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Women in a Technology Driven World

event date November 27, 2019 event timing 8:30 am - 10:00 am
The Embassy of Hungary, 35 Eaton Place, SW1X 8BY, London Members: FREE Non-Members: £10

Event overview

Join us for a special event at The Embassy of Hungary with Ambassador Kristof Szalay-Bobrovniczky, moderated by Melanie Seymour, Managing Director, Head of BlackRock Budapest and Head of Global Client Service and WIBF Advisory Board Member.

Bookings are closed for this event.

On Wednesday 27th of November we had the pleasure to be hosted by The Embassy of Hungary, a beautiful building in the very lovely Belgravia, London.

A delicious breakfast of pastries and coffee was followed by a panel discussion on “Women in a Technology Driven World” moderated by Melanie Seymour, Head of BlackRock Budapest and Head of Global Client Service and WIBF Advisory Board Member.

Our expert panel included: Julianne Miles MBE - CEO & Co-Founder, Women Returners Anna Brailsford - CEO, Code First: Girls Clare Black - Director of Corporate Affairs & Communications, Innovate Finance Mr Akos Janza - MD, Application Management and Quality Assurance, Head of Office Budapest, MSCI Inc

Our takeaways from the day were:

• Only 3% of investment in fintech goes to women currently. Innovate Finance plan to double that next year.

• 78% of girls at school can’t name a famous female tech person (a role model) so… ultimately you can’t be what you can’t see.

• In fintech women are 1/3 of workforce but only 17% of them are in senior positions.

• Female graduates from computer science and engineering consist of 20% (80% of those graduates are men). The number hasn’t changed in the last 5 years. As a result, only 3% of women choose a career in technology as their first choice, hence organisation such as Code First: Girls would like to encourage women to consider technology as a career, regardless of what they studied.

• Gender pay gap in tech is around 23%.

• Data shows that when companies invest in women led companies the return is greater and faster!

• 50% of workforce in the BlackRock Hungarian office don’t have financial backgrounds, Melanie believes the mindset, behaviour, desire and ability to learn is all it takes.

The panel discussion was followed by a few questions allowing the attendees to get into depth of the areas of their interest.

It was a highly interactive, engaging and informative panel! It’s a shame we couldn’t spend more time with our high-profile panelists, however, they welcomed one to one questions and mingled with us over coffee afterwards.

Huge thanks to Ambassador Kristof Szalay-Bobrovniczky, our panellists and to The Hungarian Embassy for hosting in their beautiful building.