Women in Tech: Meet Niamh Power, Mobile Engineer at Monzo

Our Women in Tech event is just around the corner, which means it’s finally time to introduce you to our incredible panel of inspiring women from the tech world.

Meet Niamh Power, a Mobile Engineer at Monzo. Monzo is a digital, mobile only bank based in the UK, making waves in both the banking and tech world.

From studying Computer Science at university with no previous programming experience to working at mobile agencies for clients with both Android and iOS from 2014 onwards; this wealth of experience, knowledge and passion for the industry guided her to her current product facing position as a Mobile Engineer at Monzo.

Her experience at university was the first time she noted the unequal level of diversity across her course, leaving her feeling “dismayed at the tiny number of women on my Computer Science course.” Unfortunately, this didn’t end at university but followed her and other women as they started their careers in the tech industry.

Diversity and inclusion within the tech world

When discussing her thoughts about diversity and inclusion within the tech industry, Niamh explained how “By having a diverse team working on these products, we can ask the right questions when curating ideas. Diversity also enables a wider range of thought, and challenges everyone to question their opinions, which in turn cultivates more innovation and improvement.”

Businesses directly benefit from having more inclusive and diverse teams. A recent report has shared that inclusive companies are 1.7 times more likely to be innovation leaders in their market and that more diverse teams outperform individual decision makers up to 87% of the time when it comes to making business decisions.

Businesses need to take action

In order to become more inclusive and have more diverse teams, more businesses need to encourage women to engage and feel empowered to enter the tech industry. To aid this, Niamh believes that “making it more widely known that you don’t need to be an engineer or particularly technical, or have a degree, to enter the tech industry, would be really beneficial. Providing more boot camp courses and encouraging employers to hire from these courses could also help, as this is a common route that under-represented groups take.”

Once women have entered the tech industry, though, they leave at a rate of 45% higher than that of their male peers. When asked about how she believes we can work together to improve this abysmal retention rate, Niamh explained: “I think by continuing the great work some companies are doing to provide inclusionary and supportive workplaces, we will see this statistic improve.” She went on to comment that “Workplace culture has been my biggest complaint in the past and what I have seen be the reason for other women to seek a change of industry.”

What can we do?

We hope to inspire other women to chase their career dreams and not be held back by their gender. We were keen to know who Niamh admired within the industry, to which she named Meri Williams, the CTO at Monzo. Niamh explains that “The visibility she gives to her struggles around her disabilities is really inspiring, and hearing about her story and how she got to her current position is fascinating.”

We’re on a mission to help change these issues and our Women In Tech event is a great step in the right direction. We will share more about being an empowered woman in tech, more details surrounding diversity and inclusion and where you can find support as a woman in tech. Interested in joining us? Check out the event details and how we plan to #ClosingTheGap.

Meet the rest of our panel

Joining Niamh on the panel, we have:

Alisha Dattani, founder and CEO of FMXA

Charlotte Jee, Staff Writer at MIT Technology Review

Sanchita Saha, CEO & founder Shello

Rachael Grocott, Product Designer at Geckoboard and Co-founder of Triangirls