娇色导航

Welcome to 娇色导航Leadership Live UK.

I'm Lee Rennick Executive Director, 娇色导航Communities

and I'm very excited to introduce and welcome Dr.

Roxane Heaton, CIO, Macmillan Cancer Support.

Roxane, please introduce yourself.

And could you tell us a little bit about your current role?

Thanks so much, Lee, and lovely to be here today.

So as I've mentioned, my name is Roxane Heaton, the Chief Information Officer

of one of the UK's largest cancer charities, which is Macmillan Cancer Support.

And I'm responsible for technology and digital and data optimization.

We are 98% funded by fundraising and were are the size of 250.

So it's really important we spend our money wisely.

People living with cancer.

Well, thank you so much for sharing that

and I really appreciate you joining us here today.

Roxanne, we've created the series to support diversity in technology

and to listen to women working in the sector who are building and supporting DE&I.

This year the IWD theme was #embraceequity.

So the first question, can you please tell us a little bit

about your own career

path and provide some insights or tips on that road path. As a woman

especially, are there any lessons learned that you could share?

It's a very great question and I think it's applicable for any sector.

I went to an all girls boarding school and then straight into university doing engineering.

So when there were only seven females, our course, nearly 100.

So it was straight into a very different world.

And I remember what I've always learned. Especially someone who, I've got a stammer.

So I'm always aware of different superpowers and everyone's got superpowers

and it's about maximizing those because we're all very different.

So I've had a squigley career. Which I think

is hugely valuable, and especially in discussion with people. We're all different.

We will bring different perspectives to the table.

So I started my career in the Royal Navy after a quick stint in banking.

Actually, which got me really hungry for making sure

we did great things with money and the restrictions and things money.

But yeah, I spent 12 years in the Royal Navy,

which I think really is embedded my instinctive

ambitions and behaviors of

teamwork and being a team member first and a leader second.

But actually as a leader is it is everyone's responsibility.

I'm really lucky to jump from there to Morrisons, one of the UK's largest supermarkets.

Which is end to end retailer, so everything from farm to fork. So hughly interesting.

I hope I can touch with some some insight there later.

But everything I learned through all of the really again, just showed me

that whatever skill you bring, it can

you can bring a different view.

So finding different allies and different people, who could champion

you was, I think, hardest in my early, early time.

But actually it's been super interesting as I've gone on later in my career

to find people who I really learned from are those around my network.

And that's where I get my greatest learning.

But actually those are my greatest allies too.

And it probably took me a little while to realize that.

So building your relationships across networks, the best thing you can do?

Well, I really appreciate you sharing that.

And it's looks like and we're going to talk about this in just a minute.

and it segues really well into the next question.

So I was researching some data around women and technology in the UK,

and some new data reveals that the proportion of female employees

in the UK, in UK tech has declined for the first time in five years by over 2%.

Now, this is also happened in Canada, which is very interesting.

So it looks like it might be a bit of a worldwide global phenomenon.

This study actually revealed that under 15% of IT

directors are women in the sector in the UK.

So you are really a big supporter of diversity and equity.

And I was wondering if you could share

what you believe organizations could do to support diverse workforces.

Gosh, it's a really concerning stat isn't it. And it's something that after

so much work by a lot of people across across the globe to increase that.

So female leaders, female CEOs and definitely females in technology. It's

really concerning is why is it going to be something to really unpack?

But it's not only concerning for the workforce we have, it's

concerning the solutions that we're designing.

And that's why it's so important that we really address this.

So we must normalize the conversation.

A big thing that I try and do is talk in business outcomes.

Make sure it's really open to non tech techies as I try and call the people

add a huge or just as much amount of value, if not more value.

If you talk about the user, your technologist

because everybody uses technology and I would love to hear from everybody.

It's about getting in early as well and making it and making it relevant

for people back to normalizing.

Help people understand what value they can bring to the technology sector.

But it's not good enough.

So we've worked really hard in terms of making new routes,

sideways routes through retraining and also realizing not everyone's a unicorn.

So as long as we can talk about clear development plans

and that's for everyone, not not, not not just females,

we can support everyone to grow.

So we've now currently got 40% female in our organization, which is fantastic, in technology, and

50% female in my leadership team. We've gone from from

from almost one one out of 12 to 50%, which is fantastic.

But we must keep pushing that and having those role models.

There's that, there's an old phrase that you can't be what you can't see.

So we need more diversity of lots of different demographics

at all different spaces in people's careers and understanding

what are the traps that the as you mentioned, that 2% let's work out why.

So yeah, it's really important.

Yeah, I think it is.

And given that you said you started your career in engineering,

I mean, I think there's that ability to look at how younger women

are looking at STEAM versus STEM and bringing the arts

and you talked about the soft skills like making sure that people have you know,

we recognized people's skills outside of technology

that seems to be trending a lot in these conversations I'm having.

Like we want people to bring in skills and then a lot of the,

you know, male allies I've been speaking to

in the tech industry have been saying, you know, look,

we know that women don't apply for jobs if they only have 50 or 60%

of their skills based, they don't think they should, whereas men will.

And so, you know,

just the male allies that are encouraging and looking at those applications

that come in, encouraging women to apply, I think that's such an important part.

So and just as you mentioned right now, having this dialog is so impactful for me.

Every time I speak to a woman who's working in the sector

to talk about their career when they've come,

I gain some insights myself, so I really appreciate you sharing that very much.

You mentioned in the beginning that you've had a career in various sectors,

and a lot of CIOs I speak with talk about knowledge gained by working across

sectors, you know, and the key learnings in their career through that. You've worked

both in private and public sector and now you're in the charitable sector.

So could you please provide some insights on how you utilize your learnings

between sectors and perhaps why cross-sector learning is really important?

So when I think about this question, I think about this question, I think about

our user doesn't care.

I only work in the charitable sector or the public sector or the private sector.

They don't just experience one sector.

They bounce across each sector and they expect

the same sort of level of service.

Not everyone expects the Amazon experience if one on one to shop at Amazon,

but absolutely it's about keeping up with Joneses.

So it's not good enough to just think that because I'm a I'm a charity, I'm it's

okay that I offer a less good experience doing the experience in those other sectors.

So I think it's always keeping punchy is really important

because otherwise the users will go elsewhere.

And they'll get the service from elsewhere and donate their money elsewhere. From my perspective.

That's why I mentioned that networking is so important and huge learnings

with peers and we're all hungry for the same thing.

There's not enough money to go around to reinvent the wheel

and the wheel doesn't need to be reinvented

in a lot places. We can learn from each other as we're going on

in each each journey into different use of technologies

and soft, skills and sharing that diversity. So what I've learned,

either packing boxes of boxes in a warehouse

or understanding the fish canning line at Grimsby,

for example to look at to look inside fishes, make sure that they are good

enough, the quality or even the very high tech potato sorter on the manufacturing site,

just to give a few examples of the supermarket

you see behind the sort of the shop front, I always think about how technology,

the user, the journey, the efficiency for people are so valuable.

And so often when I'm talking to different stakeholders and users,

when I think about different experiences I've had across those different sectors,

I try and I always think there's different way to solve a problem

and that there are always sort of certain friction and always I find an analysis

I can do from a sector that I've been in

to finding new ways to solve problems. I think.

So

the charity sector is no different to another sector.

Even more so with the same stakeholder pressures.

We've all got shareholders, daily profit and loss targets,

it's just different things we're looking at over

revenue implications or even when there's revenue implications.

But we can again keep up with the Joneses we can really push ahead

and look outside the global trends as well,

because someone could have done it out out there, and so why not?

So if my my only advice is always think differently, always keep hungry

and so you can stay ahead of the game. And that's absolutely fine.

Looking across sector, across. The world, I love that.

And you know, when you talk about across the world

and in the charitable sector, you know, a few years back the UK

introduced the tap to pay at a lot of events. Right?

And so instead of having to put your ?5 in or whatever into the donation box,

you could just tap your card.

Well, that hadn't come out in Canada, but it was learning through charities here

that's happening over there. I went, Oh my God, this is amazing.

And so, like the banking industry did a whole innovation around

that in the UK, which again, you talk about global learning.

So I really appreciate you bringing that up

because that is such an important part of it.

And obviously, again, your background working at Morrisons,

having that opportunity to look at, you know, how food is processed

and probably looking at blockchain and other things just, just again

enhances your role that you're in now

because you're having those outside learnings.

A 娇色导航at a roundtable said to me once, or we were at a roundtable

talking about cloud and all sorts of things

and but the one 娇色导航said, you know, people do expect the end user

does expect that Amazon experience your order one day and get it the next.

Worthy We talked about the Ocado experience of food delivery

or whatever, so I appreciate you sharing that with us.

And I wanted to really talk about tech for good.

It really seems to be

with a lot of the CIOs, especially in the UK, talking about this

and really being intentional about looking at that.

And the last time we spoke, you spoke about your passion for tech

for good, really to support inclusion of underrepresented.

communities in accessing technology.

And you made a really interesting point to me around,

you know, building data models that can really help inform that.

So really being intentional and working with data to understand

where you can, you know, support underrepresented communities.

So could you please discuss this and perhaps some of the ways

you believe leaders and organizations can support this?

This is a huge question and again, it's super exciting.

I probably think your last comment actually about different sectors

and globally as well, because I think about Blockbuster,

which is a UK film hiring company. I always say

you don't want to turn into a Blockbuster, so the need was that change

but it happened a little bit too late. And I think that's really interesting

about the global thing as well and about doing doing tech for good.

The nations who are really performing are actually some of those

who are furthest behind in terms of digital inclusion, and that's why

I think it's really important to not be not be complacent.

There were some really some really groundbreaking activities

in different areas of the world who were leapfrogging us in tap to pay

yu've mentioned because they need too. That need is so critical.

And so when I think about looking at different data models, I've got

some different viewpoints on joining up different data models

from different styles of data, for example,

and the power of that, because we we actually only look at the boundaries

that we set in or the datasets that we currently see.

And so by thinking differently, by looking into this into space,

as one of my peers would say,

and just searching for new stars, you can find insight.

And so when I think about the charity

sector that I work in, I currently serve a certain portion of people in living with cancer

that's not good enough.

And so whereas when I was going to when I think how I can solve that,

I think what could help joining that up.

So this experience from when I worked in central government at the height of COVID,

when we we formulated the discussions

to join up different datasets from across government departments.

And what the power of that show is that through aggregated data sets

that were anonymized and had a kind of a nationwide view, but localized impact.

You could see the different impact of different datasets being joined up.

So for example, water data or people the number of people on the road,

you can see the see the transmissions, for example, either increase or decrease.

And I think the same thing can happen in different examples is using open

datasets or datasets from other other other organizations

that can be shared. It's for example linked to social care. So what

at what point in a social ecosystem can you apply a certain lever

and the individual will not go back to social care like a rubber band.

And so it's understanding those datasets and understanding well

actually if you provide that lever over and over again, you can move that child

and that dependance from social care and break and break the trend.

And I think that's so important because obviously

the data is out there, but we in society aren't using it.

We're trying to hold on to it so closely.

But actually we all know it's there

and different people are using it, different activities.

I mean, we've been acutually using it, even offline.

So as a retailer for example, someone would look out, see it's raining

or see a film being loaned to another cinema and adjust their offering.

People have naturally done it for years. But actually

what can we do if we actually harness the power of data sitting in systems,

making sure it's safe and controlled in the people's trust

and can people control of that data is really clear,

but actually showing the benefits really with real life applications,

then if we look at different societies, have achieved this really, really well through COVID.

They democratized the trust

and they democratised data, control input in discussions and it really increase

people's engagement with activity and the trust in the entire system. And therefore onwards

they could understand the motivators and detractors from using digital tools.

So I think it's really, really powerful

as one element of tech figured.

And so there's so many foundations we put in place

before we get on to shiny new things such as, well not just AI, but elements

of AI or other things, because there's people need to want to trust the system.

So foundations are really important as part of it.

You're really inspiring me.

Thank you so much for saying that, because I'm thinking

we're going to our next question, which is going to be about innovation. And GenAI.

But, you know, I think what you're saying is

we have an app and what I'm hearing is almost we have this opportunity right now

with this new inflection point in tech and maybe quantum,

You know, I feel like Quantum is really coming in behind.

So there's that opportunity to potentially look at how we're connecting this data. Imagine that

at the speed of which we could do things quicker and faster and support individuals

and how we could share.

And if corporations were aligned to that, to making ensure there was, you know,

because I think of organizations that donate food to food banks

or other organizations, imagine if that was all connected, how

that would really change the world.

So, yeah, you're really it's very inspirational.

So thank you for sharing that.

And I did want to go through to our last question, which is I'm asking

everybody this question right now, and the theme is really around innovation.

and GenAI, so, you know, obviously, GenAI

and LLMs are very prevalent right now in discussions about innovation

and just in discussions about technology, really.

So could you share your views on that and perhaps some of the ways

you're looking at to deploy or what you're seeing in the market?

So if I think about this and I'm really a big fan of shiny toys,

but shiny toys that are bound with their limitations in the discussion.

There's definitely a place keeping up

and understanding what's out in the market and play and playing safely.

But at the same time, I think there were some foundations that we thought about.

If I use example, one of my wonderful medical team

I'm really privileged to work with because they work directly with the frontline.

Is that I think about we need to be contextualized.

We've got a really real critical, exciting point in a technological revolution

or evolution to think, to recontextualize, not just do as we've always done.

So arthritis, for example, to be treated the same way since the 1950s

and one dataset of white middle aged men in the north of Manchester in the UK.

Why do we still do that?

And so it becomes

pretty apparent that actually the medical treatments are very different now.

And so the same solution of fix is isn't working.

So in the same way, how can we use the opportunity

with AI and large language models and whatever is going to come next

in order to recontextualize?

I go back to the bones, what actually the user needing.

And how can we solve that problem?

Because no doubt it will create more discussions about dependencies

and also get rid of the waste effot. All those processes and also expose

second order effects of using AI and LLMs.

This is all done for if you make the hospital porter

group more efficient, of course it's going to open up more bed spaces.

Some of these some of the examples we just mapped them out and think a bit broader.

We can think about different, different implications.

So for me it's about exciting people, about the opportunities, data

to really talk to people about ethics and talking about biases and help

people understand what is that excitement to level thing to bring on on the journey.

Because at the end of day we're all looking to make the future better,

but it must be secure, resilient and joined up

and efficient because all of these things are really expensive as well.

So we all we I think some of us know some of the pricing models

with new AI systems through our hype vendors

are staff to trying to go live and it's extortionate frankly.

I as a charity can't keep up.

So how can we all get on this bus and be supporting the users in the same way,

including those those vendors. Obviously there will be people who will be left behind,

and I don't I don't mind if it's us, but I'm really

conscious of the person using the system because if we're being left behind

the user who needs the most services will absolutely be left behind.

And that that and that that the people I'm I'm worried about.

So how I answer questions in my mind about knowing what's what

what's out there absolutely making sure that the foundations

of data sharing data ethics and data management are in place

and a real hunger for people

to understand the opportunities and and to excite people with with that.

Because at the same time, that will open up those motivators

for others to get on a digital inclusion journey,

which will only help the health, wealth and ultimate well-being

in the community if if they are enabled and excited to make

best use of the exciting technologies that are out there. Dr.

Roxane, you're very, very inspiring and I really appreciate this conversation today.

It has been just phenomenal for me to listen to you and hear

give you points on technology.

And so thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I really loveed talking to you. Thank you.

And if you're interested in learning more, please don't hesitate to visit us

at cio.com/uk Thanks again.