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‍In celebration of International Women's Day, we brought together a group of women from across Indicium AI to talk honestly on our Data and AI podcast about their journeys in technology. ‍What came out of it was a conversation full of hard-won wisdom, practical advice, and real optimism. ‍Here are five things we took away.

1. Mistakes aren't the enemy - the fear of making them is

Women are often socialised to strive for perfection - and in the workplace, that instinct can become a trap. When you're so focused on not getting things wrong, you can stop taking the risks that lead to real growth. The best athletes aren't the ones who never lose - they're the ones who study their losses and refuse to make the same mistake twice. Perfectionism, left unchecked, leads to a plateau. Mistakes, processed well, lead to progress.

The takeaway? Get more comfortable with being uncomfortable. Fail, reflect, improve, repeat.

2. The rules for measuring yourself change over time - and no one tells you

In school, performance is quantitative. You get a grade. You know where you stand. When you enter the workplace, that structure disappears - and suddenly you're expected to evaluate yourself through qualitative feedback, personal reflection, and your own instincts about which opportunities to pursue.

Think of your career like a Machine Learning model. You're constantly receiving data points - feedback, results, experiences - and you need to figure out which ones to actually train on. Not every data point is relevant. Not every piece of feedback deserves to reshape your trajectory.

The practical advice? Learn to isolate feedback. Ask yourself: is this a recurring pattern, or a one-off moment when I wasn't at my best? What's genuinely actionable here? And then — crucially build the habit of self-reflection, because no one else is going to hand you a roadmap.

3. Bravery is a skill, and you need to keep practising it

The higher you climb, the more complex and exposed the situations you'll face. Being brave isn't about having no fear - it's about showing up anyway. It's reminding yourself that you didn't get where you are by accident. That took years of work!

None of us are "discovered." Careers are built, deliberately, through consistent effort and a willingness to step forward even when it feels risky. On hard days, that's worth remembering.

But sometimes a face mask and some trashy TV helps too! Bravery doesn't mean being relentlessly resilient. It means recovering, and going again.

4. Allyship is showing up in the small moments

What does meaningful allyship actually look like, not in theory, but in practice? It starts with calling things out. Not necessarily in a room full of people - that's rarely useful - but privately, with care. If you witness behaviour that isn't right, even saying to the person affected, "that wasn't okay, I'm sorry you experienced that," matters more than people realise. When you're in a room where you're the only woman, or one of very few, that small acknowledgement tells you that you're not imagining things. That you're not alone.

The next step is constructive. If you see something, consider having a quiet word with the person responsible. Not accusatory - just honest. Most people, when told how their words or behaviour landed, are genuinely mortified. They didn't know. Helping them see it creates the conditions for real change.

5. The future is more optimistic than you might think

As AI takes on more of the purely technical workload, the skills that rise in value are the ones women have often been told to downplay. Strategic thinking. Communication. Empathy. Stakeholder management. The ability to translate complex ideas for different audiences. These aren't soft skills - they're leadership skills, and they're increasingly what sets great technologists apart from good ones.

For anyone thinking about starting a career in technology - or just starting out - the group's advice was clear: Be your authentic self. Don't contort yourself to fit a mold that wasn't built for you. Trust that your perspective adds value. Find the right people and the right spaces, because community matters. And if something looks interesting? Try it. Very few decisions are permanent, and you'll learn something either way.

Happy International Women's Day from all at Indicium AI!

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