Critical Careers - Women Building Careers in Digital Infrastructure - Book - Page 73
What are you telling
younger women about
coming into the industry?
The 昀椀rst thing I tell them is that this industry is going
through one of the most signi昀椀cant capital cycles of the
next decade, and the investment roles are still wide open.
We are talking about hundreds of billions being deployed
into AI infrastructure across Europe alone. The people
who understand how to evaluate these assets, how to
price grid risk, how to read a permitting timeline, how
to structure a land option in a constrained market, are
genuinely scarce. That is an entry point, if you build the
right knowledge base.
I also encourage them to explore the different parts of the
ecosystem. A data centre isn’t just one role or one path,
it’s a full lifecycle. You have pre-development, which is
where I sit, then construction, operations, leasing, energy
management. There are so many entry points, and you
don’t have to have it all 昀椀gured out from day one. Try
different areas, understand what excites you, and build
from there.
But beyond that, what I really try to instil is con昀椀dence
and courage. You don’t have to follow a traditional path
to succeed here. I didn’t, and that’s been one of my
strengths. There have been rooms I walked into where I
was very clearly not the expected pro昀椀le, and I learned to
read that quickly and keep moving. The opportunities that
mattered came from the people who recognised what I
brought, not from the ones who needed convincing.
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