Breaking The Tech Industry’s Glass Ceiling … In 1962
Happy To Be Here
Greta Johnsen
4.6 • 924 Ratings
🗓️ 15 June 2018
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“I’d been patronized as a child,” Dame Stephanie Shirley — a.k.a. Steve — tells us this week. “I wasn’t going to be patronized as an adult.”
The kind of company that Stephanie Shirley wanted to work for didn’t exist in 1962, so she created her own.
“I wanted a company that was suitable for me [and] that I would like to work in,” Shirley says. “And I knew there were lots of women who had also hit the glass ceiling and were completely and utterly ignored by the industry.”
She’s talking about the software industry, which was even more of a boys club in the sixties. So Shirley started her own business, hired a bunch of women from IBM, and even changed her first name from Stephanie to Steve — in order to get the attention of potential clients through promotional materials.
Shirley tells us her incredible story, which includes creating a company that would later be valued at $3 billion, being made a dame by Queen Elizabeth, and keeping herself mentally and physically fit in the midst of life's many hurdles.
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Transcript
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| 0:28.3 | Listen wherever you get your podcast. |
| 0:40.6 | From WBEZ Chicago, I am Greta Johnson, and this is Power Up, a project from Nerdap Podcast. |
| 0:48.1 | In a fast and loud and busy world, sometimes it can feel exhausting, just trying to keep up. |
| 0:52.6 | So we're asking fascinating people how they handle life's hurdles. |
| 0:55.3 | How do they set themselves up for success, power up, |
| 1:00.5 | and recharge their batteries? Today we're talking with an OG in the world of business, |
| 1:04.6 | an incredibly successful tech entrepreneur you likely haven't heard of. |
| 1:10.5 | So before we begin, what should I call you? Do you prefer Stephanie or Steve? |
| 1:16.2 | Well, if we were face to face, you could give me a little courtesy and then it could be Dame Stephanie. But I think because it's radio, we'll just have Steve, please. |
| 1:22.5 | This is Dame, Dame Steve Shirley. She is the founder of freelance programmers, and her story is pretty |
| 1:30.4 | incredible. She started the business in England in 1962. She hired almost exclusively women |
| 1:36.5 | who worked from home, and by the time she stepped aside several decades later, the company |
| 1:41.1 | was valued at $3 billion. So how did she do it? Today, I talk with Steve about the |
| 1:49.0 | extraordinary obstacles she had to overcome and what she calls the facts of life for a businesswoman |
| 1:54.9 | in the 60s. So when did you decide to not be called Stephanie and to be called Steve? |
| 2:03.5 | Well, I date from the days greater when women were not really expected to do serious business. |
| 2:09.3 | It might be all right to run a little hat shop or something like that. |
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