Thread by @nirushika

.@WCalsen opens up with her story of joining the firm @DeloitteUK and the shifts she has saw in her 17+ years here. She continues to thrive here and grow within the firm! #womenintech

Wendy talks about her first ambition - being the first female president of South Africa, where she was raised! 🇿🇦✨

Wendy discovered her love of snowboarding 🏂 and started coding to feed the hobby 👩🏼‍💻. Getting into tech through becoming a coder and pivoting into tech architecture - building things and forming them from scratch!

She loved what she was doing here and decided to stay instead of moving back to South Africa. She decided on @DeloitteUK due to their reputation on doing challenging, ground breaking things! She joined in 2001. #pathtopartner

Wendy has worked on some amazing technical feats - from radio, to 3G auctioning and more! What a skill set 💥. She does say she struggled with networking and the “old boys club”.

She took 6 weeks off work to refresh, with a view of coming back to something new. She returned to leading an SAP integration and she agreed. She then was asked to do some data modelling, with minimal previous experience.

.@wcalsen admits to bouncing around to find her feet. She nods to having a career focusing in lots of different areas before figuring out what really worked for her 👌🏽

Wendy’s story is fantastic. She has played an integral role in a lot of integration pieces here. She discusses taking another snowboarding 🏂 career break & losing track of time to come back. We’ve all been there! No holiday is long enough 😂 #womenintech @DeloitteUK

Wendy joined the public sector team here in @DeloitteUK and has done an unbelievably impressive list of work for influential clients. She mentions not having a filter - we love that. Getting it done, in the way it needs to be 💪🏻 ✅ #standupmakenoise

She says the thing that really interests her is getting the difficult problems fixed.
Client > “that’s impossible - we can’t do that.”
@WCalsen > “Hold my beer 🍺👩🏼‍💻” @DeloitteCareers #YES

Wendy talks about the various different health issues she’s had throughout her career and how she’s needed support from the firm in different ways. What an amazing person 💪🏻✨

Q: did you struggle w/ the lack of female role models as you progressed in the firm?
A: Wendy mentions about growing up a tomboy and being in an all girls school. She hated it. She has said there are times where it really came home to her and she realised what that meant to her.

.@wcalsen shares a really personal journey on the struggles she faced 20 years ago as the “only”. She notes how different the world is now and she is proud to be a feminist. She believes for the equality of sexes and she will continue to push for it #influentialwomen #leadership

What a fantastic session. Lots of open discussions around what we do here at @deloitteuk, how we do it and what else we can do. Thank you @wcalsen ✅✨ #womenintech

@threadreaderapp unroll please