Last week, the world celebrated International Women’s Day. This year’s theme, “Be Bold for Change”, has profound meaning for me and embodies what we aim to do every day at Avanade.

For the past five years, International Women’s Day has been a key date in Avanade’s calendar. Each year, we kick start a month long round of celebrations with 60 events across our offices worldwide. Both men and women come together to celebrate the contributions of women to our business. In doing so, we create a rich environment where we exchange views, build relationships, increase awareness of our Diversity & Inclusion agenda and infuse everyone involved with a renewed energy for gender parity.

This year, Avanade brought together over 40 clients, 150 employees (including our Avanade Leadership program for Women participants), and our alliance partners (Accenture and Microsoft) at our marquee IWD event in Munich. By all accounts, there was a high-level of engagement from participants who particularly enjoyed the panel discussion on the topic of opportunities (and challenges) for women as a result of digital transformation.

I actually had the pleasure of spending a really insightful day in Poland with an amazing group of talented women at the Krakow office of Infusion, the global software engineering, design and digital strategy firm Avanade recently acquired. I was truly impressed by their passion and the steps they’ve already taken to lead the way for other women in technology.

In the run-up to IWD, I was lucky enough to spend time with a group of female engineers at Williams Martini Racing. We exchanged our thoughts on why mentorship is important for women, as with the Krakow group, we discussed the potential reasons why so few women are choosing STEM careers and how, collectively, we can turn that around. One thing we all agreed on was that we need to dispel early any misperceptions that could potentially harm the trajectory of women in their careers.

While providing me with plenty to reflect on, I came away from both sessions with an enormous sense of pride and excitement for the future of women in technology. As every International Women’s Day reminds me, if we have such strong minds committed to making a difference, we can only succeed. But we need to be bold for change!