Digital

Empowering Women to Lead Digital Transformation programme

October 27, 2021 by Stewart Hamilton No Comments | Category Digital Scotland, Digital Skills

Blog by Sam Cox, Policy Officer, People, Strategy, and Corporate Services Division.

The Empowering Women to Lead Digital Transformation programme is a unique leadership programme for women in digital transformation roles, delivered by Empowering You and in association with the Scottish Digital Academy, Scottish Government and ScotlandIS. The aim is to build a collaborative and powerful community of emerging women leaders in digital transformation across all industry sectors. It is designed to enable the transition of aspirational and early-mid career executives and managers into confident, capable and motivated leaders. The programme consists of four face-to-face learning days, a self-directed team challenge, three one-hour coaching sessions, and a team challenge presentation/programme graduation day.

I initially applied knowing very little about it and with very minimal experience in digital transformation and leadership. However, after reflecting with my line manager and the head of my team, we decided that applying would be a good developmental opportunity for me. I am a relatively new hire to the Scottish Government and working as a Digital Policy Officer on the People, Strategy, and Corporate Services Division is my first true experience where my entire position is related to digital. I was exceptionally surprised when I got an email saying I’d been accepted into the program because I felt wholly unqualified across the board for it.

As of mid-October, I’ve participated in two face-to-face learning days, one coaching session, and a variety of collaborative team work on our challenge. I won’t lie, I was really nervous and quite intimidated to be walking into a room of strangers for the first time since 2019! However, all the other women who make up this cohort and the two instructors were nothing but welcoming and friendly right from the start. The cohort is made up of women from across Scotland from a variety of industry and experience levels. It was excellent to meet so many smart and capable women, often who like me, did not come from a digital background but found themselves in digital positions!

Next up are two more in-person learning days and then our presentation of our ongoing team challenge project. I’m keen to see my team and the rest of our cohort in person again soon and I’ll have more to report on after the course wraps up in early December.

Tags: digital, Empowering, Empowering You, Scottish Digital Academy, Transformation

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