International Girls in ICT Day is celebrated every year on 22 April and aims to inspire and encourage girls and young women to pursue STEM education and work in STEM careers – so we’ve been speaking with two of our STEM Ambassadors about what it’s like to work in ICT.
First up is Jordan Pearson, who's experience manager for conversational AI at Natwest and is also a STEM Ambassador in the Trans Pennine Region.
What does your role at Natwest involve?
I build chatbots, which is really fun! A chatbot at our bank is a robot on the internet that answers people’s questions about their bank account, and I get to spend all of my time building them.
Why is your area of STEM important?
Technology is super important in our world today, without it we couldn’t enjoy things like TikTok or the new PS5 console. The more people that work in technology the quicker we can create even cooler technologies in the future, which is very exciting.
How does your job link to ICT?
I use technology everyday in my job. I use Excel to look at data, Zoom for video calls and my iPad and iMac for extra screens so I can work on different things at once. To actually build our chatbot, I use a software called 'Watson Assistant' as well as code like HTML, which I really enjoy. You can also get started in code with scratch where you can code your own mini games!
Why should more girls and young women choose STEM?
I love being a woman working in technology, it’s so fun doing different things every day and working with the latest technology. There are so many different ways you can work in technology, whether that’s building chatbots, building apps, designing games, analysing data, building websites, working on social media and so much more.
Another great thing about working in STEM is that the demand for skills in these subjects is growing every year which makes it easier to get a job when you’re older. There’s a place for everyone in STEM, and I would love to see more women and girls choosing STEM subjects and having fun in their jobs when they get on the career ladder.
Lisa is a data scientist who works for the Police force and is a STEM Ambassador in the South of England.
What does you role as a data scientist involve?
I study lots of data to help police officers identify if someone should be arrested or charged. I find new ways to get through lots of data quickly, as often they only have 24 hours to decide.
Why is your area of STEM important?
My area is important because the amount of data in the world is always growing, but we don’t have more people or more time in a day to look at it all! My job is to find ways to get to the important parts quickly, and to make sure people aren’t treated unfairly by how we do that.
How does your job link to ICT?
I write code to build the tools I use, but I also use tools like Excel to show results to officers. Because we work a lot at home now, we use Teams to have video chats to keep up to date with what’s happening. I also use the internet a lot to research how to build something new – and this regularly involves watching videos on YouTube.
Why should more girls and young women choose STEM?
I’d love to see more women join my field of work. It’s really interesting, but it needs diversity to be really good. The more people from all different backgrounds and experiences come together, the better we are at solving the problem. If we don’t have a wide enough range of voices, we can’t represent everyone and our results will be biased and that could have really negative consequences. Imagine if a computer decided you were guilty of a crime because it had only been programmed by people who thought in one particular way, and you didn’t fit their criteria.