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  1. Home
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  5. BP’s Women in Tech leading the way

BP’s Women in Tech leading the way

BP was well represented at the 2017 ‘FDM everywoman in Technology Awards’ as the only company to have two finalists in the running for top awards

Over 550 business and technology leaders gathered in London to celebrate the Technology Awards event. The awards showcase the breadth and diversity of women and their contribution to technology across all UK industries as well as playing a crucial role in raising the profiles of successful role models.  By highlighting their remarkable achievements, the awards aim to inspire others following in their wake to ensure that women, making up 49% of the workforce, influence bridging the digital skills gap and fill a significant number of the technology jobs that will be available in the UK by 2020.

 

Lisa Kelly, principal technical lead (one of only four in BP), was a finalist in the ‘software engineer’ category for those who have made a significant difference to the art of software engineering. With more than 17 years of SAP engineering experience, Lisa leads technical projects and programmes of work with the information technology and services (IT&S) function, and manages multiple streams of cloud transformations, typically migrations to Amazon and Azure.

 

 

The amount of inspirational people and stories in the room was staggering.
Lisa Kelly,principal technical lead

Jade Carlotta-Jones, a software engineer, was a finalist in the ‘rising star’ category, recognizing women aged under 26 who are excelling in their technology career and making a valuable contribution to her organization. Jade joined BP’s integrated supply and trading team in 2015 and, in her first year, worked in the operations programme to deliver a voyage scheduling system, delivering significant benefits to the business. She also works with schools as a science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) and Oxbridge ambassador and mentor.

 

The evening’s 12 winners included the founders of a digital fashion service that offers a truly personalised shopping experience to over 5 million women, a 16-year-old app developer with self-taught HTML coding skills and a university professor who developed sustained drug release depots for ovarian cancer treatment. Together they show the breadth of achievements by women in the technology industry over the past year.

Find out more about the winners

These awards show the extraordinary female talent that exists in the UK’s technology industry, reminding us that women play a vital role in its growth and success, no wonder it is so well loved and supported in the industry. With research telling us that gender-balanced teams provide better outcomes, there has never been a better time to applaud their success and demonstrate their impact, thereby encouraging younger generations to embrace the opportunities offered by a STEM career.
Maxine Benson MBE,co-founder of everywoman

Sadly neither BP finalists won their categories on the night, but as Lisa Kelly said: “Just being nominated for such an award was a privilege. The amount of inspirational people and stories in the room was staggering. These events are so important to help celebrate female talent and help bring about greater gender diversity in technology companies.”

 

And it is for this reason that BP were proud to sponsor the ‘Leader of the Year’ category, which was presented by Lindsey Griffiths, head of technology adoption and deployment, BP’s digital innovation organization.

 

This isn’t the first time that the talents of BP employees have been recognized by everywoman. Earlier in the day, BP junior DevOps engineer Marie Foster was invited to speak on the theme of Generation Z at the 2017 everywoman forum ‘advancing women in technology’ – which was live streamed across the globe, including to colleagues at BP’s Sunbury office.

 

And previous everywoman award winners include, Cheryl Daniels, IT&S director of planning and lifecycle management, who was a finalist in the 2016 ‘International Leader of the Year’ category; Ayman Assaf, IT&S director, commodity risk, regulatory and finance, who won ‘Inspiration of the Year’ in 2015; and Diana Kennedy, VP strategy, architecture and planning for the IT&S function, who won the 2014 ‘Team Leader of the Year’ award.

 

Supporting STEM

BP has a long-standing partnership with everywoman, which is a UK membership organization that champions female development and progression in the workplace. BP has been partnering with everywoman’s on their Modern Muse project, which aims to introduce school girls to inspirational female role models in STEM careers.

 

It’s still early in the year but, so far, 2017 has been great year for BP IT&S female recognition – in January, Carole Drape was a finalist at the Women in IT awards. The interim VP for Infrastructure & Integration Services was nominated for ‘Business Leader of the Year’ category that seeks to recognize a female leader who has demonstrated outstanding business leadership in the last 18 months.

 

Find out more our activities supporting STEM education.

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