Today is International Women’s Day, a day for celebrating the strength, achievements and impact women continue to make across the globe.
As Kinseed is female lead and founded, we understand the importance of celebrating women worldwide. Our CEO, Dr Pal Bhusate, is working alongside Skye Hammond and Jass H Sondi to combine their talents and bring a positive change to healthcare technology.
Pal has previously taken part in women’s empowerment events, such as ‘Diamonds’.
The event aims to bring together women leaders and innovators at the top of their profession who want to create a culture of kindness in business. The event is run by women, with the aim to create a safe space for women to encourage one another and provide opportunities for female entrepreneurs. Pal was invited to speak alongside a panel of inspirational women within a diverse range of professions, sharing their own experiences and insights.
Honoring International Women’s Day, Pal, Jass and Skye met to discuss their experience as women working in technology.
Here’s what they had to say about their engagement in the industry:
1. What do you consider core values and how do they influence Kinseed?
A core value that heavily influences Kinseed is connecting the disconnected. Having an impact is something that is truly important to all of us. It is crucial that the team you are working with share the same values. At Kinseed, we are a small, passionate and a very high performing team, all striving to make a positive difference to healthcare.
Embracing our unique qualities is also a core value. Throughout our lives we have met a diverse range of people across the globe who have shared valuable viewpoints and experience with us.
“Working in a diverse and inclusive culture is highly important to gain ideas from a variety of backgrounds. We work as a tight knit team, constantly bouncing ideas at each other and challenging each other to ensure we have considered all eventualities ”, explains Skye.
2. Is there anything that influenced you to begin working in healthcare technology?
“Technology is a fast-paced sector, which means our jobs are constantly evolving. My focus on healthcare is deeply personal to me, as I know what it’s like to be a mother in an intensive care environment. My son was born with two holes in his heart. The clinical teams did an amazing job but were crippled by the tools they were using to capture, access, and share data in a secure way. These challenges strongly influenced me to bring the benefits of digital transformation to support everyone in healthcare.”, explains Pal.
“In the past ten years, working with engineers on managed services for SME and large corporations has opened many doors for me to learn and manage plugging the right cable into a switch and getting the PC working again. There is no end to how much one can learn and work with technology partners. The journey has been most enjoyable and interesting so far, but even more rewarding is our team’s dedication to creating Swiftcare for Healthcare”, explains Jass
“At the age of 12, I realised my potential to transfer my creative work and drawing skills from paper to my first iPad. This stemmed a strong interest in technology and desire to transfer my skills into a professional environment. My interest in technology become more apparent whilst working at Kinseed, with the opportunity to be involved in both digital marketing and within product development. My mother also works in a challenging healthcare environment, which has influenced my aims to promote positive change enabled by the right technology”, explains Skye.
3. Does there appear to be a lack of females in the IT and tech sector? If so, how can we help resolve this?
We looked at some UK data together to understand how women are unrepresented in technology. Statistics show that overall, the percentage of female graduates with core Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) is steadily growing, however, the number is still just 26%. This percentage was similarly translated in the female STEM workforce, with women making up 24%.
The reasoning behind this split appears complex. One of the key factors to help ensure we maintain and accelerate this increase is through education, encouragement and support. It is important that children are presented with successful female role models and influential female entrepreneurs at all career stages within technology. From a young age, children must be taught the power of technology and opportunities in technology to encourage greater interest and exploration.
Women have a huge opportunity to influence technology, including bringing more creative solutions and increasing the potential for innovation. We must encourage women both to study these subjects and transition into the workplace. Companies must ensure they create an inclusive environment so that women do not feel excluded, and an environment that enables women to exploit the opportunities they are provided to make the most of their talent.
4. What advice can you give to female women starting their careers?
“It’s all about the can do mindset. Our environment ascertains our personal development. It is important to grow your network early. The people we meet along our journey of life provide us with the most valuable ideas and experience”, explains Pal.
“Your gender has nothing to do with what you are capable of! We must embrace our differences and never feel like we need to adapt to fit in”, explains Skye.
“There’s a huge variety of roles within technology so keep your mind open to possibilities. Embrace new technology partners and explore changing technology to keep up to date with the ever-changing environment. The opportunities are there, but to enable growth you must exploit these opportunities”, explains Jass.
To end our conversation, we wanted to discuss some of the women who are most influential to us today and celebrate their achievements.
Of course, our mums, who have inspired us throughout our lives. In addition, Amal Alamuddin Clooney (not just to meet George Clooney) due her human rights activism, including creating the Clooney Foundation supporting justice for women. Gloria Steinem (journalist and social-political activist), who has dedicated her life to making a difference for women. She has taught women that they can do anything they want to do. A recent documentary we found inspiring was “Coded Bias”, featuring the research of Joy Buolamwini, who heavily influenced facial recognition by highlighting the racial and gender bias in existing tools.
Kinseed’s commitment
The women at Kinseed stand together to shape their destiny by supporting one another. Kinseed is strongly committed to working in an inclusive culture. We want to provide a place for employees to grow, develop and thrive. We strive to support female entrepreneurs and leaders to flourish and succeed. This International Women’s Day is a day to celebrate all women who are making a positive change to the world.