This post was written by Office Apps & Services MVP Sarah Haase as a part of our Humans of IT guest blogger series. Sarah shares her journey as a female technology leader and provides ideas for mentoring and developing others.
Female technology leaders face unique challenges. We’re often outnumbered by our male counterparts and can face an uphill journey to prove ourselves. But we bring strengths to the tech workplace: communication and critical-thinking skills, diverse life perspectives, and distinctive ways of solving traditional technology challenges.
I remember the first day I walked into my company’s IT department to take on a SharePoint analyst role. I was the lone woman on a team of 30 technical men. I stood out, and not just because of my gender. I was a librarian working in IT. I had a different way of looking at challenges and talking in meetings and it showed. Within a couple of months, I was known as the “librarian with the impressive vocabulary.”
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