Working women are keenly aware of the juggling and multiple-hat-wearing that must be done in the face of the current global health crisis. Professional women in RPA (robotic process automation), whose careers are built around transforming business through efficiency and productivity, are now finding themselves working to maintain productivity, lead teams, and meet KPIs while managing households, children, and other personal responsibilities.  

Achievement is baked into Sidney Madison Prescott’s DNA. Her education was marked by distinction (magna cum laude and honors designations) that extended to her career, which included a post heading intelligent process automation for a leading global investment firm. Last month, she joined digital music powerhouse, Spotify, where she’s now creating and managing the company’s global Intelligent Automation program, encompassing RPA (Robotic Process Automation,) Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence.

Sidney is also a prolific champion of women in technology. She is a founding member of Chief, a career network that connects and supports female leaders, and currently heads the east coast chapter of Women in Tech. Yet, she still finds time for another passion: snowboarding. This overachiever seems to balance it all perfectly. 

It takes someone bold to transition from a chosen career path to a completely different one. Bold is just one word that describes Maria Teofanidu, who after a decade working in finance at Coca-Cola Hellenic, moved to robotic process automation (RPA). Colleagues also call her bright, driven, hard-working, and loyal.

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Maria used all of those attributes to establish Coca-Cola Hellenic’s RPA operating model. Now she leads a team managing transactional processes automation for efficiencies across the business, which last year sold 2.3 billion cases of product, reaching 615 billion people in 28 countries. And did we mention she speaks four languages fluently? It’s tough not to be just a little bit jealous and a lot impressed.

Debby de Gelder is all about driving business, creating efficient operations, and prioritizing human capital. That’s her job, but lucky for her, those are also her passions. At Visma|Raet, a leading European supplier of business-critical software to companies, organizations, and the public sector, she focuses on continuously improving customer and employee experiences and achieving customers’ human resource goals and strategic business objectives.

Debby brings a generalist perspective with the ability to acquire in-depth knowledge around specific businesses and technologies quickly. It’s this combination that makes her value modern approaches to work—lean, agile, and collaborative environments—a lover of innovation, including robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and a champion of diverse and inclusive teams.

Sneha Kapoor can be characterized as a talented, zealous learner with a tremendous work ethic. At IDC Financial Insights, she leads regional research and consulting on RPA, Intelligent Automation, AI, and cloud computing for financial services in Asia/Pacific. With close to 14 years of experience, Sneha provides thought leadership and strategic guidance on key technology trends and predictions and the overall impact of these technologies on technology buyers, vendors, and IT service organizations.  

Whether leading consulting projects and custom research or assisting clients with market intelligence and business practices, she is regularly in front and center – presenting to C-suite and senior-level executives in the region and a keynote speaker at industry events. It’s all in a day’s work for Sneha. 

Sarah Burnett is an executive vice president and distinguished analyst at Everest Group, with global responsibility for the company’s Service Optimization Technologies (SOT) research program. Sarah and her team have produced some of the most in-depth reports and thought-provoking papers in the automation field, covering Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and process mining, and shedding light on global service provider’s capabilities in these fields, best strategies for adoption, and best practices implementing business process automation.  

But Sarah doesn’t stop there. She’s also chair of BCSWomen, the women’s group of the British Chartered Institute for IT (BCS), and founder of AI Accelerator, a program of free AI events, seminars, and webcasts by experts, to encourage more women into the field of AI. One of Computer Weekly’s top 50 most influential people in the UK technology sector, Sarah is a regular speaker at client and industry events and webinars, and an active social media contributor (@SarahBurnett). 

As vice president of IDC's Intelligence Process Automation Market Research and Advisory Services, Maureen focuses on the portfolio of technologies that improve and automate processes. She is particularly interested in cloud-native and event-driven architectures, AI-embedded software products, event stream processing, predictive analytics, robotic process automation, digital assistants, and API management. From her first tech role as a programmer for the University of Michigan to now, Maureen has been captivated by how technology shapes our world – an ideal background for the RPA and automation insights and intelligence she shares with today’s global leaders.

It seems that Iris Sclar’s path to RPA was almost predestined. After an early position as a programmer with software and services provider Amdocs, she moved on to a senior consulting role with the company, refining her business process design and management skills and gaining experience with a varied customer base. Now, after nine years with Bank Leumi, an Israeli financial institution with branches worldwide, she may have found her ideal position. Leading the organization’s robotics department and expanding RPA initiatives, she’s able to effect real change, enhancing commercial outcomes and customer experiences while also improving employees’ daily work lives.

Welcome to our inaugural international Women in RPA profile!  We're proud to feature Elena Christoper as our very first Women in RPA honoree!

Elena Christopher is Senior Vice President of Research at HFS Research, which provides companies/enterprises with insights into innovations such as automation, AI and blockchain and how they impact business operations. Elena exemplifies what we had in mind when we launched this initiative – a smart, accomplished woman and out-of-the-box thinker making a difference in Robotic Process Automation (RPA). She’s also a busy mother, avid runner, and sometime-chef who loves to travel (and is confident we all will again soon). Like so many professional women today, she excels in many areas, a talented multitasker who seems to do it all with ease. 

Today is International Women’s Day. As women in technology, we’re part of a burgeoning community succeeding in a dynamic and challenging industry. We’ve chosen today to kick off Kryon’s global Women in RPA campaign to highlight the many accomplished women in our industry. Women are blazing trails in every part of the tech world, and many are leading digital organizational transformation in banking, telecommunications, manufacturing, travel, and countless other industries. 

The equality gap / Closing the gap  
Women in RPA mirror women in other sectors of technology – talented, committed and rising in the ranks but too few in number. The simple fact is we’re still underrepresented, especially the higher we climb.