Niki trigoni

”We are surrounded by female colleagues with tremendous skill, knowledge, and drive. Recognizing their work will accelerate its impact and can help provide indelible evidence of a healthy work environment where quality, devotion and commitment are recognized and celebrated. Nominating these extraordinary women for these awards is the clearest vote of confidence in their ability and ambition to transform their business, their immediate environment and, piece by piece, the world.”

Tell us about your winning moments at the Women in IT Awards UK…

It was an amazing moment! Definitely unexpected – one of those surreal moments that you are unprepared for – and when it sinks in, it comes with a sense of pride and gratitude for my colleagues at Navenio for their contributions and support, and huge appreciation to the Women in IT judging panel for their encouragement and recognition.

How did you feel and what was going through your mind?

Lots of different thoughts and feelings – disbelief, joy, pride, gratitude, and then weirdly enough an acute sense of responsibility that I need to do more to meet the high standard and expectations that come with this award, including furthering the cause of responsible leadership, particularly female leadership.

What have you been doing since receiving this award?

We have had an amazing year of further innovation at Navenio, developing a new intelligent workforce solution, a new indoor location service for people and asset management, an automated way of processing physical maps and a crowdsourced-based approach to generating signal maps used for localisation. It has been a truly productive year – and it has all happened during a difficult period of lockdown thanks to a relentlessly driven team, with a contagious appetite for innovation. Beyond the technical drive, I have also been even more sensitized to identifying, nurturing and developing leadership talent in women and other younger colleagues.

Why do you think it is important for female professionals to nominate themselves, their colleagues, managers and peers?

Women in IT awards highlight women’s achievements, and are a source of inspiration for women at different levels of seniority. They celebrate women’s commitment to continually developing their skills and leading transformational change within their business. Highlighting and recognising talent does not only help female professionals advance their own career, but also reflects well on their colleagues and the company as a whole.

And why should we be celebrating one another?

Celebrating achievements of one another positively reinforces taking bold initiatives in business, and aiming for real impact.  It shields us against any temporary setbacks, makes us resilient to uncertainty inherent in every business environment, and gives us the strength to take on new challenges and risks.

It’s been a year of uncertainty, so why should professionals be sharing their work, challenges and successes?

Sharing successes in a year that has been undoubtedly tainted by the effects of the pandemic brings a huge amount of optimism to ourselves and to our peers. Strangely enough, optimism can also stem from sharing challenges; discussing them takes off their varnish of difficulty, and reveals their bare-bones – the tremendous value of lessons learnt. They are reminders of the positive impact we can continue to have even under the most adverse of circumstances.

And finally, your call to action

We are surrounded by female colleagues with tremendous skill, knowledge, and drive. Recognizing their work will accelerate its impact and can help provide indelible evidence of a healthy work environment where quality, devotion and commitment are recognized and celebrated. Nominating these extraordinary women for these awards is the clearest vote of confidence in their ability and ambition to transform their business, their immediate environment and, piece by piece, the world.

Nominations are open for the 2021 Women in IT Awards UK. For more information and to submit a nomination, please click here. Entries close Friday 30 April.