Wincie Wong, Head of Services Workforce Technical Capability in our Workforce Enablement team, recently won Woman of the Year at the Women in IT Awards. The awards shine a light on outstanding industry talent and role models, as well those who are implementing diversity initiatives that continues to spearhead real change in the sector.
We caught up with Wincie on her career journey so far, and what the award means to her.
Q. Congratulations on winning the Woman of the Year award, it’s a brilliant achievement. Can you tell us a little about your career journey so far? Have you always been interested in the tech industry?
Although I’ve always known how to code and been interested in tech, I actually studied accounting and my first role at NatWest Group was in our Finance team, but soon enough I moved into a role running Digital teams in the Retail part of the bank.
I’ve always been passionate about trying to improve the diversity in technology as I didn’t see many role models that looked like me around. I launched the ‘NatWest Girls Can Code’ network in the bank which aimed to get more girls into coding, and through that work launched a charity under then name ‘Tech She Can’, with other women in the industry to inspire more young people into careers in tech.
In 2019 I was asked to support the implementation of the then newly announced Rose Review to support female founders grow and scale in the UK. A serial entrepreneur myself, I was ecstatic to get this opportunity! And now I lead the bank’s programme to improve and increase our workforce strength in technology and data, which focuses on mapping out the bank’s technical skills and building capability in our teams.
Q. You clearly do a lot of great work around Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Why is making positive change so important to you?
I genuinely feel that we have limited time on this earth and if we have the ability to leave it a little better than when we arrived, we should try to do so. I want to create a movement where we no longer need any of the programmes, charities or boards I work on – a world where we have gender balance and inclusion in the world of tech.
I didn’t grow up with a lot of means to get into the tech industry. My parents were non-English speaking immigrants in America, and I know I would have chosen a path into tech earlier if someone had spoken to me at a younger age.
I now want to make sure every young person out there who has the ability to work in the future of the world, gets the opportunity to make that happen.
