So why speak about digital transformation? I say, why not? Women in tech are holding roles that bring very relevant impact to organizations in so many ways.And this is not a hypothesis or a conjecture. This impact is supported by fact based research across multiple sources and creates a value proposition that is very unique for organizations and societies. And so it is today that I remind all of us about the quote from Malala Yousafzai, the globally recognized Pakistani education activist who encountered strong opposition when she took a stance opposing restrictions on female education in her home country. That quote is, there's a moment when you have to choose whether it be silent or to stand up. And it's time for us to stand up. The facts speak so strongly for themselves. When women occupy senior technical roles, return on investment rises by 66%.

This is from Fortune 500 companies that have a higher ratio of women in tech positions realizing this increase. And even recently, Entrepreneur Magazine confirmed similar statistics from the Forbes research done in 2023 and Entrepreneur Magazine from 2024. So to not take advantage of women in tech in the workplace seems like a gamble that most businesses shouldn't think about taking. Companies with a higher gender diversity blend deliver better returns and out and outperform on average less diverse organizations. But despite these clear benefits, women hold only 14% of tech roles in Europe. And this signals for me a fundamental disconnect that organizations still completely misunderstand as to what drives digital transformation.

So remember the quote, there's a moment when you have to choose whether to be silent or stand up. Let's remember that throughout the session today. Let's be honest, for those of us that are on this call and even those that are outside of this session, there is, many of us that have witnessed the failure of digital transformations despite significant investments. Many digital transformations fall short. And the reason is rarely technical. It comes down to people and our leadership of people. Traditional leadership undermines digital change. And while I cannot read the virtual room, I see and I feel the look based on our experiences collectively. And the truth is that digital transformation is not about technology at all. It's about people. And the biggest challenge that any digital transformation has is to change the way people think.

People meaning people representing your teams and people representing your peers and leadership, your business, your sponsors, your employees, your partners, and this is why one of the key reasons why digital transformations fail. Hierarchical control based models completely stifle innovation and creativity and the freedom that is needed to unlock this. Driving product innovation, think about that, is completely contradictory to traditional leadership. Here are the same studies from Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine show that companies with female leadership in digital and gender diversity have 34 of their revenues deriving from innovative products and services. Why is this? I'll tell you why. Women tend to possess a more intuitive and intimate understanding of customer needs, Diverse customer needs across generations, whether it's aging elderly parents to young children and everything in between. And this intuitive, well connected understanding of customer needs ends up driving a unique innovative solution to create products that are then tailored to customer needs.

Identifying new solutions is also goes beyond simple product innovation. Women in tech offer different methods and different strategies for how to think about solving problems. So teams reflecting gender diversity are much more likely to understand the pain points of different demographics and to develop these unique solutions. Trust over control. How else do you create an inclusive culture to enable a circular economy to facilitate introducing innovation? An inclusive work environment brings much greater collaboration, openness to creativity, to encourage teams to experiment and to take risks, and also accelerate productivity, which in the end benefits customers, organizations, and society. This concept of the circular economy, people are at the core for this type of an impact. And when we think about AI or industry four dot o, the emergence of soft skills as the human element side by side with the advent of the acceleration of these technology advantages, for me, is a strong indication that women are digital transformation.

The power of servant leadership. Let's talk about this. There's many different styles of leadership. Some of you are, I'm sure, very familiar with autocratic, and, very traditional styles of leadership, but collaborative, participative, etcetera. But servant leadership is a fundamental connection to why women are digital transformation. And, again, studies have shown why this is in comparison to traditional leadership. Servant leadership is much more vision driven. It's about removing obstacles. It's about creating autonomy. It's about putting your team first and thinking about what it is that they need to deliver, to enable, to empower them. Also, servant leadership, the clear vision requires very clear communication, same direction with purpose.

And so as women are digital transformation, the servant leadership style tends to be a much more innate approach and an innate style for how we work, how we empower, how we enable our teams for success. So if you think about it in terms of increasing team performance, engagement, and innovation to drive results organically with the right type of leadership style as the framework to enable, this is the power of women heart digital transformation. Let's look at why women excel at digital transformation. We talked about innovation. We talked about our unique ability to solve problems because of the context with which we come from. We talked about putting people first. Servant leadership also styles as one of the styles instead of the very autocratic top down traditional leadership style. Again, think about the quote from, the onset of, of the session. There's a moment when you have to choose whether to be silent or stand up.

And each of these are elements to give us the confidence that we already have, but embellishing it, really having it come out, as far as taking the position to stand up and not be silent. So when we think about digital transformation failing, let's think about the elements that allow it to succeed when you look at successful digital transformation. Adaptability and flexibility. When you look at generations that are entering the workforce currently in the last five to ten years, they are much more geared towards, organizations and they're much more tuned into organizations and have a propensity to be much more adaptable and flexible to change. Part of that is because they've grown up in a world of technology unlike potentially older generations. So they're much more akin to adapting, adjusting, and learning quickly. And also as women, in multiple roles that we wear and hats that we wear, this is an innate skill. So coming into a digital transformation that is not a linear path. Right? It requires connecting the dots. It requires constant problem solving.

This is one of the strong traits that we embody and and contribute to why we excel at digital transformation. Collaborative leadership, I mentioned earlier, encouraging open communication, bringing teams in the, the human connection, both, you know, within your teams organically with your peers, as well as bringing in your senior stakeholders and your partners, being very transparent, being very direct, being very open.

You know, this is not a world any longer where traditional leadership and being very opaque, excels at, at, at doing business. Empathy and emotional intelligence, so driving intuitive solutions. This is nothing that we need to go to an Ivy League school or, you know, nothing that we need to have necessarily special training. It is something that we embody in driving intuitive solutions as opposed to looking at traditional ways. We bring a very different lens and a different perspective. We also, in line with collaborative leadership, foster very inclusive cultures and make sure that because we have, I think, grown up in in a world or in an environment potentially many of us where inclusion has not been necessarily we have not felt included in many settings.

We tend to have a higher level of awareness and tend to air on the side of making sure that a team member, a stakeholder, a partner, you know, is part of the overall culture in terms of communication, in terms of involvement. And building consensus, I think if you think about what our roles are, both personally and professionally, you know, building consensus is at the core of what we do and how we do it. But why are we held back? Working for Unicredit, I can speak to statistics in Italy and Europe. So we have a very, very high percentage of graduates, in Italy at top universities that are female majoring and studying STEM. When we look beyond to the women that are in senior leadership roles in Italy, that rate significantly drops. In the first five years and then ten years, this is where the cliff drops in terms of you have a sixty percent graduation rate.

Within the first five years, you lose a third of the women. Instead of majored in STEM, then taking roles in STEM. So they completely exit and either take roles. In Italy, there's a strong cultural, working a strong cultural environment with family. So this is one factor, but there's also the factor in terms of the traditional leadership. The not having diversity and inclusion, not having a collaborative style, that women do not feel that despite what they've studied, that they can apply that, you know, into a setting, where they can contribute and excel and thrive. And then the following five years, so the next ten years, is when you see the subsequent drop off. And this is based on studies from the top universities and employers in Italy. When we look across Europe, it's not so much different in the sense that you have, a very high rate of women studying STEM, but then you see that the the women that are entering with STEM degrees, taking on tech roles, and this is not necessarily leadership roles, but you see a a drop off here as well in that transition.

So when people talk about the pipeline isn't there and we need to, you know, have more women entering STEM. Always, we can have more in the pipeline for sure. But I think we need to think about also what is happening with this cliff where women and the barriers that are in the work environment, the leadership styles are not there, you know, the mentoring, the sponsorship. Whereas when you see if we compare and contrast in Europe, men with STEM degrees entering tech roles is almost double. And again, you know, I I mentioned Italy in particular. I'm sure this can be extrapolated elsewhere, but there is a cultural bias that first discourages women from entering. At least that's the the myth. And while that may be true, that cultural bias, I think also, as you can see from the statistics, carries over where then staying in that technical field becomes a problem because there's a perception that I am not I don't feel like I'm a part of technology at this organization.

I'm not feeling inclusive. You know? So the the best part of what I excelled at at university is not able to thrive and and flourish. And then the last point I would mention, again, barring that this is Italy specific, when entering tech, I often see women moved into support roles. So governance roles, administration roles, process roles. And while there is clearly a value to each of these roles, I see women less in content based roles, meaning product, engineering, you know, cybersecurity. Again, just generalizing, I see many more women in support roles than in a leadership role pushing and driving and owning. So summarizing here in the last minutes, the value proposition for women driving transformation, and I would ask all of us here to remember the quote, there's a moment when you have to choose whether to be silent or to stand up.

We have a war on talent. We have an issue with diversity. We have an issue with retention. We have an issue with product innovation. The value proposition for women, our digital transformation is clear. The studies and the statistics show consistently year after year, multiple sources. I simply quoted Entrepreneur Magazine and Forbes, HBR, and other sources. You should do the research on your own and find the same. When women are in leadership roles in digital, we drive economic growth. There is a direct correlation to that revenue growth being tied to product innovation and the success of digital transformations, not the failure. And the last point is that this is not done top down by a single person at the c level, but it is done on a grassroots effort, leveraging and understanding each member of your team, what they bring, how to bring the best out in them, how to connect with them on a human level, and how to invest in them, whether it's training or time.

And when you bring out the invest, the best in your employees, you get the best results. Thank you everyone for the inspiration and the comments. If I may just take one more minute, the strategic action plan for change is for each of us to take away to address the inequities in the system, what we can do individually, for each of us to foster inclusive environments, and for each of you personally, and for each of you with your teams to invest in education and skills development.

And what you can do, take within your own control because women are digital transformation. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Jana, for that powerful and insightful session. Your perspective on women leading digital transformation is both timely and deeply inspiring. Let's give, let's give Jona a big round of applause everyone, and, thank you so much for today's session. I've shared her, LinkedIn profile link, so do connect with her over the LinkedIn as well. Well. Thank you.

Thank you for your time, everyone. Have a good conference.

Thank you. Bye bye.