Empowering Women in IT
As we celebrate International Women’s Day, we’d love to shine a light on the remarkable contributions of the women within IT. Today we will spotlight three powerful women (among the many other talented women who work here at Ferranti).
Namely, Leen Van der Borght – Solution Architect, Bea De Winter – Development Consultant and Jolien Wens – Application consultant.
My name is Leen Van der Borght, 41 years old, working for Ferranti since 2006. I live together with my 2 kids (Robbe & Fiene, aged 14 and 11) and my husband.
In my spare time, you’ll often find me pitching in as a volunteer with the ‘Oudercomité’ at school, where I help organize the school festival and other fundraisers. When I’m not busy with that, I love getting lost in a good book or taking leisurely walks in nature.
In my personal life, the simplest things in life can fill me with joy: freshly baked bread (by my husband), seeing my daughter dancing on stage, a day trip to an amusement park with the kids, holidays, …
Working in the IT field presents its challenges, particularly in juggling personal life alongside responsibilities such as standby hours and providing support during release installations, which often occur outside of regular business hours. As a woman in this industry, it’s essential to have confidence in your experience and expertise, especially when interacting with new customers.
At Ferranti, I’m working as a solution architect on the Ores project. Throughout the day, I spend time supporting colleagues, meeting with the customer, discussing long-term solutions as well as short-term workarounds to unblock incidents.
Next to that, you can find me writing complex queries to support analyses, discussing priorities as well as following up release planning and scope. When deadlines are short, I’ll help out where needed, development, testing, writing technical analyses, …
I like solving complex problems and helping colleagues/customers, seeing colleagues grow in their skills and responsibilities.
“The Energy and utilities sector is constantly evolving, which brings along new requirements on a regular basis. This keeps the work going, and even after 18 years it still manages to keep me interested.”
Finding your place in a man’s world can be hard in the beginning, keep pursuing your dreams and you’ll be acknowledged for your hard work and can be proud of every achievement reached.
My name is Bea De Winter. I started to learn about computers in 1982 because my school started a new class called informatics. It had lots of math but not so much language, and that sounded fantastic to me!
Starting with an Apple-2e, my education continued at KDG (formerly Sint Lodewijk). I started my career in 1987 and the first 18 years I worked with IBM midrange computers. The next 18 years with Oracle and Microsoft Dynamics Systems. Throughout, SQL queries have been my constant companion.
In my free time, I find happiness in taking care of family, and helping my mother with her computer issues. In the meantime my three children finished their studies at university and have left home.
My greatest joys comes from doing things with my husband on our dairy farm, dancing together during ballroom courses, and of course, spoiling our adorable grandchild, he is so cute!
Although I have seen things change over the past 36 years, I see myself as no different from my male colleagues. Nevertheless, I always look forward connecting with female colleagues. I think there is greater difference in the character of each colleague than in being male or female.
“I see myself as no different from my male colleagues”
At Ferranti, I work as a Development Consultant, specializing in third-line support. This means delivering fixes, crafting new code, testing, implementing solutions, and delving into the entire codebase to diagnose and resolve issues. I have to be a jack of all trades.
What excites me most about working in the IT sector, particularly in energy and utilities, is the daily challenge it presents. Each day offers an opportunity to learn and grow, it keeps me young.
To young people looking for a career in STEM-related fields, you need to explore your talents, don’t hesitate if it is in an area where you are in the minority. The more diverse the workplace, the better our teams become.
My name is Jolien. I’m 31 years old. During my free time I love to hang out with my friends. I am also giving swimming lessons to children during the weekend as a volunteer.
I love to travel to different countries.
There are not that many women in IT so most of my colleagues are men. But they are very nice and treat me like one of the guys. So I never feel any different than them.
I work as a functional consultant (on the payments & collections and finance fields). I discuss the current process with the customers and see how we can set this up in MECOMS365. If any development is needed I will discuss this with one of the developers on the team.
It is a very diverse job. Even though I work on the same topic (payments & collections) on several projects, it is still different for every project. Because I have projects in different countries with a variety of rules but also companies in the same country may have different processes.
I also love that I can work independent and have some freedom to do my work.
If you love science or IT more specifically, just go for it.