Voice of Experience: Liv Sandbaek, Managing Director, Technology, Accenture

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

In her 20 year career in technology, Liv Sandbaek has climbed the ranks at Accenture to become Managing Director of Technology in the company’s UK office. In fact, she’s become so well regarded that she was recently awarded by Science and Technology award at the CBI and Real Business’ 2011 First Women Awards.

According to Sandbaek, women have the skills to get ahead – but often lack the confidence to take charge. She said, “Women need to feel 100% confident to do a job before they accept, but men will volunteer for anything. We need to take a few chances here – it’s all to do with the confidence you feel inside.”

A Career in IT

After earning her Master’s of Science from the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, she moved to the UK. In 1990, she began a job with Andersen Consulting as a programmer.

For the next eight years her responsibilities grew and she was promoted to a senior executive in 1998, handling large system development within the financial services. In 2009, she was named Managing Director of Technology.

Recently, she took leadership of an internal strategic industrialization program at the company. “The goal is to improve productivity at Accenture,” she explained, and it means reviewing processes and training for coders, unit testing, and design. “I’m also looking into providing training for new things like agile, mobile, and the cloud.”

She continued, “We have leads in every one of our 53 countries. It’s very exciting to work internally.”

Challenges

“One thing to fix is that we see a lot of women dropping out after their first two years,” she said. “And these two years are probably the worst in my mind. As a coder, you’re sitting there by yourself, and then also as a tester. But really, you need a firm grounding. You need roots so you can climb up.”

She continued, “We are finding ways to make coding and testing a better experience for women – like providing more opportunities for teamwork. And new methods like agile, I think, are the way to go from a personal point of view.”

“Of course many people love doing the coding,” she added. “Mainly, the challenges for women are not just in our industry.” One issue, she said, was “time pressure.”

Sandbaek explained, “How do you focus your time, to combine with your family? It’s hard and requires a lot of planning.”

Advice for Women in Technology

One thing Sandbaek wishes she had known early in her career was to take a longer view. She said, “Everyone has years when things don’t go so well. While I’ve been unhappy a few times in my career, now I just think, ‘put it behind you. Next year there will be a new opportunity.’”

“For young women I would say stick it out for the first couple of years. Learn the ropes. This can be a very enjoyable career – there is lots of change and always something new popping up.”

She continued, “IT is in the middle of everything. If you manage to stick it out, this is a very rewarding career.”

She said with a laugh, “People aren’t as nerdy as on TV – it doesn’t help our image!”

Sandbaek advised more senior women to make the most of opportunities. “I’m trying to figure this part out myself,” she said.

In fact, Sandbaek leads the Accenture Women’s Network in the UK. “It helps women fulfill their potential by building skills.” Coursework includes gravitas, building relationships, personal branding, languages of leadership, and social styles.

“There are 3000 women in Accenture in the UK and we had 500 women last year in the program. I benefited a lot from the skills management class on how to be more politically savvy,” she said.

She added, “Accenture provides fantastic on-the-job training. And I work with exceptionally bright people. I’m thankful for that. You learn things from them that you can’t learn in any course.”

In Her Personal Time

Sandbaek, who has a young daughter, said she enjoys keeping fit in her spare time. “Sports, pilates, cycling – a good brain in a healthy body is kind of my mantra.”

She added with a laugh, “I’m working on the body – we’ll see about the brain!”