Venturi's Voice: Technology | Leadership | Staffing | Career | Innovation

Katie Roberts is Head of Engineering at NearForm Katie has fifteen years experience of in software development, working in a variety of sectors (media, education, games, advertising) on a variety of platforms including web, interactive TV, mobile phones, touch screen installations. NearForm offers a new kind of partnership combining the development of both products and skills to accelerate digital delivery. We provide our clients with not only game-changing digital products but also the processes and skills needed to maintain the efficiencies brought on by digitalization. During this episode, Ben sits down with Katie to talk about scaling engineering management across NearForm as an organisation, NearForm’s remote-first working policy across Europe and USA, and creating and implementing a set of values for the culture of engineering teams working remotely.

Kim Lawrie is head of Emerging Technology at ENGINE UK | ND Engine is a future company. A full-stack consultancy, technology, insight, data, brand and experience design, advertising and communications company, with the power of diversity and imagination to take on the future. During this episode, Ben sits down with Lawrie to find out about the Metaverse, what it is, and what we can expect from the not-so-distant future.

Ulf Kirsten is VP of Engineering at Delivery Hero Leading cross-functional development teams to deliver high-performing and scaling solutions to help to grow the business. Using the latest cutting edge-technologies like containers via Kubernetes with cloud providers such as GCP or AWS with various programming languages. As well as maintaining old legacy systems in order to keep existing stacks running & performing. Delivery Hero is the world’s leading local delivery platform, operating its service in over 40 countries across Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa. During this Podcast, Ben sits down with Ulf to discuss the unique challenges Delivery Hero are facing within the ‘quick commerce’ space whilst operating on a global scale, as well as the complexities they must maintain and what they are doing on the technology side to overcome these.

In this episode Andy Davis talks to Rashi Khurana, the Director, Engineering for eCommerce Images and Contributor experience at Shutterstock. On the show they discuss how to get more women in tech. Andy also asks Rashi about her own career development and mentoring. They also chat about having the right approach to business and the best practices when leading a team. Rashi is currently leading the technical teams for the eCommerce platform and the Contributor experience at Shutterstock, New York City. Previously, she has worked with Orbitz Worldwide where she use to own and manage the Landing Page framework and Infrastructure. The framework involved creation and launch of dynamic and flexible landing pages with customization and personalization built in it. This also involves the business facing tool that contributors can use to generate content and publish landing pages. Show Notes: 1.10 Rashi’s career background and development. 3.13 Are the traditional methods of educating technologist obsolete? 5.03 Does there need to be a realignment in the way we onboard tech professionals. 9.14 How do we increase women’s confidence in tech. 10.22 Why does society gear engineering towards males? 11.47 Negating social anxiety and learning at your own pace. 14.46 Have you had any mentors in your career and have you found yourself a mentor in recent years. 17.12 Rashi’s mentoring and speaking work. 19.00 Having the right attitude and approach in business. 21.35 How do you earn your team's trust? 22.35 Leading by example and letting employees know it’s ok to fail. 26.46 Building a productive company culture. 29.08 Finding a company with the right cultural fit for you. 30.39 What motivates you?

Polly Moore is Principal Consultant at PA Consulting | Founder @ THIS WOMcAN | Data Science Nanodegree Instructor @ Code First Girls Polly has an incredibly interesting background, joining the Royal Air Force in 2015 for 5 years, before continuing her career as a Data Engineer. During this podcast, Ben sits down with Polly to discuss her experiences as a Female in the tech industry, what we can do to encourage more Females to pursue a career in tech, and why Women may be put off working in this space. As well as Polly's work with Code First Girls and the motive behind her new project, THIS WOMcAN.

Callum Linington is Principal Engineer at ClearBank® ClearBank® is the UK’s first new clearing bank in more than 250 years. It delivers a new level of open competition and transparency to the UK financial services marketplace. During this podcast Ben sits down with Callum to speak about the joys of programming and the correlation between engineering, the arts and music, they also discussed the vast amount of career opportunities available in the tech industry.

Daniel Smart is Engineering Manager - Test at Booking.com and co-founder at Techs and The City and CTO of Manchester Tech Festival Booking.com are pioneers, on a mission to shape the future of travel through cutting edge technology, to make it easier for everyone to enjoy amazing experiences wherever they go.  They’re determined to make the world of travel more sustainable, more accessible, and more inclusive, to create a positive impact on a global scale. During this podcast, Ben sits down with Daniel to discuss Manchester Meetups, what it's like to organise meetups & how he got into it, Software Testing, Daniel's background & what the future holds.

Celia Pronto is Managing Director of Love Home Swap. Love Home Swap is an award-winning, global home swapping platform that connects like-minded home-lovers with incredible properties. Celia Pronto is responsible for setting the overall strategic direction of the company, owning the P&L and global performance delivery of the Love Home Swap brand.  Diversity in tech is essential for businesses that want to stay relevant to their customers, and competitive in the talent market. During this podcast episode, Ben sits down with Celia to chat about diversity in technology, and what we can do to promote a more diverse and inclusive industry.

Steve Pimblett is Chief Data Officer at The Very Group, and is in the DataIQ 2022 top ten!! Their purpose at Very is to “Make good things easily accessible to more people”. They do this by delivering leading brands and products to our customers; providing flexible payment plans and financial services; and enabling high levels of personalisation and ease of use. Their data (“DNA”) mission underpinning this allows us to “delight customers and empower colleagues with trusted data products and services”. It was an absolute honour to speak with Steve on the podcast, as one of the most influential people in data we opened up a great conversation around how The Very Group uses data to better serve their customers by extracting the true value of the data to forensically understand the customers' needs and demands. We also spoke about the scale of the data landscape and its mission, how surfacing new channel data to marketing teams can drive value, and how demand forecasting helps improve customer experience and maximise revenue.

David Brear is the CEO of 11:FS and since his dream of being a sportsperson was crushed (along with the ligaments in his knee!) and he had to take a different path in life, he has worked in pretty much every angle of the financial services industry never losing that competitive desire to drive forwards and win. Having pitched, established and run billion-pound transformations for some of the biggest FS companies on the planet the realisation that "Digital Financials Services Is Only 1% Finished" has spurred his desire to establish an organisation that can actually support the industry through its greatest challenge. 11:FS is a challenger to the incumbent consultancies. They create innovative strategies and build out new propositions and ventures in the UK, US, Europe and Asia for some of the biggest brands on the planet. Alongside this 11:FS build in-house products from competitor benchmarking tools like 11:FS Pulse, to core banking and modern architecture systems like 11:FS Foundry. In 4 years 11:FS went from zero brand and zero revenues to a multimillion a month business with one of the hottest brands in fintech all with zero external investment in the group. During this podcast episode, Ben sits down with David to discuss the sporting and CEO mindset, and how David has created 10 banks across the world in 6 years as the industry is getting to grips with Digital Banking.