LONDON, 27 Dec 2018: EY and Henley Business School have launched their Women in Emerging Technology Immersion course in order to help develop the next generation of female leaders and improve diversity in leadership positions. The first cohort of thirty of the most promising future leaders from around the world completed the course last week at Henley Business School. The participants, from the technology, media and telecoms sector, as well as a number of other sectors and many from leading FTSE 100 companies, were nominated by their organisation’s leadership to take part in the course. EY plans for future emerging technology immersion courses across the Europe, Middle East, India and Africa (EMEIA) regions in the coming years.
Praveen Shankar, EY’s Head of Technology, Media and Telecommunications for the UK & Ireland, and EY Partner Sponsor of the course says: “At EY we are committed to our vision of Building a Better Working World and through this course, we are making an effort in enabling and empowering the most talented females in TMT to be the industry’s next leaders. This course provides an exciting opportunity to obtain invaluable learning and experience.”
Throughout the week, over 40 senior leadership speakers from EY, Henley Business School and EY Alliances delivered an agenda focused on demystifying emerging technology, providing inspirational career and leadership presentations and helping understand how businesses are using innovation for competitive advantage. Additionally, the course helped facilitate networking, support career development and develop individual leadership capability and improve diversity in leadership positions in a new growth area.
The technology topics, led by EY, covered on the course included Robotics Process Automation (RPA), the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive technologies, Blockchain, and data analytics. Participants were guided through scenarios, case studies and immersive demonstrations, including a live chatbot session. The leadership development topics, led by Henley Business School, included creating resilience and identifying ways to build your leadership brand, as well as how to ‘pay forward’ your role as a female leader.
A senior professional from a multinational telecoms organisation commented: “I am so pleased to have been invited on this course. You have to walk the talk and demonstrate action to make a real change to improve diversity and this course is a fantastic demonstration in making a change.”
A senior professional from the public sector commented: “It’s been a fantastic mix between tech and leadership. Learning about emerging technology and seeing them in applied environments with all the use cases has been brilliant.”
Henley’s Programme Director Claire Hewitt said: “A strong sense of community quickly developed amongst the group as delegates shared some of their leadership challenges. They were able to create powerful responses right there in the room, and left feeling inspired to accelerate their leadership roles as women in the tech-world.”
Praveen Shankar added: “Emerging technology has the potential to be an excellent catalyst for improving diversity in leadership teams and now is the prime time for women to seize these opportunities to lead in this exciting area. This is just the start of the journey and I am confident in the dynamic shift we can make.”
