EKMH Innovators Interview Series
A new interview series spotlighting global tech influencers, disruptors, visionaries, and of course, innovators.
More than a year after launching @womenoffintech, Gemma Young saw the need to create a more organized community where everyone had a voice. Focused on diversity and inclusion in the Fintech industry, in April UK-based Young began setting the groundwork for DiversiTech Hub in order to create a community to address inequity in the sector. DiversiTech Hub will officially launch this September.
I had the opportunity to connect with Young via email to discuss a variety of topics, including her career, her vision for DiversiTech Hub, the need for an “inclusion revolution,” other mavericks and mavens leading the change, maternity leave and return and books that inspired her.
Our interview follows:
EKMH: Please tell us more DiversiTech Hub, the new Fintech membership community promoting global diversity and inclusion.
Gemma Young: DiversiTech Hub is a community for the Fintech industry. Those joining as a company receive:
a certification/emblem to show that you are a safe and inclusive place for people to apply for work no matter what their background
access to the community chat group
invitations to monthly events, including coffee mornings, networking socials and panel events
the ability to post your jobs to the community to attract diverse talent
access to training seminars and workshops to teach diversity and inclusion skills
access to participate in STEM projects
Also available is an individual membership which gives access to the community chat group, ability to search for work among companies that are inclusive, look for work experience and invites to the events.
EKMH: What led to your founding this new community?
Gemma Young: I set up @womenoffintech just over a year ago and it has grown from strength to strength, however it also highlighted the need for all minorities in the industry to be represented, so I looked to create a community where everyone had a voice. That is not to say that the community is only for minorities though, far from it! Inclusion is about just that, we want a platform where EVERYONE is included. The only way that diversity and inclusion can work is if we all come together and I am now building the platform to allow just that.
We have found there to be lots of small groups doing great things in the space, but there is not a community as yet which is for EVERYONE in Fintech and that is what we are creating. Diversity has taught us the value of a group of people from different backgrounds can have, so we already know that this will be a winning formula, we just have to all come together now to create it.
EKMH: How will you spread the word about the HUB and the “inclusion revolution”?
Gemma Young: As a community being set up for the betterment of the industry, it will be reliant on everyone coming together and making it happen. The more people involved, the more successful it will be for everyone.
I recently went to the Women in Finance Summit and there Ann Cairns, Executive Vice Chairman at Mastercard, pointed out that "we can only thrive in a thriving environment." As a community being set up for the sole purpose to help the industry thrive, from a STEM level upwards, we will be reliant on the industry to help us spread the word and help us publicize the community, as its success will then become their success.
EKMH: What are your near term and long term goals for DiversiTech Hub?
Gemma Young: The community is a membership community, meaning that it will be funded by membership fees. Many people have asked why and there are a few different reasons. The first is that a community funded by itself is free of any corporate agendas that come with sponsorship, meaning that its only agenda is to support the community itself. This also means that everyone's voice and opinion matters as there are no sponsors who get a higher platform or more of a voice.
Secondly, it means that as the input of the community grows, so does the output. Therefore we will all be encouraged to get more people to join, which in turn increases what we can do in terms of events, STEM projects, workshops, etc., but also increases our networking capacity. Thirdly, when people pay to be a member they are more likely to utilize the community which in turn will make the networking all the more valuable.
EKMH: What steps will you take to achieve these goals?
Gemma Young: My near term goals are to get 20 companies to join me in launching this community. As the founding members they will also be architects of how the community looks, so this would suit companies who have been looking to support diversity and inclusion in the industry but haven’t known where to start.
My long term goals are that as the membership base grows we can fund more workshops to provide the members with training for diversity and inclusion, fund more STEM projects to attract a wider and more diverse talent pool into the industry for the future. The beauty of membership is that the bigger the community grows the more the community will benefit.
EKMH: Where do see Fintech innovation held back by inequitable work environments?
Gemma Young: Fintech is growing at an incredible rate and new jobs are being created at a rate faster than we can train people, meaning that those working in these roles are in demand and have a choice of where they choose to work. Companies therefore have to start thinking about how to create an attractive working environment, not only to attract the staff in the first place, but to also retain them once they are onboard. Innovation is being held back when companies are not changing their ways; people in senior roles need to invest time and money into making a difference, otherwise they won’t win this war on talent, and without the talent they won’t succeed.
EKMH: Where do you see Fintech innovation thriving due to equitable and inclusive work environments?
Gemma Young: I have been working in Fintech for many years, before it even had the label Fintech in fact. I started my career in IT recruitment back in 2002 and have seen over the years how much the gender landscape has changed in the industry. A lot of this has been due to the availability of flexible working when returning to work, which is thankfully now available in most places. I have 4 children myself and since having my first, 11 years ago, I have seen a huge change in the mentality of maternity leave and flexible working. This just wasn’t on offer back then. I think this has been a huge turn around for the industry in creating working environments that are inclusive of women both before and after they decide to start a family. I have seen first hand how this kind of inclusion breeds loyalty and therefore retention of staff: the success of the business in the long term.
EKMH: What specific steps can be established to achieve a more equitable and inclusive workplace? Which companies/platforms do you already see as paradigms for the movement?
Gemma Young: For companies to achieve a more equitable and inclusive workplace, they need to put the time and money into programs, but first they need to realize the value that this investment will have on their company. Many of the larger companies in the industry are able to create divisions specifically for D&I growth, but smaller companies might not have such a capacity. DiversiTech is being set up to give training and workshops to all its members alike so that they can all benefit from achieving such an environment.
It is said that people only change if there is an emotional or a financial reason to do so. Financially companies will attract and retain a better talent and this is proven, but empathy is something that must be taken into account when trying to achieve a more inclusive workplace.
A place where I have seen this work really well is Barclays. I had the pleasure of working with James Allan, Head of Corporate FX at Barclay International, on a diversity award judging panel last year. He was co-chair for Barclays LGBT Employee Spectrum for 3 years and told me about a buddy system in place which grew empathy between the workers and gave people an insight into their colleagues day to day struggles. I loved this sense of camaraderie and support that they created among their staff.
EKMH: Which industry leaders do see leading the change?
Gemma Young: Through my work for @womenoffintech I have seen a lot of wonderful leaders doing wonderful things, in particular I love the work that EWPN is doing to promote women in paytech, there is also a wonderful group for women in regtech run by Sian Lewin. I recently saw a wonderful talk by Heather Melville OBE at PWC and love how vocal she is at calling in a need for change, we need people like this because in her words, “It’s not a hidden agenda that’s going to go away.” I also love what Finastra is creating. I spoke to Johanna Pugh last year about how the platform works diversity ‘from the top down and then the bottom up,’ making sure everyone in the company is involved. Harrington Starr is a FinTech recruitment firm who wholeheartedly understands the role it plays in diversity and inclusion. Part of my want to create DiversiTech Hub is seeing all these people leading the way, and seeing what they have done individually made me think, imagine what we could do if we all came together! So perhaps I can say I am also leading the change?!
EKMH: Who has mentored you in your career? Why was/is this connection important?
Gemma Young: I am lucky to have worked with some very inspiring people over the years and have taken pieces of advice from each of them on my career journey. I think the person I have learnt the most from for my career is my Dad – he is in a completely different industry but taught me to graft hard and always try my best. Seeing someone work so hard throughout your childhood is the best kind of mentoring you can have. For this reason, I strive to inspire my children in the same way.
I have also been inspired by Toby Babb, with who I have worked at 3 different companies over the years and have seen grow from strength to strength whilst always being a genuinely nice guy, there is a lot to be said for that.
I also think you can and should learn a lot from your bad career experiences too. I remember once helping to scale a tech company up and after succeeding far beyond its expectations, I was told ‘imagine what we could have achieved if we had hired a man in your role.’ Now, years later I am setting up a community to create inclusive workplaces to prevent that from happening to someone else.
EKMH: What advice do you have for those who re-enter the workforce after maternity and paternity (or any other type of ) leave?
Gemma Young: Be confident. You have had a career gap but you are still the same person and the skills of parenthood are more transferable than you know! Managing little people and all their emotions is way harder than managing a team of grown adults (or so you would hope!), multitasking is taken to a whole new level, your levels of empathy you get from having children is a huge benefit to understanding your team and these are just to mention a few.
With any type of career gap look at what you have learnt in your time away and how those skills can be transferable. Even if it was just time off to find yourself, return to work knowing you have grown as a person and can therefore offer more now that you have grown as a person.
EKMH: And finally, which books do you recommend that have inspired you in your career?
Gemma Young: If you saw the size of my bookshelves you would not have asked this as we could be here a while! Haha! I love reading and I am currently reading a lot of books to understand different points of views at the moment to aid my D&I knowledge. I recently read Somebody I Used to Know by Wendy Mitchell who talks about her career and abilities with early onset dementia, which was inspiring in terms of seeing the world through somebody else’s eyes. I also read The Source: Open Your Mind and Change Your Life by Dr. Tara Swart, when I was starting to think about setting up DiversiTech. We are so conditioned not to make big changes when it comes to career, particularly when we have a family to support, so this book was very inspiring about understanding the psychology of why we sometimes hold ourselves back and how to overcome those challenges, it inspired me enough to set up DiversiTech, so it must be good!