Five women in tech who are #PressingforProgress

Fair returns to skills and the availability of deeper talent pools are disrupted by existing gender biases - and the fields most affected, such as the technology sector, are losing out on the benefits of diversity.

In celebration of International Women’s Day (IWD), here are five women in tech who are pressing for progress:

Elke Bretz, UX Designer at PCA Predict
Elke works as an in-house UX expert for ecommerce data experts PCA Predict (a GBG company) on everything relating to the customer journey, user experience design, data collection and usability. Prior to working for PCA Predict, Elke founded her own design and consultancy business, Simplicity, where she specialises in generating end-to-end customer experiences across interfaces for web and mobile applications.

Camille Rumani, Co-Founder and COO of Eatwith
Camille is the Co-Founder and COO of Europe’s largest social dining and food experience platform Eatwith (formerly VizEat). The idea for Eatwith was born out of a conversation between Camille and her now business partner, Jean-Michel Petit, about the best travel experiences they’d recently had whilst abroad. Camille is determined to change the way people travel, one food experience at a time. Most recently, Camille was named as one the Forbes 30 under 30 (Europe) in the 'Retail' category.

Olga Feldmeier, CEO of SMART VALOR
Olga is Co-Founder and CEO of SMART VALOR, a Swiss-based blockchain startup building a decentralised marketplace for tokenised alternative investments. She also founded The Crypto Summit, the first international conference in Switzerland dedicated to Blockchain crowdfunding. Prior to founding SMART VALOR, Olga held the position of Commercial Managing Partner at prominent Silicon Valley Bitcoin startup Xapo.

Sophie Guibaud, VP European Expansion, Fidor Bank
As Vice President for European Expansion Fidor Bank, Sophie is responsible for the market launch strategy in selected countries, setting up and managing the ongoing operations of selected countries. Before joining Fidor, Sophie was instrumental in the launch of HelloFresh UK and also previously headed product strategy at Bankable.

Maria Gutierrez, VP Engineering at FreeAgent
Maria is Vice President of Engineering at cloud-based accounting software provider FreeAgent. As Director of Women Who Code Edinburgh, Maria is a huge advocate for women in coding. She believes that diverse teams allow companies to better represent their customers, explore different ways of solving problems and challenge themselves to achieve greater results.