Sharing knowledge and celebrating the achievement of Women in IT
In December 2021, the Women in IT Summit & Awards series, announced Derya Sousa, Co-Founder / CEO of Kianda Technologies, as the winner of Women in IT, Entrepreneur of the Year 2021.
According to a report by The World Bank, women make up less than 40% of the total global workforce. Also, looking beyond gender, we find a notorious lack of representation globally of black and minority ethnic professionals. As well as workers with disabilities and those from the LGBTQ+ community. Diversity at all intersections is critical in tech, as it enables companies to create better and safer products. That is, products that take everyone into consideration, not just one section of society.
The prestigious Women in IT initiative, presented by DiversityQ, has been working to change these statistics since 2015. More clearly, by providing a regional and global platform to showcase advocates, role models and allies working together to break digital boundaries and promote the importance of a more inclusive tech sector.
The Women in IT Summit and Awards
After a year of buzzword-decorated diversity, equity, inclusion & accessibility conversations within the tech industry – and more than 5 years of diversity reporting for some organisations, this summit focused on Tech for the better. As well as that, the summit explored how we can use technology to create a positive impact and social change. And it also highlighted the core problems with inclusion & equity in tech firms in Ireland.
The Women in IT Summit Ireland returned virtually on December 7 2021. During the event, we were joined by a powerhouse panel of tech experts and D&I advocates who shared valuable recommendations on creating true diversity in IT.
This year the awards shone a light on outstanding talent in the industry. Also, the employers that are implementing diversity initiatives to spearhead real change in the sector, and identify new role models to inspire more diverse talent into careers in tech. The winners were announced in an online ceremony at the summit. Certainly, the event celebrated the outstanding achievements of colleagues and peers in the past challenging year.
Kianda’s CEO wins Women in IT Entrepreneur of the Year 2021
Our CEO Derya Sousa was successfully titled the Women in IT, Entrepreneur of the Year 2021
This individual and her company are in a high growth competitive market and they are making some serious waves. Furthermore, the company has focused on being lean and agile and this plays a crucial role in helping them to increase their customer base by over 40% and double their staff in the final 6 months of 2021. Judges can see great employee and customer growth as well as a compelling business model. This leader’s involvement in developing a no code application has shown real insight into the future of application development. The development of this kind of interface will empower non-IT staff to build powerful customized applications. It opens up the world of applications to people with non-tech backgrounds. It is inspirational, powerful and creates a mountain of opportunities.
After being announced as Female Entrepreneur of the Year, Derya says:
“Thank you to all who voted and honoured me with this award. Certainly, it is a pleasure to receive this recognition for the work we do at Kianda, making the creation of technology more inclusive by empowering people regardless of their technical skills with our innovative no-code low code application development platform.
Moreover, thank you to the Women in IT Summit and Awards Series and everyone involved in this initiative…”
About Kianda
Kianda is a no-code application development and business process automation platform aiming to make digitalisation easier for people. In short, it empowers business users to create enterprise applications. And, without the need for coding.
Winning Women in IT Entrepreneur of the Year 2021, is a fantastic achievement for Derya Sousa and another important milestone reached by Kianda. That is, following the announcement of an investment of €1.5 million for Kianda from investor Kernel Capital.
Early in 2020, the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) announced Kianda Technologies as the winner of Female Entrepreneur in Residence 2020. Derya was one of the leading lights for National Women’s Enterprise Day (NWED) 2020 and guest speaker 2021 regarding “Internationalisation right for your business?” In short, NWED is an initiative set up by Local Enterprise Office, Ireland, bringing together female entrepreneurs across Ireland.
Kianda Technologies, who are supported by Local Enterprise Office (LEO) Fingal, were winners of the “Best Export Business”, at the National Enterprise Awards (NEA) 2021.
The company has achieved significant penetration in global export markets with Kianda application development and business automation platform, that streamlines business processes in areas such as finance, HR and quality. As a result, Kianda has grown from strength-to-strength in the last couple of years, and continues with strong plans for 2022 and beyond.
Related articles:
“Dublin-based Kianda secures €1.5m investment with plans to double the team size by early 2022”
“Kianda wins NTMA entrepreneur in residence programme 2020-21″
“Kianda wins Ireland’s Best Export Award at National Enterprise Awards 2021″
“Found of Kianda on being a woman in a male-dominated sector” featuring Derya Sousa in Silicon Republic – one of Ireland’s leading tech sources.
