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Alissa has obtained her Master of science in Business administration at Hogeschool Universiteit Brussel and also studied Economics at the Karl Franzens Universität in Austria. She has several years of experience in project, change and people management with a very broad knowledge in different domains and sectors. She is a strategic thinker and inspiring leader driving people towards results. During her last years she has been attracted more and more towards ICT, leading great digital transformation projects as a managing consultant, later on as a project manager for specific HR technology implementations. Now she is the director of VDAB I&T its “transversal domains”. She is in charge of ICT performance programs , budget & licence management, communication and HR for the whole I&T department of 500 people.

Her main focus during this war for ICT talent is creating a supportive ICT HR environment through ‘inclusive talent management’. ‘Inclusive talent management’ means that ‘we stimulate growth for every employee, whether internal or external, so that they can further develop their talents’. VDAB itself profits from a ‘positive impact on staff retention’!

For this all, Alissa Bey continuously improves the I&T Academy – that provides ICT training and onboarding schemes specific to every department’s needs and .

Obviously, Alissa Bey also enables a positive working climate, by means of ‘an open culture’ and ‘challenging projects’, with ‘state of the art technology’. A big help is the job classification system – noblesse oblige – that enumerates all positions and their links. This stimulates employees, irrespective of their contract, to grow in their career paths.
To top it off, Alissa Bey pursues a renewed recruitment strategy, with more attractive job proposals, different proactive search actions and a more visible employer branding strategy.

In short, by setting a true role model, Alissa Bey will inspire others and will keep VDAB’s I&T strategy ‘first class’.

Graduating with a Master of Science (industrial engineering: electronics and ICT) at the KU Leuven made Lissah Blommart already somewhat unique, as she was the only woman in her class. As a result, Blommaert started a never ceasing effort to ‘encourage everyone to dive into IT, regardless of gender,’ and whatever. It means that in addition to her expertise in SAP Sales Cloud and SAP Field Service management tools, she also invests part of her time in training colleagues, and being both a mentor (with career direction advice) and a buddy (guiding starters at delaware, an interesting challenge during COVID lock-downs). Yes, ‘connecting people is very important to me’, up to and including helping organize open bar evenings… And a regular event for Lissah Blommaert is organizing the ‘delaware student game’ – a two-day event allowing students to work on ‘real innovation challenges from our customers’.

In the past six years, Lissah Blommaert has worked for a multitude of different organisations, and with many different people. ‘It is in all cases important to me that being a woman or being in a queer relationship does not change anything to the expectation, respect or collaboration in comparison to others’.

With degrees from the University of Trieste (International relations & affairs) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (EU politics), Martina Calleri is a strong and rather exceptional asset in the ICT world.

In recent years, she has focused on regulatory efforts and policy advisory to bolster Europe’s cybersecurity and the defence of its critical infrastructure, acting as a bridge-builder to facilitate information sharing.

As an advocate of mindfulness and diversity, Martina has taken the initiative to, for example, organise an eight-week wellness-based stress reduction course for the Deloitte Cyber team, and participate in projects such as Women4Cyber (an initiative of the European Cyber Security Organisation) to encourage more women to enter the field by demystifying jobs in cybersecurity.

Martina also took part in several projects both at an international and European level, such as being a member of the Young Ambassador Society (the official partner of the Italian Government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the youth engagement group of the G20 and G7), the 1989 Generation Initiative (a European think-tank at the LSE European Institute aiming to tackle international generational challenges), and volunteering in Brazil and Uganda.

Through her passion and commitment, Martina continues to be a true role model.

Beyond solid functionality, successful digital products must be accessible and inclusive to all users! At In The Pocket, Stephanie Depuydt has become the driving force to deliver digital products with the best possible inclusive user interface. With both a Master in Business Economics (UGent) and a Bachelor in Cross-media (Arteveldehogeschool), she started at In The Pocket as product designer, becoming product manager, acceding to the job of product management lead.

Passionate about inclusive and accessible products, Stephanie Depuydt researched the subject, developed best practices, and ensured their application throughout the company. Her Inclusive Design team keeps everybody in the company nicely focused, strengthening its competitive position on the market! She aims to spread this extremely important expertise even beyond the company walls, organizing conferences, workshops and master classes (including for higher education).

Indeed, no less can be expected from a person who’s all about ‘creating loved digital products that work for everyone’.

With a Master degree in Business Engineering (HEC Management school – ULiège), Nabila Farhat started at Capgemini as a tester, making rapid progress. Today, she’s the account manager of one of the country’s largest banking groups (representing one of Capgemini Belgium’s biggest clients), and making truly an impact, both regarding technical and business aspects (as product owner). In particular she has a feeling for the ‘channels’ domain at the customer, where she heads cross-domain team as project manager.

She’s proven to be a true people leader too, steering a team of 200+ Capgemini consultants, and providing coaching, support and advice to a number of consultants.

Being a woman of Lebanese origin, she insists on a diverse and inclusive workplace, including support for being a mother, as she is of two daughters. For this, she shares her story readily and widely, while keeping an eye on a diverse recruitment process (getting and keeping the right talents). And she does it with initiatives as ‘Mum at work’ (for a consultant’s life as a mother) and ‘Duo for a job’ (linking young and experienced consultants). Clearly, Nabila Farhat does not sit idle by the ringside, but is in the thick of inspiring people.

If you’re kind on your own in a situation, you look for other people to join you… by being a role model, becoming a mentor, taking initiatives, by ‘changing the status quo’! There’s no better way to describe Cornelia Fontes de Mello in a nutshell. There were very few students with an African background in her Business Engineering studies at Solvay Brussels School, so she took action. She joined the African Group (becoming its president), and went full blast organizing coaching, mentorships etc. in collaboration with alumni (which she continues to do as an alumna herself).

Joining Accenture, she didn’t lose momentum, growing in the job. Starting as a functional analyst, she became a transaction analyst, scrum master, and today a project manager. In addition, she continued her diversity and inclusion efforts, creating a Ladies in Tech mentorship program, while becoming leader of Accenture’s Cross-cultural team. Clearly, this is being appreciated, as she was selected for the first Young Potential Boostcamp. Continuing a career in ICT, she wants to be ‘an intrapreneur at Accenture’, as well as an ‘ambassador, a role model’.

Her motto? ‘You don’t do something because it’s impossible? It’s because you don’t do it, that it’s impossible!’

Dr. Konstantina Kyriakopoulou brings to her job at Sopra Steria a rather unusual background for an ICT person. She’s holds a Ph.D. in experimental psychology and social neuroscience, with a focus on judgement and decision-making. As an award winning and published (peer reviewed) scientist, the quality of her work was recognised by the British Neuroscience Association and the UK Research and Innovation body. Her multi-disciplinary expertise is focused on user centric design and ICT.

Through Sopra Steria, she will assist the European Commission ‘to shape strategic aspects of the IT landscape’, as well as the ‘digital transformation agenda’. In addition, she will continue to do ground-breaking research and help Sopra Steria to build the EU Public Sector Agency. This includes contributing to Sopra Steria’s Cybersecurity & Consulting Community.

For the future, she insists on Digital Innovation – accomplishing a.o. a better interaction between public administrations and citizens – and Education. Regarding the latter, Dr. Kyriakopoulou will focus on encouraging women to enter ICT, while providing a role model, leveraging her own challenges in her transition from academia to ICT consultancy. Indeed, ‘seeing that you can, makes the difference’.

With a Master degree of the Universsity of Paris I: Panthéon-Sorbonne, Charlotte Pletinckx arrived at Devoteam after stints at Orange Business Services and ING Belgium. Quickly, she became a highly valued team member, both by Devoteam and customers, not the least because of her fast learning Google’s technology. ‘I can trust her blindly with all projects,’ beams her manager, whether local or international.

Because of her experience, Charlotte Pletinckx presents the perfect interface between the change management department and the technical department. Actually, she combines the roles of project manager and change manager when transitioning from one environment to another. This includes training and coaching, often supported by quizzes, sport challenges etcetera.

Obviously, Devoteam is perfectly willing to apply her skills to other tasks as well. Charlotte Pletinckx aims to continue developing the ‘Women in Tech’ initiative at Devoteam G Cloud and beyond, as well as mentoring younger colleagues.

And when not busy ‘changing’, she keeps her colleagues on the move with ‘Game on’ activities, whether simply an Easter egg hunt, or participation in sport event!

‘Hi, I am Aagje, a developer, UX/UI designer and inclusion strategist. How did I get there?’ No if’s and why’s for her, no stopping her. Having taught herself coding as a teenager, she became a Coderdojo coach (later also a CoderDojo4girlz volunteer), writing a Python course that’s still in use. As a student, she attended the LUCA School of Arts in Genk (Communication & Multimedia Design interactive), but did chose resolutely for a technical internship, becoming a ‘very driven all-rounder’. Actually, she stayed at the company of her internship: Craftworkz, a start-up specializing in prototyping (they built a Talking Teddy). Later she switched to Wheelhouse, a sister company.

There she started focusing on diversity and inclusion, to let her voice be heard in a male-dominated world. And she was heard, in panels, (her) blogs and schools, while also starting an inclusion workgroup at group level (Raccoons Group). She also makes sure her interfaces abide by the legal standards regarding accessibility!

So here is Aagje, a developer, a role model, continuously developing her skills and building products that include ‘women, cultures and disabilities right from the beginning’.

As a student, Chloè Van den Bergh already taught herself how to ‘think as a winner’, to reduce the fear of failure in a sales job she held (and to become the #1 seller, which she did, breaking the national sales record). ‘Your mind is a magical and powerful tool that enables you to open and close doors’, she learned, an insight she has applied assiduously ever since.

Also during her studies (Business Engineer, KU Leuven), she created a blockchain-based real estate application, and taught herself C# and to become a full stack .Net developer. With this expertise, she joined KBC as an analyst, seeing how business and ICT came together. But also experiencing some doubts from colleagues whether as a woman she was really capable of doing her job.

She joined the corporate culture board and ever since she campaigned in word and actions (e.g. rewriting the job opportunity process in a gender neutral way) for women in ICT. As a team lead, she proved a woman’s worth by a different style (prioritizing team atmosphere over figures). Also, Chloè Van den Bergh joined the ‘Genderdiversity@IT’ IT community (with a WoMentoring track).

Clearly, the lessons learned as a student will be diligently applied for many years yet to come, for more diversity and inclusion.

You don’t watch TV anymore. You watch a computer, even if it still has the appearance of a TV (or has morphed into a smartphone). That makes Cécile Gonfroid a formidable figure, as she has been riding these monumental changes, facing
enormous challenges (both technologically and budget wise), with interesting results. With the rise of digital broadcasting, followed by non-linear watching, Cécile Gonfroid had her work cut out when being appointed CIO in 2013
and Chief Digital Officer in 2021.

Playing a central role in the ‘Vision 2022’ project, she has put data at the heart of the strategy, keeps an eye on new and future technologies (cloud, IP, 5G,…) and challenges (cybersecurity), and develops new platforms
with crucial user interface experiences for audiences and internal users. The latter will need highly automated systems, in order to provide the required services with a lower headcount.

She complements this technological insight with a comprehensive understanding of the business (35yr+ at the RTBF!) and the gift of popularizing complex fields. A felicitous combination, particularly as the new broadcast
ecosystem increasingly is a heady mix of partners and competitors. And as mentioned, she has been preparing for this for many years (since becoming Director General for Technologies & Operations in 2009), creating a new organizational
structure in 2018, establishing a stand alone division for technologies.

And last but not least, Cécile Gonfroid understands that the challenge of these changes is human. ‘The result of which I am most proud today is the creation of the Technology team on a human level, a team of experts and
competent managers.’

When joining Inetum-Realdolmen in September 2021, Laurence Mathieu brought along a backpack full of experience at companies as HP Enterprise. And that’s not only experience related to ‘setting up and managing transversal operational
and delivery structures across the company and its business units’ as she is doing at Inetum-Realdolmen. No, during her career, Laurence Mathieu has also grown as a people manager, e.g. taking care of a shared information environment,
with coaching and mentoring, eliminating fears as ‘I’m not able’…

She’s committed to ‘setting up a work environment with a better work-life balance in general’, focusing also on well being. Indeed, she will fight tooth and nail the myth that ‘you cannot combine a family life and children
with a career’. Because ‘yes, you can!’ and employers should make this possible.

Laurence Mathieu knows about the policies that make it possible to manage life and work, and to avoid feeling ‘out of he game’. She knows about effective initiatives, even though ‘it still remains not easy to attract women
to an ICT career, or attracting young girls to IT or technical studies.’ It remains an issue, but the motive to overcome the problem is strong. ‘I believe that having more diverse teams, that are more representative of our real
society, enable a company to be more balanced in its organization and its decision-making structure and processes. This can create a different and better dynamic in a team.’

‘When I joined Euroclear two years ago, I was asked to build the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Office and to transform the CISO division. Today our division counts 160+ people and we expect to still grow in the future.’
Aurélie Michaud couldn’t have illustrated the importance of het Office more clearly! And this is still only the foundation, with yet more improvement of services, increased competence and risk reduction to come. ‘We will embed
our division in the whole Euroclear organization.’

From the very beginning, Aurélie Michoud focused on people, as in security they are as ‘key’ as technology. Therefore, she started monitoring the wellbeing of her people and their engagement. The latter increased from
6,9 in 2020 to 7,9 in 2022 (employee engagement survey). When analyzing incidents, it’s important to get different perspectives and views, with a mixture of gender, backgrounds, level of education, interests etc. creating value
for the organization.

Therefore, another ambition of Aurélie Michaud is to bring more women into the ICT world. She joined several events and communities, but also organized some internal job fairs. This allowed her to share her views, based
on her own professional experience and background. And it does help that CEO LIeve Mostrey has an ICT background.

Today, the top-three priority list includes more women (e.g. by rewriting job descriptions); focus on internal training; and promoting some role models (as seeing is often believing). Because ‘ believe in who you are and
keep on trying, because you can do it!’

Starting out as a telecom engineer, with a Master of science (electronics/telecom) at KU Leuven, is Valerie Tanghe today lead of the Belux technology practice for the Communication, Media and High-Tech industry. This combines her original
expertise (telecom and more recent developments as cloud, 5G etc.) with others (e.g. Oracle, SAP etc) in solutions for the customers. A logical progression for Valerie Tanghe, with the added conviction that ‘throughout my career,
I have always believed that technology solutions will be stronger, better able to solve real-world problems, if they benefit from the female perspective.’

Her actions prove these not to be idle words. Early on, she joined the Flemish association of engineers (today ‘ie-net’) and its Women and Engineer think thank (president of the board from 2005 till 2010). Based on studies
regarding obstacles in women engineer careers, a plan to promote STEM-type studies among last-year high school girl students was enacted. As an advocate of gender equality, Valerie Tanghe also joined The Amazone (today serving
as its president) with the Amazone House supporting a large variety of woman organizations. In October of this year, she was also chosen as one of the InspiringFifty Belgium.

Ultimately, she would love to see the development of a platform, uniting as many companies as possible in the effort to raise the awareness and engagement of girls for studying STEM-related subjects. ‘Becoming ICT Woman
of the Year would be a huge opportunity to give this project the attention it deserves.’

If data is the new gold, Valerie Zapico may count herself rich. Indeed, with Master degrees on Business Intelligence and statistics (and computer science), she dove straight into the deep of BI at a SAP consultancy company. After becoming
the manager of the Belgium office of that company, Valerie Zapico struck out on her own as an independent consultant – founding Valkuren – in 2014. Today, Valkuren provides solid Big Data solutions, founded on data analytics and
artificial intelligence (AI). In 2021, they participated in the AI4EU challenge, developing a predictive pump failure solution.

Clearly a hardcore ICT company, you would think, but not quite. ‘Our objective is to help companies optimize processes and improve their decision-making with a specific focus on human link and gender diversity’. In 2020,
Valerie Zapico was named one of the Inspiring50 and in 2021 she became leader of the Brussels chapter of the Women in Big Data organization. AI runs truly through the veins of Valerie Zapico, as she’s also involved in the ‘AI training
& jobs skills’ task force for AI4Belgium, and she’s member of the AI steering committee for the Brussels region at Agoria. And finally, she’s lecturer at the UMons, for the certificate ‘Hands on AI’.

Valerie Zapico won’t stop and is already planning on hiring more people ‘while keeping the diversity aspect’; developing new projects in AI with a focus on sustainability; creating a training center in Big Data; and develop
the community of the Women in Big Data organization (Brussels chapter). Big data galore!