I’m a Senior Innovation Consultant at Santander Technology, and I have spent a career pushing for more female representation in leadership positions in the tech space.

I grew up living in a bubble where women ruled the world! I lived in an all-female household with my mum and sister, and I went to an all-girl secondary school. I performed around Europe with the school choir, raised thousands for charity, started a nail art business as part of Young Enterprise and went on to be elected as Head Girl. I loved it and I thrived! At university I really struggled. I began to experience the unique challenges that females face in the professional arena. It was from that point onwards that a fire was lit inside me to promote more inclusive environments for females to thrive.

I began my career in HR, where I spent a year as an intern leading the talent programme at HSBC in Chile. During my time at HSBC Chile, I made good friends with a colleague, Manuel Fernandez, who led the IT department. From that moment on, I felt a pull toward the financial technology space, and I wanted to be a part of it.

After earning my degree in International Business from Warwick Business School, I joined Santander Technology in 2016 in the Payments department as an IT Business Analyst, where I was coached and sponsored by a fantastic female leader, Liz Barnes. Since then, I have gained experience in many functional areas within the bank, and I have driven the development of several projects ranging from defining the functional architecture of mobile app features to project managing the development of an asset management tool. During my career, I was also honoured to be placed on secondment with Pay.UK, the UK’s retail payment authority, for a pioneering payments initiative in collaboration with other CMA-9 banks. This was a career highlight for me and boosted my exposure within the industry.

Following on from a successful run as a Business Analyst, in 2017 I decided to qualify as a Scrum Master. In my 4 years as a Scrum Master I have successfully formed, led, and coached software developments teams to deliver better products through improved customer feedback mechanisms and reduced the time to market by encouraging small incremental releases.

Today, I am proud to work in Santander’s Innovation function on one of the banks top priority digital transformation projects where I report directly to senior leadership.