Critical Careers - Women Building Careers in Digital Infrastructure - Book - Page 72
At what point did you realise you had an
opportunity to make a difference for the
younger women coming into the industry
after you?
I was working through the concept of ikigai, the idea of aligning what
you are good at, what you love, what the world needs, and what you
can build a business around. And when I mapped that honestly, one
gap kept surfacing. I have spent years working at the intersection of
infrastructure and capital. I know how investment decisions get made in
this industry, and I know how few women are in those conversations. Not
just in leadership roles, but at the level where capital is deployed and
deals are structured. That is a material gap, and it felt like something I
was speci昀椀cally positioned to address.
Throughout my career, I’ve been supported and mentored by incredible
women, and I’ve held onto those relationships across different stages of
my life. But more recently, I’ve noticed a shift where younger women are
now coming to me with the same questions I once had. That was a real
moment of realisation, where you see yourself on the other side of
that equation.
What shifts still need to happen at an
industry level to ensure long-term progress
for women in this sector?
The reality today is that if you want to follow a traditional path into
institutional investment, the route is still very structured. It’s the top
schools, analyst roles, associate, VP, and then slowly working your way
up. That pathway hasn’t really changed, and it can be quite narrow in
terms of who it brings through.
But what I’m starting to see, and what I think is a real opportunity,
is the emergence of alternative routes. More women are getting
involved in angel investing, in startups, in smaller funds where they
can deploy capital earlier and more directly. And what matters in this
industry speci昀椀cally is that capital allocation decisions determine which
infrastructure gets built, where, and at what scale. If women are not in
those rooms, the physical infrastructure of the next decade re昀氀ects that
absence. That is a concrete problem, not an abstract one.
And I think that’s where the industry needs to evolve. We need to create
more visible and accessible entry points into investment, not just rely on
the traditional pipeline. Because if that pipeline remains the only route,
we’re going to continue to see the same pro昀椀les coming through.
“A data centre isn’t just
one role or one path,
it’s a full lifecycle.”
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