Victoria Driscoll

One of the Tech Women Celebration 50 - women changing the ratio of the tech workforce

Victoria Driscoll is Programme Director of IT Infrastructure change programmes at Rackspace. During her time at Rackspace she has delivered networking, data centre, server upgrades, cabling and most recently a private cloud productisation and migration programme of all BT's cloud infrastructure. Victoria has delivered programmes out to £5m in value across up to eight countries bringing change to thousands internally and externally.

What attracted Victoria to a career in technology?

"Honestly I fell into it. I worked for the IT suppliers to the London 2012 Olympics and enjoyed the diversity of the roles and the interesting characters I was working with. I was offered a project manager role with Atos and then the rest is history."

Victoria, like some of her Tech Women Celebration 50 cohort, is the go to for projects which are running into trouble.

"I am the go-to person for programmes that are going off plan. I make decisions quickly and am assertive but never rude. Most recently I took the reins from a contractor and turned around the programme and delivered to accelerated timelines. The customer and management team are impressed with my work ethic and determination to deliver to a high standard despite a reduced team size. I have some great testimonials on my Linkedin!"

What does she find most challenging about working in such a male dominated space?

"Having to prove myself with every delivery. I find that women lose their amazing reputations very quickly and have to earn them over and over again. It's exhausting and somewhat disheartening that our reputation doesn't carry and build to the next roles."

Despite having to prove herself time and time again, Victoria also acts as a mentor and sponsor for other women in tech.

"I do free coaching, I am sponsor to a number of women in IT, supporting Graduate and Apprentices in how to navigate the IT world."