BA Life on International Women’s Day
This weekend I was fortunate enough to spend some time in the company of these two special women…
From left to right – not including the dogs! – This is Julia Newell and Sally Rogan
If you have been following my blog, you will know I wrote about them on International Woman’s Day last year.
Borrowing from that blog post…
Sally Rogan – UX, User Researcher, Content Designer
Having spent the best part of 2 years working with Sally, I’ve learned so much from her calm and perceptive nature. She has a fantastic ability to empathise with a customer and instinctively know when to say the right thing and when to let things go quiet. We’ll be firm friends forever.
Julia Newell – Business Analyst, Director of IIBA UK, Co-Founder of BALIFE
Julia has so much energy! She works tirelessly to make all the branches in Scotland and the North of England a great success, enabling learning for all those who attend the meetings. Julia also extends this learning through the mentoring programme. And of course, another forever friend.
Clearly, two great women, and they got on like a house on fire, which was wonderful…
But I’m not finished yet…
Both are involved in BA Life, the BA Festival in a Day. Julia is a co-founder and Sally spoke last year and will be doing something again this year. Despite appearances, and the occasional glass of something nice, that is why we met …we were actually working (honestly!)
They had given up their Saturday to come to my home and work on a promotional video for the “Sally and friends” UX talk at the forthcoming BA Life conference on 26th May 2022.
(If you’re a BA and haven’t got your ticket yet, then why not!? You will then see why these two were so happy to be involved. You can get more info and your ticket at www.balife.co.uk)
And yes, as you can see, we had a couple of furry interlopers as well!
Anyway, it got me thinking of all the great women involved in bringing this year’s event to you…
Great women in action
BA Life is powered by women! 😉
- Over half of our speakers are women! The day kicks off with Gina Buckney, with the first keynote of the day, entitled ‘The Power to Progress Your Life’. Many women will share their skills and expertise throughout the day, including Kathy Berkridge, Kristy Dean, Angela Prentner-Smith, Gemma Daly, Neeti Ohri, Veena Hirani, Sally, Sarah Murphy, and Liz Calder and Saffron House who will be talking about how they inspire young BAs.
- We also have strong women behind the scenes helping to organise and volunteer, and again, half of our BA Life team are women. Check out the BA Life website for more details (www.balife.co.uk).
- And of course, Julia, who you saw earlier, is one of these amazing women.
And let’s not forget our sponsors, who have helped us in our mission to enable Business Analysts to be effective and create future value in business through inspiration, inclusion, and innovation.
Many of these sponsors have women playing significant roles in their success and we gain a lot of strength from them, like Vicky Di Ciacca, CEO and founder of Be Positive.
I’m not sure why there are so many amazing women in the Business Analysis community. I just know I feel blessed to work on BA Life with so many fantastic women and am honoured to celebrate their success on International Women’s Day.
Here’s to you ladies!
