Not so long ago I pledged to write a blog entry about a woman in IT that I admired. Bearing in mind my ability to keep my blog up to date I saw this as a good opportunity.
The ladies whom I want to talk about I met when I was just 21 years old. Starting out in my career in IT and working on the IT Help Desk at NTL answering the calls and dealing with technical user issues. It was by a turn of fate and an office move that our internal IT help desk was moved to be closer to the then Microsoft Windows Server Team. This team consisted of two women one who managed the architecture and design of the Microsoft Windows Servers and the other who managed the architecture and design of the then MS Mail environment.
Through this move and the fact there were only 3 women in the whole IT department we started talking. I expressed a desire to move away from the help desk environment and get more involved with desktop and server support and they mentioned a role within there team that was opening up to support the migration of servers to NT 4 and MS Exchange 5. I think I literally jumped at this chance to work with these two ladies.
They taught me how to build a server (Compaq in those days), install memory, rack mount these servers, backups, fault fixing etc. I learnt about the MS Mail and Microsoft Exchange Server from the beginning. I was taught how to interact with the user and deal with customers.
Most importantly I was taught how to be a women in IT. If it weren’t for those two women I would not be able to look back over those 13 years and say that I have enjoyed my career so far. They taught me to have faith in my abilities and to be proud of my achievements.
Thank you Trisha Rose and Sue Harper for starting me on my journey and my passion for IT.
To learn more about today’s pledge please go and visit http://ada.pint.org.uk/
