We feel strongly that women should feel empowered and able to progress in their chosen career, whether it is in tech, engineering or anything else. Diversity drives innovation, ensures we better understand our customers, and raises the bar across retail. That’s why we’re backing the Scottish Women in Technology (SWIT) Awards for its second year.
So as a company that’s constantly creating exciting new jobs for scientists, engineers and designers, we see the SWIT Awards as a great way to inspire the next generation of women and bring new talent into a fast-growing industry.
We’re involved in other likeminded initiatives to help widen the talent pool in Scotland, particularly amongst women. For example, we work closely with the University of Edinburgh where we launched the Amazon Women in Innovation Bursary, helping young women from less advantaged backgrounds fulfil their ambitions of a career in innovation and technology. This was followed by the growth of our popular apprenticeship scheme and more recently we worked with Magic Breakfast to launch free breakfast clubs to help boost performance at schools across Scotland.
Our very own Lauren Gemmell was nominated last year for the Inspirational Women in Leadership category. Lauren leads an internal group that supports female engineers with mentoring, networking and identifying new opportunities in the business, including looking at ways in which we can build supportive relationships with secondary schools.
Along with other female role models from the tech industry, Lauren has been visiting schools across the country as part of SWIT’s Roadshow to help literally hundreds of children better understand what opportunities are out there in the world of work.
We look forward to seeing more incredible talent recognised at the SWIT awards in October. If last year was anything to go by, I know it will be a truly inspiring night of celebration and recognition.
