You're Invited: Building, Elevating and Sustaining a Career In Tech

In this newsletter:

1. Leadership, Tech and Career Conversation with Avela Gronemeyer

2. Women’s Month Inspiration

Here’s a quote from a leader that I respect:

Leadership, Tech and Career Conversation with Avela Gronemeyer

As digital and disruptive technologies have become more ubiquitous, the demand for technologists, technology aficionados and enthusiasts for technology adjacent roles has skyrocketed. Yet, the technology field is constantly changing - and at times, downright unstable. A career in tech demands adaptability and requires a high level of self-leadership, ambition resilience and unrelenting grit. Courage! Boldness! Vulnerability.

Let’s get together to engage on what it takes to build, elevate and sustain a career in a challenging, exciting and often tumultuous, disrupting and disruptive industry.

Dear Leader,

A lot of technologists, or generally - yet more particularly - people who did well at school, expect building a career to be about the merits of their technical abilities. That’s what the school and university system teaches us, right? If:

• we’re disciplined;

• sit at our desks regularly to learn, complete assignments and projects at high quality levels;

• are deliberate and thorough in terms of ensuring our work meets the required criteria (and go beyond that to exceed that criteria);

• If we meet test (readiness) and assignment (delivery) deadlines; as well as

• make valuable, considered contributions in group projects

we’ll end up in the top 30% of the class, if not the top 5%.

So, when we get into the work place, we continue to:

• work the longest hours;

• amass the most certificates;

• make sure our mandatory and recommended training, plus a few extras are D.O.N.E. on time with no system reminders;

• chase the deadlines like our lives depend on it; and

• deliver 150%!

We are reliable and make up the backbone of every project we’re in, often doing our own job AND raising our hand to help wherever help is need.

Surely, they will see me…right?! Surely, my contribution is clear for all to see - the projects are regularly delivered at high quality, on time and under budget. My long list of university qualifications and certificates will surely differentiate me. It’s clear, I am the future of leadership. They will elevate me. I will ascend during the next promotion cycle.

So, when that doesn’t happen, we are thrown! AND quite often, our ambitions - turned to frustration - get the better of us and we want to throw out the baby (our career) with the bath water and LEAVE! Our conversations with ourselves potentially take a turn that may not be that healthy, because it is hard to let go of a specific, timed vision and ambition that we’ve invested an immense amount of effort towards.

In my leadership career and the work I do mentoring and coaching people (and being mentored and coached), I have seen this pattern playing out many a time. I have also been fortunate enough to help a few people keep that baby and throw out, only, the bath water. Some wonderful mentors and coaches have helped me work through my own career frustrations, many a time.

I have had the privilege of working in the technology field from junior levels - straight out of university, to senior levels - Managing Director at one of the world’s largest management and technology consulting firms in the world. I have sat at and engaged with Executive Committees both in Consulting and in Industry. I have engaged with company boards, negotiated with board members and advised ministers on business and technology. I’ve also enjoyed early promotion for every career milestone that I have had AND I can tell you one thing - your technical skills and remarkable, consistent delivery are only 50% of the gig!

Adding to that, some of the top technology firms have laid off people with critical skills in 2023 and 2024 in a continuing, old age cycle of hiring to grow and readjusting (read lay-offs) to maintain “healthy” commercial ratios. On top of the technical skills, the other 50%, including building resilience and cultivating ingenuity, are central for sustaining a career in tech.

Join me for career building and elevation insights, engaging discussion and a Q&A on the technical 50% as well as the rest of what you need to build and elevate your career in tech. We’re excited to bring this leadership conversation to you, particularly this 2024 Women’s Month.

The conversation titled, Unlocking Tech: Building, Elevating and Sustaining a Career In Tech, will take place on Thursday, 29 August 2024 (16:00 PM SAST | 16:00 PM CET | 11:00 PM EDT).

About Avela Gronemeyer

Avela Gronemeyer is the CEO and Founder of Inno Yolo. She is an entrepreneur, a former Managing Director at Accenture and a 2023 Women-In-Tech Africa Lifetime Achievement Award nominee. In 2024 she was named among the Top 20 Most Influential Women in Tech in Africa by African Women in Tech. Her areas of specialisation include digital transformation, technology innovation, data and AI ethics (with a special focus on AI privacy). 

Avela is the co-convener of the Opportunity, Responsibility and Accountability in Data and AI Conference (ORADA Conference 2024). She holds a Bachelor of Commerce majoring in Economics and Information Systems from Rhodes University, in South Africa and is a Master’s thesis result away from holding a Master of Science degree in Business Informatics from the University of Hagen in Germany.

About Inno Yolo

Inno Yolo is a learning, innovation and advisory company focused on digital and technology strategy development, technology innovation as well as shaping the responsible, strategic and practical use of new technologies with a special focus on data and artificial intelligence. As part of the founder’s commitment to building leadership skills, enabling learning and supporting career growth in the technology field, Inno Yolo runs a Leadership, Tech and Career Conversation Event Series.

Women’s Month Inspiration: Charlotte Maxeke (1871 - 1939)

Dear Leader,

Charlotte Maxeke grew up in an area of the present day Eastern Cape that at the time of youth had recently seen 100 years of frontier wars, known as the Cape Frontier Wars. These wars were fought from 1779 - 1879 between English colonial settlers and the Xhosa nations that were settled in the south eastern region of South Africa at the time. As the last battle was lost in 1879 and she was born in 1871, in Limpopo, later moving to with her family back to Fort Beaufort in the former Cape Colony, she grew up a colonial subject of African descent and a woman, meaning she enjoyed the least amount of rights at the time.

Still, she rose! She was the first black woman in South Africa to earn a degree - and, for that matter a Bachelor of Science degree, from Wilberforce University, in Ohio in the United States. At Wilberforce, she also read under the tutorship of W.E.B. Du Bois. She was a choir singer and soloist, touring internationally with her choir. She went on to become a teacher; to raise funds for and a start and school; take on several formal leadership positions within the Methodist Church and become an impactful political activist and leader. She was one of the women present at the meetings that later led to the formation of the South African National Native Congress (the predecessor to the African National Congress, South Africa’s famed liberation movement and political party). Charlotte further contributed meaningfully to the formation, activism and impact of the South African labour movement. She was a regular contributor to multi-lingual Johannesburg Newspaper Umteteleli Wabantu, and founded the Bantu Women’s League.

Tell us, dear leader. If Charlotte Maxeke could achieve all this under colonial, patriarchal rule, what might we be able to achieve today? What world would we live in, if we would all strive to achieve even half of what she achieved in her lifetime.

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