies Spain Counselor, Eloisa Alonso.
The #SomosMujeresTech initiative was created by Hill+Knowlton Strategies Spain and a group of technology sector managers who came together to give the collective visibility in two ways: (1) the promotion of STEM vocations among students in Spain and (2) the professional promotion of women and their promotion to managerial positions to increase the presence of women in decision-making in the technology sector.
Globally, many technology companies have already embraced gender diversity and are currently being led by women. Examples include Renee James, President of Intel; Ginny Rometty, CEO of IBM; Susan Wojcicki, CEO of Youtube; Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett-Packard; and Safra Catz, Co-CEO of Oracle. Similarly, the number of women entering the technology field is increasing rapidly, with more women taking STEM subjects than ever before. Women are succeeding in new and (often male-dominated) technology fields such as software engineering, programming and artificial intelligence.
This Spanish initiative is a true embodiment of the diversity values espoused by H+K, and its parent company, WPP. I feel proud to be very much a part of it.
David Vindel
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