Profile
Job: Head of Product
Organisation: Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
Years in Public Service: 12 years
My grandmother/mother was a…
My grandma was a nurse, and growing up I spent a lot of time with her while my mum was at work. She was an ‘army brat’ who went on to marry an army man and raise her kids while they move between military bases. She trained as a nurse when she and my grandfather divorced in the 1970s. I used to volunteer at the hospital where she worked, reading to patients or sitting and talking to them.
While my mum and my grandma always raised me to believe I could achieve whatever I wanted, I always noticed when I went to the hospital that the nurses were always female, and the doctors were male. My grandma always spoke about the doctors like they were a separate species.
Me in a paragraph
I am a single mum, a geek and a civil servant. I have an invisible disability and I’m LGBT+. I am passionate about equality for all, and how we can use digital opportunities to help build a better, fairer world.
My role
I’m the Head of Product at DWP Digital, working to build the capability and skills of product owners and managers within DWP. Ensuring we develop quality services for all of our users, meeting user needs and solving real problems.
I love my job because I get to make a real difference to people’s lives. Nothing beats the feeling I get when I see someone using a product or service we have developed, and hear how it has made things better or easier for them.
If I had a magic wand, what I would do to accelerate gender equality?
I think we need to think of all genders when we think about gender equality, so it is not just male and female, it is any gender. I also believe we need to look wider than just gender as other characteristics define a person’s experience too, such as people of colour, disabled people, LGBT+ people, older people.
If I had a magic wand I would make everyone in the world see that difference of experience and perspective is not a threat but something to be valued.
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