Lisa Herbert

Role: Managing director, Infinity Group

What does Infinity Group specialise in?

Using our unique products and methodologies we increase productivity and provide a secure and agile platform through our mastery of the Microsoft cloud. Supported by our industry leading managed services, we empower people to think bigger so they can achieve more.

Name one thing most people won't know about the company

The company was formed more than 20 years ago by combining a telephony service and a Microsoft service business. We added a D365 practice in 2013 and in 2021, added a Business Central component. Growing organically and not by acquisition helped us keep the positive culture that we are proud of today but also allowed us to move with the times and offer our clients current solutions for their evolving business needs.

How would you summarise your leadership style?

I like to lead by example and adopt a coaching leadership style to engage with our senior management team. At Infinity, my focus is on identifying and nurturing the individual strengths of each member of our management team as well as support their departmental strategies to enable us to work better together.

While I believe that my role is to collaborate with our executive stakeholders in carrying out our strategic direction, I work with our management team so that we can execute new strategies and interests while ensuring that current working conditions remain stable for our workforce.

Our current focus is on creating strong teams across Infinity that can communicate well and embrace each other's unique skillsets in order to get work done.

Does the industry have a diversity problem and, if so, why does this matter?

Statistics report that the tech industry still has a diversity challenge. I can only comment on the progress that I have seen over the last 25 years. It makes me proud to see the challenges that I faced in IT in the 90s not being the same experience that our young people face today. However, I realise that I have the honour of working with progressive, educated men who have been influenced by their mothers, sisters and daughters.

We celebrate our management team who are 50 per cent women-led and across the business, we are actively enthusiastic when we add women to our workforce. We take our cultural diversity just as seriously and I feel very lucky to have a role where I can influence our direction and participate in initiatives where we continually address the balance of diversity with the acquisition of skills.

Do you feel the outlook for women in the industry has changed at all in the last four years?

I feel that it is becoming less of a showcase to have women in all types of roles in the tech industry. Initially, all new initiatives run the risk of window dressing and women in IT could have been accused of this in the early stages of diversity awareness.

Over the last few years, I have seen more women being awarded influential roles because of the style of leadership they bring and the experience that they have deservedly acquired. Diversity balance continues to be something that we are all striving for.

The progression of big IT companies leading the way with diversity initiatives has now become the norm for all IT companies and the responsibility is seen to be less of a grudge

What I have seen is that actively balancing diversity in the workforce has been increasingly adopted by smaller companies in the tech industry - the progression of big IT companies leading the way with diversity initiatives has now become the norm for all IT companies and the responsibility is seen to be less of a grudge.

With CDW and Insight recently appointing female CEOs (alongside Crayon and Avanade), three of the top four global IT solutions providers are now female led. Is this a positive sign for the industry?

I believe it is. It will be real progress when the appointment of female CEOs are the norm and not a news piece. But I am satisfied that we are bursting through the glass ceiling where women's lofty aspirations were once curtailed.

We are bursting through the glass ceiling where women's lofty aspirations were once curtailed

Name one thing companies in our sector should do differently to ensure they are attracting, retaining and promoting more female staff?

We need to do more education of school-going girls - the types of roles that are available and the education paths that can be taken to achieve a career in tech. As women leaders, we come from a diverse background of education and experience but many women still started their careers in science-based tertiary education. This may be excluding many girls from thinking that there is a role for them in the tech industry.