International Women’s Day is all about celebration, reflection, advocacy, and action.
At Experian, we work hard to create a culture of inclusion as we believe the diversity of our skills and life experiences allow us to better serve our clients.
With this in mind, our campuses around the world curated a programme of inspiring speakers, workshops and tours to highlight the opportunities that are available to women in the technology sector.
Women across Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, United States and the United Kingdom had the opportunity to hear from women leaders across our organisations.
Below are just some of the events that took place across our regions to celebrate International Women’s Day:
Brazil
Brazil hosted an impressive panel of influential women both from within Experian and other organisations including: Banco Original and U.N. Women.
The ‘Inspiring Girls in IT’ event was attended by girls from local schools as well relatives of Experian employees.
“People used to say that IT was the future and I wanted to be economically independent,” said Hewlett Packard Bell’s Claudia Braga speaking at Experian’s Women in IT event in Brazil.
The panel debate and workshops gave the girls an insight into career opportunities within IT as well as a chance to learn from woman who have already forged a successful career in the sector.
Colombia
As well as hosting an event for young women to learn more about technical careers, our Colombia office also released a special edition of its quarterly Credit Indicators Newsletter focusing on women and credit.
One of the key findings from the report found that 1 in every 5 new credit lines is given to female micro- entrepreneurs — who doubled their loans in the real sector.
There’s also a whopping 62% annual growth of revenue-generating credit products for women between the first quarter of 2015 and the third quarter of 2016.
“When it comes to credit and entrepreneurship in Colombia, we can certainly say the future is female,” said Mauricio Angulo, Experian’s managing director for Spanish LATAM.
Costa Rica
To celebrate International Women’s Day, our Costa Rica campus invited four women from their IT department to share their stories on why they pursued a career in IT. The panel included: Lead de Quality Assurance and Compliance Tatiana Salazar; Software QA Analyst and President of Experian´s Employee Solidarist Association, Cindy Vargas; GSA Client Apps Manager, María Valverde; and Lead de Service and Delivery team, Monica Barrantes.
England
Four of our UK offices took the opportunity to celebrate International Women’s Day by holding local events as part of their ‘Women in Experience’ networks.
In Nottingham, the team invited senior women for Experian to share their success stories with local girls; it was also a chance for the girls to find out more about Experian’s culture and career opportunities.
The women in our EITS office held a lunch and learn session with young girls from the area to share job insights and offer advice on how to secure a position in the tech industry.
As part of the celebration, the UK team also took the opportunity to sit down with some of the innovative women who work within Experian to glean some insight into how they overcame adversity in what is considered a male dominated industry.
Laura Blackwell who works within our IT Service shared her advice on how women can secure a job in IT. “Stick to your guns, even in the face of adversity. If you enjoy doing IT, don’t let anything put you off achieving your dreams. It’s also a good idea to find a company to work for that will allow you the sort of flexibility to learn about different disciplines that I’ve found here at Experian.”
United States
Our team in Costa Mesa, California held a ‘Women in Experian’ Expo, which included an executive speaker panel who shared their insights and thoughts on this year’s event theme ‘Be Bold for Change.’
From awareness-raising to concrete action, attendees learned about how these executives demonstrated boldness in their careers to eliminate bias and foster inclusive work cultures.
Hiq Lee, President of Experian’s Business Information Services Unit shared her own experiences on how she secured her role at Experian and offered some advice for young women in the audience on how to ask for workplace opportunities:
“You are deserving of every opportunity,” said Hiq Lee, President of Experian’s Business Information Services Unit speaking to young women at Experian’s North American event.
The IWD event in Costa Mesa was streamed live on Periscope and clips from sessions from both Brazil and the United States were featured on Snapchat.
The team in Allen, Texas encouraged Experian employees to bring their daughters, nieces and sisters to their ‘Future Female Technologists’ event.
The panel included top female Experian employees to share their insights and expertise about how to pursue a career in technology.
DeMarcus Brown, who works within Enterprise Systems Management, and Jessie Montano from our Firewall team provided an update to the girls on the range of Early Career options available at Experian.
We’d like to thank all of our teams from across the globe for their commitment to helping women and girls achieve their ambitions.
Our role in promoting gender equality is increasingly important and we will continue to dedicate our time and resources to help women lead.