Norwegian model is getting women to the top

The Danish IT Industry Association has launched a talent program targeting women, who seeks to reach the top in a rather male dominant ICT industry.

About fifty women who all have ambitions to reach the top attended the launch of the talent program last week. “The sector needs to get the most out of its talents– also the women”, says Morten Bangsgaard, CEO of IT-Branchen. “The past three years ITB has been working determined to get more women involved in management. Now we take it a step further and launch our own talent program.”

The inspiration comes from the Norwegian sister organization IKT Norway, which has had great success with the talent program Oda. “In September we started our fourth team in Norway. The program has proved to be very effective. For the past teams 50% of the participants have experienced increased budgetary responsibility and 24 % has achieved a top leader position in their company”, says Hege Skryseth, member of the Board for IKT Norway.

The program, which is one of the initiatives presented by the steering group Women Leaders in IBT, includes mentoring from absolute top people within the industry, workshops with female role models combined with an education for personal and professional development. “Our focus is on promoting female leadership within the IT industry, an initiative which will help producing concrete results”, says Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl, chairman of the steering group.

Dell, FDC, Microsoft and KMD are among the companies who have already joined the program. The program is offered to the ITB of Cognitive Learn Center by Sigrid Nygaard Johansen, who has a career from the IT industry herself.