Gaelle Mogabure, Head of ESG at VIRTUS Data Centres, featured on a recent panel discussion we hosted for women in data centres. She offered some key insights about the extensive opportunities this industry has to offer and what she’s found most effective for career progression. Here she emphasises the importance of making yourself visible when it comes to applying for leadership roles and having your voice heard.
What sparked your interest in the data centre industry and how does it compare to roles you’ve had previously?
I fell into this industry by accident. I used to work for a private cloud provider and we were sharing office space with our sister company which was building and operating data centres. Data centres were new to me, so I talked to my colleagues to find out more about what they were and what they did. I had the opportunity to visit one of the facilities and I was fascinated and impressed. Two years down the line I transferred to the data centre company because I believed there was lots of opportunity to grow my career – not least because it was a growing industry at the forefront of enabling technology and innovation.
Are you noticing companies becoming more aware and determined to employ female leaders as part of their workforce and if not, why do you think this is?
In my experience, every company is very mindful that women are likely under-represented in their leadership team. It’s not necessarily the fact that they don’t want to employ women, I think it’s that the pool of talent is quite small so finding females with the right skills and experience can be quite challenging. The other part of the challenge is that historically, the industry has been a boys’ gang so unconscious bias comes into play.
It’s come to my attention that a lot of women in data centres experience imposter syndrome and therefore avoid applying for a promotion or negotiating a position – how far can you relate?
I can relate 100%. I felt like a bit of a fraud when I started. I think what helped is making a conscious effort to somehow benchmark myself against my male colleagues and realise that we had the same skills – I was as knowledgeable as them and therefore deserved to get promoted just as much as them.
It comes down to building self-confidence and believing that you are totally capable and in the right place as well as allowing yourself to be ambitious and looking to the next role.
How can women learn to embrace their strengths and be more forthcoming when applying for leadership roles?
I experienced this not too long ago. I think there are several aspects to it – first is about being honest and accurately assessing your skillset, what the new role requires and how your skills are aligned with those requirements. If you’re not quite clear about what success means for the next job, you should openly ask what you need to do to make your next position a success and what that looks like. That’s also something we need to work on as women – we don’t need to have all the skills to apply for the job, we need to have the core competencies and the rest we can learn on the job.
The second aspect is to reach out to other women in the company that you believe have had inspiring careers and ask them what they did – what steps did they take and what advice can they give you? It’s about understanding that you are fully legitimate to apply for those roles.
The final piece is to understand the promotion process – who’s making the decision? Who are they going to ask to inform the decision and if you can identify those people, go and market yourself and let them know you’re applying for the role.
Make yourself visible and have a voice, understand your intention, ask for support and advice and just go for it.
What advice would you offer women wanting to take the next step in their career within this field but don’t have the confidence to do so?
Ask your female colleagues. There are only a small group of women in this sector so we are very supportive of one another. If I had someone come to me and ask for advice on taking the next step but not knowing where to start, I’d be happy to spare some time to help. I’d help them understand what’s possible within this sector and what I found to be most effective in terms of progression and next steps.
It’s also important to share what didn’t work so they can avoid making the same mistakes. It’s good to learn from female colleagues but also to ask male colleagues for advice and support.
The lack of gender diversity within data centres is concerning for the future – what impact will this have on digital innovation and how can we prevent it?
When I look at men and women, I believe we complement each other. It’s not a competition that one gender is better than the other. We each offer something unique and bring something different to the table and if we have an industry or sector that is dominated either by men or women, you lack ideas and diversity. If we don’t increase female representation in the data centre industry, the reality is there’ll be no future innovation.
We therefore all need to make a conscious effort to showcase what this industry is all about and that needs to start from a young age. It’s too late to wait until university level to implement this because the idea is to increase the number of women in the pool of talent. We must start to encourage girls to enter engineering careers from primary school level, for example, to show them that there are so many possibilities.
Hopefully having these discussions will bring about change and in the near future people will feel they can take up a career in this industry and not feel overwhelmed by it.
So, be confident, get out there, be loud and be proud.
Watch the video interview with Gaelle, here.
