CyberIAM Promotes First Female Principal Consultant
Our Co-Founder and Executive Director, Andy Pinnington, with Deepika
CyberIAM are proud to announce our first ever female Principal Consultant, Deepika Reddy. Deepika is nearing her two-year anniversary with CyberIAM after joining us as a Solution Architect in August 2020.
Having always been interested in technology, science, and mathematics, Deepika’s first job was an unpaid role in a community services initiative, teaching mathematics, science and computer technology to young children in summer school. Here, she quickly realised she wanted to pursue these subjects because of the ways that science and computer technology can influence society and civilisation. Following this role, Deepika graduated from University in India and was to be placed in an IT company where she landed her first role in identity and access management (IAM).
Working in security quickly became another passion due to its potential for constant evolution and how it allowed her to be tech savvy. A point of interest to Deepika was the fact that hackers would always be thinking of new ways to compromise networks and systems and in response, so would technological demand. She has very much enjoyed the way this has kept her on her toes and has given her constant opportunities to improve her knowledge and skill set.
Although Deepika found equal participation from men and women in the STEM subjects she has worked in, during her time in college and in the workplace, she found there were very few women in leadership roles and very few up the ladder to learn from; to gain from their experiences. She always wanted to be one of those women in a senior role, helping and guiding junior women to be encouraged to pursue these technology-related roles and to provide a role-model; a mentor.
“Mentorship is incredibly important because I was able to achieve what I have today, only because I have received mentorship in each place I have worked” - Deepika Reddy, Principal Consultant at CyberIAM.
Since the day she joined CyberIAM, Deepika has had some amazing mentors, consistent people to reach out to, whether the issue is major or minor, about technology or otherwise. Mentors come with invaluable experience in fields you may not have had the opportunity to work in before. Being the first to put her hand up to help and support, Deepika continued to pay it forward and mentor junior members of staff in the same way that she benefited from it. Everybody who works with her reports how approachable she is and how she is always available to anyone who needs help.
“Mentors are important for personal as well as professional growth. We spend a long time in offices, in work, it’s important to have someone there at the workplace who can help you to navigate what can be an incredibly difficult world”.
As a start-up business, CyberIAM have been consistently striving for equality, constantly progressing, hiring the best person for the job, regardless of individual differences. Deepika mentions the modern ways of working here as an advantage such as the flexible schedule which affords her the ability to pick up her child from school and other such family matters. The open door policy throughout the company has allowed Deepika to have what could have been difficult and stressful conversations, very easily and issues and challenges are discussed simply and collaboratively. Since the pandemic, after welcoming her child, Deepika subsequently wanted to spend less time in the office and that conversation was very easy because of the culture that has been carefully nurtured throughout CyberIAM.
To round off our interview, Deepika provided us with some fantastic advice for anyone hoping to get into technology and other STEM fields.
“Just keep doing what you are doing, learning is a constant. As long as you are passionate, you can achieve your goals. Stay willing to keep learning and evolving with technology and customer needs”.
As of 2022, only 26.7% of technology related jobs are held by women. Historically, CyberIAM has consistently stayed above the average but we continue to strive for equality in every way possible. We are so proud to have Deepika join our senior team and we are excited to see the increased presence of women in our company.
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