IWD 2025 Series Part 1 - Women Leading the Cloud – Breaking Barriers & Driving Innovation

To kick off our 2025 International Women’s Day series, Georgia and Matt sat down with Yasmin Benjamin, Head of Cloud and Finance, for an incredible conversation about navigating leadership, staying technical, and thriving as a woman in cloud.

🚀 Cloud & AI News Highlights

We covered some of the week’s biggest cloud and tech stories, including:

🔬 Quantum Race Heats Up – Google, Microsoft & AWS all making quantum moves (but don’t expect breakthroughs just yet).

📞 Skype & Amazon Chime Say Goodbye – Both platforms heading for retirement. Georgia reminisces about Chime.

🚀 Satellite Showdown– China’s “Space Sale” takes on Starlink, while Australia's National Broadband Network picks Amazon over Musk.

📱 iPhone Encryption Shakeup – UK pressures Apple to soften its backup encryption.

💬 Signal Stands Its Ground – May leave Sweden to protect message security.

💡 In the Spotlight: Yasmin Benjamin

Yasmin’s career is a masterclass in blending deep technical expertise with bold leadership.

With a background spanning systems engineering, AI & robotics, and even a current PhD in quantum computing (!), she’s proof you don’t have to choose between tech and leadership — you can own both.

Key Themes We Covered:

👩‍💻 From Engineer to Leader – How Yasmin stayed hands-on even as she moved up the ranks.

👶 Balancing Motherhood & Career – Keeping technical skills sharp during career breaks.

👩‍🚀 The Power of Community – Building networks to avoid feeling isolated as a senior woman in tech.

✨ Authentic Leadership – Why being yourself beats fitting the mould every time.

💰 The Reality of Cloud in Financial Services - If you thought banking was all cutting-edge tech — think again.

Yasmin gave us a behind-the-scenes look at where financial services really are:

🎶 Legacy Lives On – Yep, some banks are still running on systems from the disco era.

☁️ Hybrid Cloud is the Default – Most are juggling on-prem with Azure & AWS.

🤖 AI in Banking – Right now, it’s all about smarter chatbots & faster data processing (with RAG models ensuring accuracy).

📊 Data is (Still) Hard – Especially when compliance, structured & unstructured data all collide.

💬 Yasmin’s Advice for Women in Tech

🔧 Stay Technical – Don’t lose your hands-on skills, even in leadership roles.

🤝 Find Your People – Mentors, sponsors & allies make all the difference.

👨‍💼 Bring the Guys Along – Male allyship is critical to driving real change.

🌱 Pace Yourself – Careers are marathons, not sprints — focus on learning, not rushing to the top.

Bonus gem: Yasmin wrapped up by sharing her creative side — she wrote an e-book called "How The Two Worlds Collide”, blending her love of Star Trek & Star Wars. Tech leaders who write sci-fi? We’re here for it.

You can find it here: https://tayloryasmin.gumroad.com/l/eyqci