Growing your network & finding new opportunities

Kayleigh Bateman: 0:00
Hello everyone. Thank you for tuning in Again. I am Kaye Bateman, the content director at she Can Code, and today we are discussing growing your network and finding new opportunities. Now, women in Dorset is a group of people who want to make a safe, welcoming environment where women can share knowledge and be inspired. Luckily, today I’ve got the fabulous Simi Suleri, vp of Engineering at Insurance Tech Company Prima, and she’s also the co-founder and director of Women in Dorset and she’s here to discuss how the group got started, its goals and how you can become more involved. Welcome, simi. Thank you so much for joining.

Seemin Suleri: 0:40
Oh, thank you very much for having me Nice to be here.

Kayleigh Bateman: 0:44
It’s a pleasure to have you. Thank you so much. I know you’ve already got a really busy day. You also look after Women in Dorset on the site, so we’re going to talk a little bit about that today and how listeners can get involved. But come and kick off with a little bit of background about yourself, please, and kind of how you got into tech.

Seemin Suleri: 1:04
Yeah, I mean so. I’ve always been a software engineer by profession. I think my love for software engineering goes back all the way to school, so I’m not one of those people who actually came back after choosing a particular career. This is the career that was for me, you know, from the beginning. So we’re here.

Seemin Suleri: 1:26
I don’t hear that all the time, I know, and I think this was always something. I was into maths and physics and I really enjoyed problem solving, so it was the path for me, and I started my career in a company designing simulation systems for air traffic controllers so very aerospace oriented, really, really interesting industry. Then I kind of moved a little bit away from that, went into electronics manufacturing, then went to e-commerce, more around web systems, then insurance, then back to e-commerce and back to insure tech now. So I worked in a number of industries in various different positions and initially largely as a software engineer, then moving into leadership positions, and now I’m a VP of engineering, looking after a huge team of very capable engineers, and building high performance teams is one of the passions of mine.

Kayleigh Bateman: 2:28
Yeah, it sounds like you have an amazing background where you went from around a few different industries as well. It’s always interesting when people say to me that they knew they wanted to go into tech and you mentioned you liked maths and STEM subjects. Was there something about technology that you kind of had you seen somebody as a role model, or was it someone at school who encouraged you? I speak to so many ladies who say you know what? I was really turned off by technology until they kind of got into their first job and then they just happened to transition and fall into the industry. But you had a clear plan.

Seemin Suleri: 3:05
Yeah, this is. This is a very interesting question because I think that for me I already had, I always had really great math teacher. So it really, really depends, and I do think that in school it depends on who your teachers are and you take the first impression from them. Also, my grandfather was a math professor and so I used to actually talk to him about it, all of those things, and when I used to find something like a little bit more complex and stuff, I used to sit down with him and work out, just just do math. So this was my thing with my granddad. You know, he used to teach me and he was obviously being a professor. He used to really enjoy doing like the school problems right, so that was kind of a day off for him when he was doing that. But eventually it created a very lovely connection between me and the idea of this problem solving and stuff. So I do think that your initial connection with those things matter and therefore any work that you do.

Seemin Suleri: 4:04
It is important that we go back to schools and figure out how the impression we are, the, you know, the young children and pupils. What is the impression we are giving them If we say to them oh this is too hard, it’s not for you. Or actually on the side of the teachers. If it is not something that is taught well or interestingly enough, then people just find it laborious and difficult. It is one of those things, though, that challenges you. It challenges you to be more creative, to think of the ways of solving a problem that you might not have thought before. It also teaches you a very important lesson of abstracting things right A representation of the world in a mathematical equation.

Seemin Suleri: 4:51
Once you learn that skill that is the core skill you have to learn programming as well. So if you learn it as a child, programming comes very, very naturally and easily to you. So that’s what I would say. And in terms of role models, yes, he was in terms of my. You know, he was kind of a math genius in our house, and so he was a role model for me. And but yeah, I mean in our house, both my parents worked, but they weren’t in the. My mom was a doctor, my dad was a lawyer, so they didn’t actually have these subjects, but they were very happy for me to kind of explore my own way, but I had a natural interest in engineering and how things worked and how problems were solved and so yeah, so that’s how I ended up in the field that I did.

Kayleigh Bateman: 5:36
Yeah, amazing. I love the fact that you just mentioned on solving challenges and you have to get creative to solve those challenges. And that is a misconception about working in technology that it’s not a creative industry to be in and you just kind of you don’t get to be very creative in your job. And you just happen to mention it, that people don’t tend to put maths and technology or any STEM subject together with the word creative, do they?

Seemin Suleri: 6:02
But actually I think this is a really big misconception, I would say, for people who are actually outside of the tech industry. And the thing is that in technology, let’s say, you have a problem to solve. However, a lot of the times when we are building a software, we are trying to solve a real life problem. And when I say that, it might be that we are building something. So let’s assume well, let’s take the example of insurance.

Seemin Suleri: 6:29
Like, if you go to traditionally, how it used to work is very manual and laborious, with a lot of paperwork. But in order to automate all of that, you need to understand the core concept. So you need to apply the same abstraction to it, with a lot of constraints. And the magic of constraints is that when we are given that we have to solve a problem with a lot of limitation in what is available, then we really get those creative juices going because we need to make it work. So I believe that, just like architecture, just like any other engineering skill, building software is a highly creative process and it is a highly collaborative one as well. So I think the idea that you’ll be sat in your room behind a computer not talking to anyone is probably I would say at least 40 years old and now date. So I would say that this is something that perhaps we need rebranding of the tech businesses into and really telling the story as it is on how immensely collaborative and creative this space is.

Kayleigh Bateman: 7:42
Yes, definitely, and the more people that tell their story, the more people will hear about it, which absolutely makes sense. And that leads nicely into our discussion today. We’re talking about communities and the power of communities, how to build your community and sharing those stories amongst each other and helping each other, and we’re going to talk a little bit about women in tech doorset. So can we get started with? What is women in tech doorset and how did it get started?

Seemin Suleri: 8:08
Yes, so it’s kind of like a story of my, a little bit of my personal experience. You know, I had most of my career in doorset. I started and had my jobs around here and I mean there are not many women in tech overall and there’s a very small percentage generally. But in doorset is probably worse than you know, the worst than your national average, and I think that a lot of the times I found myself to be the only one in the department. That wasn’t an unusual thing. And then I found out maybe in a, maybe there was one other, but we were sat right right in the opposite end of the building so we didn’t even know that there was another woman in the department.

Kayleigh Bateman: 8:54
Is she bumped into each other in the toilet? Yes, that’s precisely what happened.

Seemin Suleri: 8:58
This is true, and they were like oh, what’s your part when you work in software? Really? I didn’t know that. Anyway, so it actually did happen like that. So hilarious that you said that, but yeah, so I think I found out that generally, I think if you know about social psychology, you know that a lot of the groups at work and outside social groups tend to form around gender boundaries. Right, it’s not like people are trying to exclude I don’t think that our colleagues were trying to exclude us it’s just like they form groups around gender boundaries and you’re like the odd one out standing out there. And I think that a lot of them actually did make genuine effort to include, and I know that a lot of people are consciously trying to do that.

Seemin Suleri: 9:41
However, I felt that it’s still required and I know that women thrive in communities. There was still something missing. There were not enough of us to even form like a small group or relate to each other and kind of like share those stories. And when we did come together the two or three of us the powerful, you know we were lifting each other up and sharing those things and it was powerful. So I made a promise to myself that I will make a difference in this space when I get a chance and eventually I think you know, having kids, getting married, having a steady career and getting to a VP level I thought, ok, now it’s time to give back to the community, because it’s time to do something. And I kind of went back and started getting the feel for what was out there and figured out that a lot of women were still facing the same thing. You know, it hadn’t changed over like the decade, and it was very disappointing for me and I was like, ok, we’re going to change it now.

Seemin Suleri: 10:45
So while I was trying to find out ways to get involved in the community, just to find out what we need to do and make a plan, I found out about Dorset Council running this program under Digital Dorset, which is to introduce the concept of programming and coding to children in schools, and you were asked as people in the tech industry to volunteer and I think there were about quite a few schools that signed up. I think definitely over 50 schools signed up for it and then I was a volunteer to go in and actually interact with the children to teach them to code and I really loved it, that session, and, yeah, it was brilliant. And through that program I met another lady, sharon Jones, who had worked in the Dorset community for a long time. She worked for the Bournemouth, christchurch and Pool Council before and she was familiar with the business kind of the big business ecosystem in the county. So we kind of joined forces and we decided to form Women in Tech Dorset, a community for women to come together for learning, networking and also for inspiration and to share those amazing stories that were not being told often enough and to celebrate, and so that’s how we started.

Seemin Suleri: 12:15
It’s been a year that we’ve been going. We started and our initial launch event got covered by the BBC Radio. It got in the press. We were very happy about it, but it also highlighted that there was a need for things like that, and we had a really amazing response from the community, the women who’ve been inside the community. There was a real thirst for something like that and we were really, really happy that we are able to do all of this. All the events are free. We do online webinars, which are free as well, and or you can join an in-person event, which is done on a quarterly basis, and, yeah, so we are heading towards our anniversary event in November. So this time round, we are involving a lot of businesses, because real change is only going to happen if businesses commit to making a difference and creating better working places for women. Yes, definitely. So that’s the mission.

Kayleigh Bateman: 13:20
And do you mentioned that there was a first for it and that you had heard things from certain women that there was kind of a gap that you wanted to close and help them? What kind of things were you hearing from those women in tech that made you think you needed to start the initiative? Was it things like I hear a lot of women say this? Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who feels that way, or I’m the only one that feels like an imposter, for instance, and there’s no one to talk to.

Seemin Suleri: 13:45
I think of course, like imposter syndrome, and I think it’s a consequence also of being and feeling a little bit different, right? So the idea is that I think we we as women basically feel a lot of the times that the way we feel we you know others don’t feel just because we haven’t seen anybody who looks like us in the field that we are in, especially in tech. This is more the case than other fields, and so what we were hearing was a lot of that, plus that the loneliness and feeling like there was wasn’t any support community around them. The another thing came out was around difficult conversations about women’s health. People were not feeling like they can they can communicate with the businesses.

Seemin Suleri: 14:32
So I talk very openly about my endometriosis and my struggle with it, and in the first our launch event I I spoke about it and I said about how I communicated with my employer to get a better, flexible deal for myself, and there were at least 10 women who approached me after the event to tell me their story about with their struggle of endometriosis, and they told me that one of them was a very young lady, just graduated from uni, who said that she didn’t even think she will ever have a career because what employer in their right mind would allow that flexibility? Like she thought it was completely unreasonable to request this very, you know, fundamental thing about your health and she thought she will never have a career. And she said I look at you and now I think if she can do it, I can do it too. So she really was, you know, in tears and it really touched me because I think, again, the communities are formed to support each other having these difficult conversations as well.

Seemin Suleri: 15:45
So some of that stuff came out and you know, general trend is that employers are sometimes disconnected and not flexible enough for women, and it’s not that, you know, normally women are juggling a lot of household responsibilities as well as work. That makes them super duper efficient in the time they have. So they are actually much more productive in, let’s say, the two hours that they’re going to give you than another employee who might give you five hours but can’t get that much done. So there are ways to negotiate that. So there are some of the. These are some of the themes that came out of our conversations.

Kayleigh Bateman: 16:24
Amazing. And you said as well I mean, from those conversations you’re obviously working on what you’re going to do as a group. And also you said that you’re now going to be working with more industry and businesses. And I’m curious what are the groups aims and how is the group working to bring about change in the industry? Now you’re kind of working, you know more to build that bridge between yourself and business.

Seemin Suleri: 16:49
Yeah, so all of our events have a theme.

Seemin Suleri: 16:52
So we do not only some speakers and panel discussions, but also we do a brainstorming exercise where the community gets involved in generating ideas about certain topics, and we’ve been building all through this year a huge kind of treasure of these ideas about how an organization can make the workplace better for women who have now you know, or or make you know, the recruitment retention practices so that they are able to attract more people and retain them and develop them over a long term.

Seemin Suleri: 17:28
And so these ideas are coming in and being fed directly through the community into what we call women in tech doors at playbook, which we are taking and sharing with the businesses to allow them to sign up to the charter, so to speak, and then we will be promoting them as businesses that have made a firm commitment under those guidelines being created by the community, and then we will obviously hold them to account on those things and work with them to help them implement those.

Seemin Suleri: 18:04
Again, you know we’re offering our services and all this consultation absolutely free of cost. So a lot of the businesses we have seen they want to do these changes, they want to see these changes, but they don’t know where to start and they don’t know. They don’t have that experience or wealth of data coming in through to help them direct their efforts in a certain way. So we are aiming to bridge that gap and and to get them involved and really give them the playbook to say, look, these are some of the practical things that have been successful and have been recommended by the community and then promoting them inside the community and kind of building that whole full circle.

Kayleigh Bateman: 18:46
Yes, definitely Sounds like incredibly busy. It sounds like it’s evolving as well as you go, which is brilliant. I’m wondering a lot of our listeners will be thinking how do they get involved in women in tech doorset? Do you have to live in doorsets to get involved?

Seemin Suleri: 19:03
Because you mentioned webinars yes, well, we have a combination of in-person events and webinars. If I would encourage people to go to womenintechdoorsetcouk, our website, and then go into our events directory and we publish all of our online as well as in-person events. If you are down in doorset, please join us absolutely free. You get refreshments of great chat, great networking opportunity as well. However, if you want to join from home, we have live conversations with a lot of fantastic technical experts from around the world. We do that webinar every month, so you’ll get a lot of information coming in from that, and that is also free to join for anybody who’s living anywhere. I’d encourage people to join that as well and be a part of those conversations, because running a live session means you are able to ask those questions to these experts directly. What we wanted to do is we wanted to bring all these people at the doorstep of the community so that all this information that is out there, we want to be able to really harness that and move forward with it.

Kayleigh Bateman: 20:24
Yes, and you keep saying a word that our listeners are going to love free. Everything is free, free events, free advice, free webinars.

Seemin Suleri: 20:31
Yes, it’s absolutely free, because I think that in the current climate, as well as all of the commitments, the time is the biggest commitment you can give anyway. So I think from us, as far as we are concerned, that’s what we ask for. However, we will make sure that if you do give us your time, you will feel enriched by the conversation and you will feel that there are several examples and a lot of progress you can make as a result of that. So, yes, there is no subscription fee. There is nothing absolutely free of cost, and we welcome everyone to join.

Kayleigh Bateman: 21:14
Wonderful, and what about? So that’s people joining? What about if any of our listeners are thinking, you know I love the sound of this and they’re thinking about launching something similar? Where would they get started? Is there any advice that you wish someone had told you before you got started? Got started on, you know? Just sort of tips on where to start and who to go to.

Seemin Suleri: 21:36
Yeah, I would say the first thing I think we did was, you know, getting a feel for the community. So before we talk to the businesses, make sure that perhaps you’re having some conversations around your target audience, right. So you will need to understand the needs first. Is there a community already in place which you could be a part of, maybe? So try and find out some local communities that have already been set up. There are lots of people who are trying to do these efforts. If it is not there, then how can you develop into those things? So I think I would say taking one step at a time is the only thing I would recommend, because things like these take time. A lot of us well, most of us have got our day job, so there is little steps, but I would say few steps in the right direction are better than no steps at all. Yes, through our combined effort, we have been able to make a lot of progress in a year. So I think, pace it well and suit according to whatever flexibility you might have.

Seemin Suleri: 22:43
Join forces with other women. I think I would not have been able to do anything like that, even close to what we have done with our Sharon. So Sharon, with her leadership, her style and communication, her links to the local businesses, has really pushed it forward. So I really really recommend partnering with other women because it is about a community and it’s just the two of you. Yes, it is the two of us.

Seemin Suleri: 23:10
Yes, gosh, yeah. So I’m not only the director and co-founder, I’m also your tech support, I’m also your web developer, I’m also the, and Sharon does all of the conversations with the businesses, the sponsorship and stuff and all that I will try and make do. But I think what we’re doing is also aiming in the next year to expand that further and to form like a steering group and some of our members well, not members, but some of the participants have shown an interest in becoming a part of the group and we will extend that further. But we do partner up with some like Dorset Council, bcp and well, it’s good if the local government gets involved, right, because that can help in getting the visibility and stuff. So we do have support around us, but at core, it’s Sharon and I who do who run the women and tech Dorset community.

Kayleigh Bateman: 24:08
Yeah my gosh you guys have your work cut out so far. I mean, people must think that you’re a team of 20 running in the background.

Seemin Suleri: 24:17
We are. This is the thing. This is why I say that women are much more efficient in much less time than people might realize. Definitely yes.

Kayleigh Bateman: 24:30
We are almost out of time and I wanted to ask you one last question. If you were starting out in the world of tech again, what advice would you give your younger self?

Seemin Suleri: 24:41
I would say don’t get disheartened by the fact that a lot of the time, responsibilities are passed on and actually you are the last one to be considered, even when you might be the most qualified person for that. It is okay, because it will come your way. The thing is that I felt initially there were quite a few disappointments and I used to really take it to heart and I used to really really struggle with that. But I think eventually, if you work hard, you’re consistent, you look for those opportunities, they will come your way. It’s not, you might not be the first one, but you will be one and you’re looking for that one chance like a hawk and the moment it arrives that, you will seize it. And I would say just don’t be disheartened. It might not be every time, but your time will come.

Kayleigh Bateman: 25:34
Yes, it’s brilliant advice not to feel disheartened, because you are absolutely right, and even dealing with those setbacks and that disappointment, finding your tribe and your community, that can really help with that. Surely that must really make a difference. So almost as well to tell your younger self. Please think about the types of communities that are around you and join them. I don’t think that’s something you consider when you’re young. Do you just kind?

Seemin Suleri: 26:01
of think you want a job. No, I think you feel that in retrospect almost right, because when you’re young you always have your friend from uni and everybody’s starting their career. There’s a lot of buzz around you, right. But I think eventually it gets a little bit lonelier as people move on and all that kind of stuff. So I think that that’s when it really comes to play.

Kayleigh Bateman: 26:20
Seemee, thank you so much for joining us today.

Seemin Suleri: 26:22
Thank you so much, yeah it’s been an absolute pleasure and I really appreciate the work that you guys are doing under Sheikin Code, and I think the more organizations that are thinking along those lines the better. I cannot recommend that enough, and I look forward to speaking to you guys in the near future.

Kayleigh Bateman: 26:40
Yes, and in terms of listeners signing up for Women Tech Doors, we’ve put the link in our blog below. So please take a look, listeners, and sign up and see all the wonderful things that are available for you there. But to everybody, as always, thank you so much for joining us and we hope to see you again next time.