Roshni Patel, Technical Graduate at Leidos
- Be curious and chase every opportunity to learn something new. The world of technology is changing every day, giving us so many chances to grow!
- Embrace challenges, explore new ideas and let your curiosity guide you to opportunities you never imagined.
Valentina Kskhafa, Service Owner for the SG Cloud Platform Team at Scottish Government
- Persevere: Challenges are inevitable – work through them with confidence and resilience.
- Don’t Make Assumptions: Stay curious; ask questions before making conclusions – very often too many assumptions are not clarified.
- Look for Solutions: Focus on opportunities – someone else will always find the problems.
- Communicate and Connect: Build relationships and trust through openness and empathy.
- Value Good Governance: Strong frameworks enable fairness, accountability, and sustainable success. Together, these principles empower women in technology to lead with purpose, integrity, and impact.
Joanna Jackson, Security Manager at Leidos
- In tech, talent matters – but so do the people around you. Building a strong network opens doors to opportunities, ideas, and support you might not find alone. Say yes to events and workshops and join online communities. Connect with people who inspire you and seek out mentors who will guide, challenge, and champion you. A good mentor can help you navigate uncertainty and grow your confidence. You don’t have to do this journey alone – and it’s more fulfilling when you don’t.
Mamtha Ragupathy, Senior Software Engineer at Leidos
- Embrace ambiguity and be comfortable with “failure as data”: The tech world is defined by incomplete information and rapid iteration. So do not seek perfection before starting. Be willing to jump into ambiguous situations and lead the process of bringing structure to them. When things don’t work, treat that outcome as “data” that helps inform the next, better decision, rather than as a personal failure, which many of us do (especially women).
Milly Connell-Flynn, Systems Engineer at Leidos
- Choose to study something you enjoy! As a young person, I would get so bogged down trying to figure out what career I wanted, so I could then choose a course based on it. I loved Maths and am so glad I chose to study it at university because a career I enjoy came from it, even though I couldn’t see the clear path back then. I didn’t even know what a Systems Engineer was, and now here I am!
