Event

Inspirational International Women’s Day 2023: #Tech CDIO Claire Priestley

This event took place on 8th March 2023

Hosted by Zoe Cunningham

About the event

Free speaker session: Tune in to hear technology CDIO, Claire Priestley, talk about how she got to the top of her career, what she thinks about some common challenges for women and where she hopes inclusion will go this year.

What’s the event about?

International Women’s Day is an annual celebration to celebrate and explore the achievements of women, and how we can support a gender-equality and diverse modern society. Softwire is proud to present a lunch-time speaker event, featuring Claire Priestley.

Claire is the epitome of a successful women working in technology, inspiring all with her contributions to the workplace, the progression of women and many social causes:

Claire Priestley

CDIO / CIO with a passion for people, data and tech

Claire has held Senior IT leadership roles for many years across the commercial, public and Higher Education sectors including Director of IT Services / CIO at City, University of London and more latterly as Chief Digital and Information Officer for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea where she led RBKC’s disaggregation of shared IT services with Westminster. Claire has recently been working in Singapore, after which she’ll rejoin the Higher Education sector as CIO for LSE.

In 2016, Claire founded CIO+1, a not-for-profit initiative which sought to improve representation in tech leadership. In 2017, Claire initiated the ‘Connectivity Across London’ project. She has been listed for consecutive years in the CIO100 list, sits on the UK IT Leaders Board, has been on the judging panel of the Women in IT Awards for the last 4 years, and was on the UCISA Board of Trustees whilst in HE.

What’s on the agenda?

In this free one-hour online event, we’ll be covering topics including:

Claire’s amazing journey into technology, and the challenges and opportunities she experienced (Plus her love of boxing!)
When does looking at gender actually help?
Common issues faced by women in Technology, such as:
- Communication barriers between technical and non-technical roles
- Lack of confidence and over-apologising
- The assumption that being a ‘woman’ is synonymous to being somehow ‘weaker’
What can we all do to support each other and make inclusion a priority?

Plus a live Q&A session!

The event will be chaired by Zoe Cunningham, Director at Softwire.