About Me
Hi, I’m Emma,
I’m a leadership coach with more than 20 years’ experience working in tech.
This page will introduce you to more about me, my background and why I do what I do.
You’re always welcome to get in touch if you’d like to find out more.
Hi, I’m Emma
I’m a leadership coach with more than 20 years’ experience working in tech.
If you’re thinking about working with me, and wondering if I’m the right person for you, this page will give you a bit more info about me, my background and why I do what I do.
You’re always welcome to get in touch if you’d like to find out more.
I love solving problems and seeing the solutions make a difference in the world.
My Journey: Software Engineer to coach
At school I was a bit of a geek! I loved maths and often had my head in a book, studying hard.
I started my career as a software engineer, developing image processing algorithms. I loved the feeling of getting absorbed into a problem and finding a way to solve it through code. Even better was when I saw those solutions bring value and make a difference.
I also found myself buzzing when I connected with people. I loved listening to peoples’ stories of their life, along with their hopes and dreams for the future.
This combination of skills meant I quickly found myself with line management responsibility for 30 engineers, almost all of whom were older and had more experience than me (and were mostly male).
I didn’t have the knowledge or experience to manage by telling them what to do, but they were way more successful when I coached them to find their own solutions.
Choosing to invest in training as a coach, I discovered the amazing feeling that comes from helping people develop their career. I also found myself drawn to create teambuilding and ideation sessions, facilitating groups to help them to connect, share ideas and collaborate.
Over the last 20 years I’ve worked with engineers, academics and software developers, from those early in their career to senior managers, small business owners and executives in large organisations. I’ve coached one-on-one, run workshops and training and facilitated innovation sessions attended by hundreds of people.
I currently balance my time between running my business offering coaching services to women in tech, while also staying connected with the quickly developing tech world in my role as an engineering manager.
I still love getting absorbed in solving problems and occasionally get stuck into a bit of coding, but I know my limits and rely on the experts in my network when it needs doing well!
How would our everyday tech be different had it been created by a predominantly female team?
My Mission: Authentic Leadership for women in tech
Tech is still a man’s world.
As women working in tech we often find ourselves in the minority, and the more senior the role, the smaller the proportion of women in the room with a technical understanding.
The structure and the boxes women have to tick in order to progress have been defined by a male-dominated system, meaning that in order to be seen and heard we often have to “be more male”.
I experienced this for myself as I stepped into leadership roles. Invited to sit on decision making panels surrounded entirely by men I found it harder voice my opinions and share my ideas, especially when they came from my personal experiences as a female which others in the room found it harder to understand.
I didn’t question this. I didn’t see a reason to challenge the system. I stayed quiet and assumed my ideas weren’t relevant.
The big insight came as I attended the Women In Games conference in 2018. As I saw and played games developed by predominantly-female teams, I noticed how different they were. They told different stories, had different game mechanics and opened up new perspectives on the world.
Women brought new innovations to the industry and their products were reaching new markets.
This wasn’t just relevant for the games industry, but for tech as a whole.
Suddenly new questions appeared in my head:
What innovations are we losing from the tech industries because women feel unable to speak out and share their ideas?
How would our tech be different had it been created by teams with a female majority?
How much of their markets are tech companies missing when their solutions only partially address the needs of women?
This insight wasn’t just about women. I realised how enabling more diverse voices to influence the world of tech had the potential to make a difference to the products and services that were being created.
My Mission Became Clear:
To help women in tech speak out and become authentic leaders so that their perspectives and experiences influence the design and development of products and services in tech.
I’m always amazed to see the creative solutions that emerge when we get curious about the way we see the world.
My Coaching: no tools or techniques, just Curiosity And adventure
If you’re looking for a coach to push you hard and hold you accountable to everything you commit to, that’s not me.
I used to do that stuff, and I had a huge toolbox of techniques I could take you through, helping you to find the willpower and mindset to achieve all the things you thought you needed to do.
Then I got fed up of seeing the same tools re-packaged again and again, dissatisfied and discouraged because it felt like a lot of hard work, and the feelings of happiness, acceptance never seemed to last.
Then I was introduced to the 3 Principles – an understanding that was first shared by a Scottish Welder named Sydney Banks. A simple description of how our minds work and how we experience the world, it starts from the premise that there is nothing wrong with us.
What if, no matter what was going on in the world around us, we were always ok?
Having focused my first 10 years of coaching on trying to fix myself – working hard to change my unwanted behaviours, get rid of unhealthy beliefs and become a better person, this idea threw me.
Could it really be that simple?
Yet, at a deeper level these ideas resonated with me, so I decided to find out more, experiment and test the ideas out for myself.
As let go of the pressure to do better and achieve more and started to trust my own inner wisdom I found myself naturally achieving some things I’d only ever dreamed of:
- I took the leap into self-employment, set up my coaching business and built the business up through the pandemic.
- I discovered I could draw and started selling my artwork online.
- I solo-walked Wainwright’s coast-to-coast path (192 miles) across the UK, with a tent on my back, on my own.
- I did a TEDx talk about AI and empathy
And I didn’t need willpower or accountability or any of the other standard coaching tools to achieve them. I just showed up following the things that inspired me, taking next step and following my common sense. It was amazing how effortlessly it all unfolded.
This understanding has made such a difference to the enjoyment and fulfilment that I get from life, and so this is the basis of my coaching approach.
I introduce these ideas to clients in our sessions, encouraging you to get curious and notice how they feed into your life. I don’t ask you to accept anything as truth, but instead ask you to go and test things out, applying the ideas to practical day-to-day issues, noticing new insights and absorbing the things that work for you into your life.
Whether you are looking for a change in career, promotion at work, dealing with challenging stakeholders, or wanting to find more balance in your life – developing an understanding of the 3 principles has helped in all these areas for myself and my clients – and more.
If my story resonates with you and you’d like to explore how we could work together and what that could mean for you, please get in touch.
