Week 14 of 52 — Women in Tech Series
Welcome to our Women in Tech series. Over the next 52 weeks, we’ll spotlight inspiring women shaping the technology industry — sharing their stories, achievements, and insights.
From founders and engineers to designers, researchers, and community leaders, this series celebrates the diverse voices driving innovation and building the future of tech.
How did you first get into tech/innovation?
I am starting to be a “veteran”!
My first foray into e-Learning was back in 2007, a lifetime ago in the tech world. My job was large scale behaviour change with the World Anti-Doping Agency. Our mission was to prevent athletes from using performance-enhancing drugs. We had to educate roughly 15,000 athletes worldwide. Technology was therefore a great tool to help with that mission. It’s important to put things back in context : in 2007, the use of any form of technology in the workplace was extremely rare and culturally weird. Using a spider phone for conference calls was about as innovative as it got. It was expensive. So engaging with e-Learning was a big leap!
What did your career path look like before landing your current role?
My background is philosophy. My main interest is how humans make decisions. I wrote my Ph.D. on how we decide what is right and wrong in the world of sport. The reason that is such an important question is because it defines what behaviours are encouraged/celebrated and discouraged/sanctioned. This applies within any groups of people.
I worked in drug prevention, then applied what I had learnt to integrity issues : different forms of cheating, corruption, financial integrity. This got me into the private sector, where I applied behaviour change methods to help organisations optimise performance. It is amazing what you can do when you understand behaviour dynamics.
I learnt a huge amount. I became more and more aware of systemic biases : when you are trying to change behaviours, you have to change the systems in which people operate. So my big question was : how can we force a system change ? And that is the beauty of behaviour change : it makes this social evolution possible. I therefore decided to put everything I knew together, and Enough App was born.
What does your role involve day-to-day?
For the development phase, my role was the design of the product. It was a lot of content creation. I tend to have to warm up to get my brain going, and once it’s going, I get completely sucked into producing. So I have spurts. There wasn’t much of a routine. It was very cathartic, because it made me aware of all the skills I didn’t have to be able to manage my situation differently. And I am so amazed and grateful to my younger self for having got through that phase. I wouldn’t want anyone to feel so alone and helpless… hence Enough App !
I know myself by now, so I surrounded myself quite early on by great people with complementary skills – someone to help with systems, automations and admin. Someone else to help with copy – I tend to take 3 paragraphs to say something that can take one sentence ! I was therefore able to focus on where I can best contribute to the mission.
Now that I am happy that the product is of sufficient quality to be market tested, my rôle is changing to raising awareness and advocacy. It is a transition, and like any change, it requires energy ! But I am doing what I love doing, and that is talking to people.
What challenges have you faced working in tech, and how did you overcome them?
The biggest challenge for me was… me. Women are conditioned to self-doubt, and I am no exception. The negative self-talk, the self-doubt, the lack of belief… but what saves me is that I know to ignore it. I know, at a rational level, that it isn’t true. I have a Ph.D., I became a CEO aged 36, I am a qualified pilot, so something must be working in my brain… but emotionally, it’s a different story. It does make things more difficult, and take longer, but I have accepted that. I respond with a lot of self-care and self-compassion. I have therapy and coaching. And I hope that with me sticking with it, I will contribute to helping others like me to persevere. And that one person at a time, it will get easier for everyone.
Was there a moment or opportunity that helped you break into the industry?
Yes. I had a complete breakdown ! My health and mental health went out the window. It forced me to have a taste of my own medicine. I started to observe my behaviours in the workplace, and the behaviour dynamics at play. The world favours confidence over competence, and visibility over impact – this is scientifically proven. But this is only possible because the kind, quiet and competent people do the actual work.
Why? Why do these people consistently deliver without recognition? That is the question I set out to answer and it is actually fascinating. There is such relief and hope in understanding how this happens. Once I started talking about this, there is not one single person who didn’t react with a « OMG, THAT’S ME ! »
So I decided I had to take everything I knew and give access to as many kind and competent people. That is how the app came about.
What advice would you give to women who want to work in tech or innovation?
GO FOR IT. I did learn a few things.
Take your time. We are always under huge pressure to go fast. But in my experience, there was an incompressible amount of time that was necessary for me to reach the quality I wanted. And there is nothing I could have done to accelerate that.
In innovation, it is key to allow ourselves to be surprised. By nature, innovation is not something that currently exists, therefore letting go of outcomes is really important. I am so glad I did, because Enough App is so much better than what I originally had in mind. I could not have conceived this purely intellectually (as in thought it without experimenting in the real world).
Beware of advice from people selling you something. I got myself into a right tizzy because I kept listening to contradictory advice from « gurus » or people trying to sell me softwares or services or business coaching. It was all noise, and from where I am standing today, I can see that none of it was relevant to me.
Surround yourself with great people. Good energy, supportive and competent. Join networks. Have chats. Anything that stays on your to do list for long is either unnecessary or needs to be delegated – do not beat yourself up about it.
What do you love about working in the South West tech ecosystem?
The South West is a very active scene. I would love to get more involved now that I am coming out of my product design and development cave.
Connect with Léa!
Follow Léa’s journey and connect with her on LinkedIn here
