Firstly, please introduce yourself
My name is Marina Giliver and I am a director in Risk Tech at Capital One. I started at Capital One in September of 2019 and it has been an incredibly interesting journey since then. I was an employee #30 in the Boston office, we have been ramping up pretty quickly even in the current nonstandard environment. I am super excited about being a part of building out the Capital One brand in the Boston area.
A little bit about me and what I did before joining Capital One. I spent most of my career in financial services, working for big financial services companies like Thomson Financial (now Thomson Reuters), Computershare, the largest Transfer Agency in the US, and most recently Linedata implementing big re-platforming transformational projects. At Linedata, I was hired as the first female Director of Development for Linedata’s front office suite of products, which accounted for more than 50% of global asset management software revenue.
Here at Capital One, I am heading Engineering teams that are working across multiple layers of Risk business lines – Operational Risk and Enterprise Risk Services. Our vision and mission is to transform risk management through building innovative, data-driven products that empower our customers with intelligent risk insights.
What are you looking forward to at Women in Tech Boston?
This conference is designed to empower and inspire women, educate on the latest cutting-edge technologies, and provide networking opportunities. It is a great honor to be able to represent Capital one and continue establishing the Capital One brand in the Boston area.
I am looking forward to meeting fantastic women and WIT allies, making meaningful connections, learning about new technologies, and spreading the good word about Capital One. We haven’t been able to participate in events of this scale for quite some time so this is an exciting opportunity to both attend and present at such a premier conference as WIT Boston 2022.
What advice would you give to a woman looking to step up their career in tech?
Performance only accounts for 10% of career success while image and exposure account for 30% and 60%, respectively (Based on Harvey Coleman’s book Empowering Yourself, The Organizational Game Revealed). Build your personal image and brand. Start early on and do not stop. Jeff Bezos is famously quoted as saying, “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”
Personal branding is all about promoting what you are passionate about, and clearly articulating what you believe in whenever you connect with people around you and especially ones who make decisions about your job trajectory. It also requires you to pay attention to details – what you say and do, your social media presence, your body language, who you associate with, and much more. It’s the new way of ‘faking it until you make it’ in that putting a personal brand out there helps you to become the best possible version of yourself.
Personal branding is very important for women in a world where glass ceilings are still being shattered every day. For women, in particular, a strong personal brand can open the door to new business and career opportunities. In rapidly changing work environments, the rules aren’t as clear for women about how to be who they are, what they should wear, and what qualities are acceptable. Building a female personal brand means focusing on your best self within the variables that you can control and not being afraid to be seen for your uniqueness. .
What do you see as the biggest challenge currently facing women in technology?
The biggest challenge is around diversity and inclusion in tech. The percentage of women in computer science has declined dramatically — from 37% to 18% since 1984—and only 25% of computing jobs are held by women. This is a number that has been on a steady decline for years. Many women have cited unwelcoming work environments as part of the reason for not entering or staying in the field.
So what can we do to reverse this trend? How can we encourage women to get into the STEM field in the first place and once in the field stay there and feel welcome and included? I am hoping to share my experience and learn how my peers tackle and work through these challenges and support women in technology.
The theme of the event is Resilience, what does resilience mean to you?
To me, resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from challenges and difficulties, one’s ability to bounce back, and strength and flexibility of character. We need resilience in our personal and professional lives now more than ever. Even though physical resilience is something that is well recognized, emotional and cognitive resilience are often harder to acquire and require more practice. Resilience is an essential self-preservation tool – when we hit a tough situation or a roadblock we need to keep moving forward and not let our emotions overwhelm our cognitive abilities to think rationally. We all know that stress has a paralyzing effect – the ability to overcome the negative impact of stress on the cognitive functioning of our minds and attitude is absolutely crucial for someone who is looking to grow along a career path. With expanding responsibilities, stressful situations become more common and only people who effectively deal with and overcome obstacles successfully progress and move forward.
Join Marina Gilver for her workshop “Personal Branding for Technical Workforce” at Women in Tech Boston on October 20 – 21st.
Comments are currently closed for this post