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 * Women to watch


THE ‘CRUCIAL’ FACTOR FOR TECH LEADERS TO GET AHEAD

A mentor can help future female leaders by acting as a sounding board and
passing on skills and coaching.

Tess BennettTechnology reporter
Mar 7, 2024 – 5.00am
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10 min


To mark International Women’s Day, The Australian Financial Review celebrates
the careers of emerging figures in key sectors of the economy, nominating four
women as the Women to Watch in each of five sectors: financial services;
technology; professional services; sustainability and energy; and education and
public service.

We asked four rising stars in the tech sector for their best advice for the next
generation: find a mentor, work flexibly and don’t doubt your own abilities.


PUNITHA SENNIAPPAN

Principal architect, Seek

Taking an 18-month career break to start a children’s clothing company helped
Punitha Senniappan advance her career as a software engineer.

Seek principal architect Punitha Senniappan says you shouldn’t feel like you
have to face challenges on your own. Arsineh Houspian

The principal architect at online job site Seek has just completed work on a
three-year $175 million technology project, combining the company’s three core
marketplace platforms – Seek, JobStreet and JobsDB – into a single platform.

Years before she was wrangling 100 engineers across Australia and Asia to bring
data from 20 different systems into the new platform, Punitha stepped away from
her career in the tech sector to indulge her creative side.

With two young children at home and a mortgage, in 2016 Punitha decided to step
away from her full-time role at IBM and started her own business, NIOVI
Organics.

“Managing the entire lifecycle of running the business, from sourcing to customs
clearance and engaging with freelance designers gave me a lot of confidence in
my abilities,” she says.



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“It helped my tech career because when I came back the way I communicated in
meetings changed … I was a lot more confident in expressing my opinion.”

Born in southern India, Punitha grew up on a farm in Tamil Nadu state, taking a
one-hour bus ride to travel the 20km to school each day.

After graduating from computer science and engineering from the University of
Madras, Punitha and her husband migrated to Australia in 2004. She worked as a
consultant, including a decade at IBM.

She still operates her business selling organic cotton baby clothes today (very
passively, she adds), but felt lonely as a solo operator and returned to the
tech workforce in 2018.

She joined Seek in June 2021, while Melbourne was still in lockdown, as a
software architect and was promoted to principal architect in 2022.

Another pivotal moment in her career came when she was selected to take part in
Seek’s FAST program (Females at Seek Thrive) in 2022 which is targeted at future
female leaders by giving them skills, coaching and mentors.

Through the program, Punitha was introduced to her first mentors, Kathleen
McCudden, Seek’s people and culture officer, and Narelle Charity, director of
product at Seek, who she says have made a “massive difference” to her career.

“It’s crucial for women in the tech sector to have a mentor. You are going to
face challenging situations at work, don’t feel like you have to deal with that
on your own. Find someone who can act as a sounding board for you.”

“Don’t let anybody – including yourself – doubt your abilities.”


LUCY WARK


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Co-founder Normal, co-founder Fuzzy

Towards the end of 2023, Lucy Wark found herself spending a couple of days a
week listening to other people’s stories of harassment or discrimination in the
start-up sector.

Lucy Wark knew from her early days at McKinsey that she wouldn’t be a consultant
forever. 

The start-up founder had just publicly spoken about her own experiences and the
need for the powerful venture capital community to take more responsibility for
preventing sexual harassment in the sector.

“It doesn’t feel like relief. Speaking publicly about sexual harassment actually
feels like introducing a permanent sense of anxiety and fear into your life,”
Wark says.

In part, that’s because the start-up ecosystem is built on networks that can
either work in your favour or freeze you out, Wark explained.

Behind the scenes, women were galvanising to turn the outrage into change, which
led to the launch of Grapevine, an activism collective calling out workplace
harassment and discrimination among tech companies.

“There’s a really excellent appetite for change in the tech ecosystem, and when
it makes something a priority, then it moves very quickly,” Wark says.

Wark is quick to add her involvement with Grapevine isn’t a full-time job – she
has two of those already as the co-founder of sexual wellness brand Normal and
skills platform Fuzzy.

Growing up in Brisbane, Wark wouldn’t have predicted her career would lead here.
In high school she was more interested in debating, model United Nations and The
West Wing.


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Wark left Australia when she was 18 to study at Cambridge and later the
University of Chicago. When she returned home, she took a job management
consultant job at McKinsey & Company.

“From very early on in consulting, I was sure that I didn’t want to be a
consultant,” Wark says.

But the skills she gained in the role – like breaking down business problems and
crafting a narrative – have paid dividends throughout her career.

At Fuzzy, which she co-founded with another former consultant Harry Hamilton,
Wark teaches negotiation and other soft skills that can help young professionals
accelerate their careers.

“I think a lot of people could be on much faster career tracks or be much more
effective in their careers if they had access to a lot of those lessons and
skills.”

Her number one recommendation to be effective at work? Get a therapist.

“I think I’m like a much better founder and manager because I regularly see a
therapist.”


LEAH PINTO

Intelligence engagement lead, CyberCX

Leah Pinto was 34 weeks pregnant with her youngest child when she stepped into
the CyberCX office for her first day as an intelligence analyst gathering intel
on cyber spies and criminals.


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Cyber CX’s Leah Pinto works with corporations in their defence against hackers. 

Pinto hadn’t been looking for a new role when she reached out to Katherine
Mansted, an executive director at CyberCX. But after an initial conversation the
firm, which is called in to respond to the largest national cyber breaches and
help clients prevent hacks, wanted her to start work before the baby arrived.

“When I first went into the office, I was obviously incredibly heavily pregnant.
There was zero sense of not feeling comfortable. It was incredibly supportive,”
Pinto says.

Six weeks later she was off on maternity leave.

Pinto leads CyberCX’s intelligence engagement function, which helps clients
understand how cyber criminals are trying to disrupt their operations or steal
data. She works with clients including critical infrastructure operators, big
corporations and government departments to make sure their resources are in the
right places to defend against hackers.

The Sydney mother-of-three took a non-traditional pathway into cybersecurity but
has had an interest in catching bad guys since she was a teenager.

Pinto started her career in intelligence at the NSW Police Force, after studying
criminology at university in Sydney, a decision which was inspired by watching
crime shows like NCIS and CSI.

“I decided to study criminology when I was about 14 … I just thought criminology
would be the coolest thing, and it was the only option I was ever going to do,”
Pinto says.

In the police force, Pinto rose through the ranks delivering tactical,
operational and strategic intelligence to all levels of police on matters of
serious and organised crime. From there she made the move from law enforcement
to cyber, and later from the public sector to private.

Women are 48 per cent of the Australian workforce, but they make up just 21 per
cent of all staff employed in cybersecurity. Pinto says she hasn’t felt the
weight of that imbalance, largely thanks to her bosses and role models.


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“I’ve seen strong women forge the way and go up against those gender imbalances
and win,” Pinto says.

Pinto, who works four days a week from home, says she openly shares how she
balances her caring responsibilities with work.

“I wouldn’t be able to do this job if I couldn’t [work from home] and if I
didn’t have that flexibility,” she says.

“Between school and daycare and everything else, I wouldn’t be able to be the
parent that I would want to be and build out a career without having flexible
work.”


FARZANEH AHMADI

Founder and CEO, Laronix

It wasn’t an easy decision for Dr Farzaneh Ahmadi to decide to leave academia
and launch a start-up that manufactures a bionic voice box to help people speak
again.

Dr Farzaneh Ahmadi has developed a bionic voice box for cancer survivors. 

Universities, where she’d spent over a decade researching solutions for voice
loss caused by the surgical removal of larynx as the result of throat cancer,
were safe. Running a medtech start-up, on the other hand, was a risk.

Ultimately, Ahmadi couldn’t shake the requests that she’d received from patients
who had lost their voice as a result of laryngeal cancer asking when they could
get their hands on the prototype technology she’d developed.


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Her company, Laronix, was officially launched in 2020 in Brisbane, with her
brother Mousa Ahmadi signing on as a co-founder.

Its first product, the Ava device, has been approved by the FDA and TGA and
allows wearers to speak, laugh and sing nine notes. It can produce a male or
female voice. Ava comes from Persian roots and means beautiful singing voice, a
nod to Ahmadi’s Iranian heritage.

The field has been neglected by device makers for more than 40 years, leaving
laryngectomy patients with conventional artificial voice boxes which are
surgically implanted and produce a robotic voice. For women survivors of the
cancer, there were previously no female voices available.

“Coming from science and industry, you learn very quickly to make your way of
thinking a lot simpler and to stop being a perfectionist about things,” Ahmadi
says.

The company expects to sell thousands of devices this year to patients in
Australia and the US and is in the process of raising more capital to scale up
its manufacturing operations.

“When I’m speaking to institutional investors the moment I say, ‘My name is Dr
Ahmadi. I’m the co-founder and CEO,’ a lot of them ask, ‘So, who’s going to be
the CEO?’”

The State of Australian Startup Funding Report found 26 per cent of venture
capital deals in 2023 included at least one female founder.

Nevertheless, Laronix has raised $4 million so far from government grants and
investors including VC firm Scale Investors and includes participation from Dr
Elaine Saunders and Dr Peter Blamey, the co-founders of hearing aid company
Blamey Saunders, and Kristy Chong, the founder of ModiBodi.


READ MORE ON WOMEN TO WATCH

 * Meet the Women to Watch in 2024 in five key sectors To mark International
   Women’s Day, The Australian Financial Review has nominated emerging Women to
   Watch across five key sectors – and asked them for their advice and how they
   made it.
 * This is how to win the productivity prize If a country used only half its
   factories it would waste a lot of its productive potential. The same is true
   if we tap into only half of society’s brainpower.
 * Not ‘one of the boys’: Fundies with a different leadership
   style Up-and-coming and leading fund managers share their journeys through
   the wealth sector and impart their best lessons.
 * Resilience and a leap of faith to advance in banking Leaders in retail banks
   point to how progressive the industry is, with shared ambitions about
   boosting those around them.
 * Calling the shots in investment banking Women are underrepresented in
   client-facing roles, but banks are moving to change the status quo.
 * Positive influence: Saving the planet is a big drawcard Men outnumber women
   three to one in the energy sector, but the desire to make a difference as the
   planet warms is drawing many women to jobs in sustainability.
 * ‘The best revenge is living well’: How to deal with sexism From making room
   at the bar to encouraging ‘Space Ladies’, women are advancing in
   male-dominated fields.

Gain insights into the week’s biggest tech stories, deals and trends. Sign up to
The Download newsletter.

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Tess BennettTechnology reporterTess Bennett is a technology reporter with The
Australian Financial Review, based in the Brisbane newsroom. She was previously
the work & careers reporter. Connect with Tess on Twitter. Email Tess at
tess.bennett@afr.com


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