UN Girls in ICT Day

Celebrating UN Girls in ICT Day with Femke Bergman and Hadya Adnan

To celebrate the UN International Girls in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) we spoke to two colleagues who share their stories and their experiences of working in IT as women professionals. Femke Bergman and Hadya Adnan have cultivated significant experience in the field and hope to inspire more women to do the same.

Femke Bergman

Femke Bergman Femke Bergman is proof that it is never too late to switch careers and pursue a career in IT. She is a CRM specialist at Caldic’s Rotterdam Headquarters and has been with us for nearly four years. She has a background in African Linguistics and worked for several years in different roles. She only made the switch to IT 15 years after her first job.

Femke believes that her background helped her acquire skills that go beyond technology. They include social skills as well as the ability to identify potential avenues for improvement and optimization of operational processes. “Since linguistics focuses on the system of a language, understanding a digital system wasn’t entirely new to me. My educational background helps me in my current role as I am able to understand the needs of various user groups and their ways of working. In my previous positions, I had become familiar with various sales processes making it easier for me to understand our end users,” she explains.

The switch has not been without hurdles, but she has had a great experience thus far. “The transition was a major decision. I was gaining quite the experience in my job, but I knew I could do something better for myself and I went for it,” she says. Being a woman in a male-dominated field isn’t easy, but Femke stresses more on the importance of female leadership: “Like most women, I feel the need to constantly prove myself and work twice as hard. I am glad that the people I have worked with at Caldic have been very helpful and supportive.”

She genuinely believes that more and more women should pursue a career in tech and other scientific fields. She supplements this sentiment by saying, “Most women know they are capable but struggle to see themselves as the logical candidate to make a career move or climb up the career ladder.”

Hadya Adnan

 

Hadya Adnan
Hadya Adnan has been working in the IT field for over six years and is a Business Systems Analyst - IT, at the Mississauga office of Caldic North America. The objective of the UN Day is to pursue a future in ICT to empower girls by ensuring they have the necessary skills, confidence, and support to achieve their goals. With her extensive knowledge in the field despite her harrowing past, Hadya embodies it perfectly.
 
Born in Iraq, Hadya fled to Syria and then to Lebanon before moving to Canada under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees program. While in Syria, she began pursuing her studies in computer engineering, which she completed in Canada and is currently pursuing an advanced diploma in software engineering. At Caldic, she manages AX and Optiva projects and also leads workshops for supply chain users.
 
“I think from the very beginning, I knew I wanted to pursue a career in IT. I saw my older sister do it, and I knew I would be supported if I went for it as well,” she says. In her first job, she was the only woman on the team, which was an arduous experience. “I know I had the knowledge and skills but there were times when I was made to feel incompetent or even uncomfortable. I was given simpler tasks even though I constantly asked for new projects and more challenging tasks,” she explains. At Caldic, however, she has had a far better experience.

 

Hadya states that throughout her career, she has realized that her everyday experiences as a woman have prepped her for her current role. “Managing and executing projects and multitasking are skills you cultivate,” she explains. While echoing Femke’s conviction of more women opting for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) careers, she says, “Throughout everything, pursuing a career in IT gave me a goal, a purpose to keep going and I hope more women recognize the benefit of being in such ‘conventionally-male’ fields.”