Tell us about yourself? 

I am fortunate to have worn many hats in my career, starting as an SAP techie to now leading teams through SAP implementations. I have a hands-on supportive approach allowing me to deliver excellent results and I thrive in the excitement of working in complex and transformational projects.



I am passionate about growth, both professionally and personally. In this constantly changing and evolving world of information technology, I've learnt to welcome the change that comes along with it. I get excited about innovative technologies and I've become resilient to new environments and challenges.

What inspired you to have a career in SAP?

After university, my first job was a graduate programmer for a manufacturing company which I was awarded at the university's co-operative education program. I was coding in a very old language on a legacy application and later moved on to a company that used SAP R/3. Back then, the SAP GUI screen look and feel was modern and was so different to the black and green screen that I was using. I was very interested and inspired to learn this innovative technology. I was later seconded to the SAP team where I had the opportunity to code in ABAP. That's how my career in SAP started.

SAP has always been a forward thinking organisation and I am seeing a lot of changes in the technology. It's an exciting time, which inspires me to continue my career in SAP.

Tell us about your career journey in tech / SAP to date 

As an Abap programmer I have always been curious about "why I do, what I do?". I had the desire to understand what the reason behind a piece of code that I was writing was. So, I joined a company that allowed me to experience a global greenfield implementation of SAP SD, MM and FICO. It challenged me and allowed me the ability to experience and be involved in all aspects of the project, with a full end to end implementation starting from RFP's, all the way to support. This fundamentally built my toolset of skills in project implementations.

Later I commenced to expand on other SAP modules, in logistics and supply chain management, for one of Australia's largest privatised organisation. I was a SAP Functional working on the company's complex supply chain solutions, IT integration, distribution operations, linehaul, freight forwarding and warehouse management. The highlight during my time there, was the company's world first implementation of SAP TM9.1 solution. SAP TM was a leading edge technology and through self-learning and training I rapidly grasped the technology and further cemented my knowledge through formal bootcamp training with SAP. Soon, I took a senior position and led the functional and technical teams and continue to rollout the company's Transportation Management Solutions to the other customer operations which involved deployment across 25 sites in Australia. I led the build teams to do a further five more Transportation Management Solution implementations and system upgrades.



I later joined a large rail freight operator and a top 50 ASX company in their journey of Freight Management Transformation project as a Solution Delivery Lead. My recent accomplishment there was delivering a highly integrated and complex solution with SAP HANA and SAP TM. Both the business and IT gained many benefits from the success of the project. For example, the solution simplified and de-risked their business process. It consolidated their fragmented landscape and decommissioned old systems that has reached end-of-life. It is always rewarding when your work contributes to the success of IT and the organisation as a whole.

Is diversity in the workplace something that you think about ?

Absolutely. It is at a forefront of my mind and studies shows that companies that integrate it into their organisations, make their business more competitive and profitable. I've been in my IT profession for over 20 years and I have seen some organisations embrace it more than others.

How do you see the gender landscape in SAP and why do you think Tech/SAP have been male dominated in the past ?

Generally over the years, the presence of women in the SAP landscape has improved, but we have a long way to go. I hope to see a lot more women in the senior leadership roles and we need the help of men to make this happen.



The other area where there is still a big gender gap is the technical area. I don’t think this is unique to the SAP landscape. It applies to IT as a whole, statistics show that there is a gender gap in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). This is one of the reason why it has been always male dominated. I hope that this will improve through educational incentives to encourage female students to pursue a career in these fields.