From military service to enterprise tech - an unconventional career path is a feature, not a bug - especially when it comes to building AI

While the business case for diversity has been clear for years, the clarity has not produced urgency. We are currently at a critical inflection point — if we hesitate, customer trust will be impacted because of flawed solutions, or AI systems that fail to meet their needs.

For global technology firms, homogeneous thinking has a specific cost — products designed for a world that does not exist. There have been studies which highlight where bias has become ingrained in tech, including this feedback loop between AI programmes and the people training them, demonstrating how important it is to eliminate bias, but also, how difficult that is. One way of thinking can overlook local regulatory environments, customer constraints and market dynamics, leading to slower adoption, higher compliance risk, and missed opportunity. Teams with diverse experience understand this instinctively, because they have lived it.

By investing in diversity and listening to different voices, organizations stand to gain the perspectives needed to build technology that actually works, for everyone. As individuals, we should be challenging ourselves to learn new things, push ourselves out of our comfort zones and listen to other perspectives — giving time and space to gain new insights. This is something I’ve done throughout my career and it greatly improves both critical thinking and outcomes.

The advantage from outside

Innovation happens when customer understanding, contextual knowledge, and technical capability converge. Teams built from diverse cross-sector backgrounds bring that more naturally, because they have navigated it in other arenas. From a personal perspective, I have made bold decisions when my back was against the wall, pushing me out of my comfort zone. Ultimately these resulted in me learning about myself, growing, and developing new skills. For example -

• Serving in the military for several years was an exceptional training ground for taking decisive action under pressure. At times there is no handbook, the work needs to get done and there is no clocking off at a set hour. Discipline, determination and problem solving get the job done and have given me a lifelong bias for action.

• My public sector experience offers something equally valuable — a ground-level view of how policy, budget constraints, and legacy systems shape what is achievable in practice, not just in theory.

• The enterprise technology space is interesting, fast paced and fun! It peaked my interest and I’ve learned a lot about customer needs and a new way of problem solving. The opportunity to reskill is so important for our long and short term development.

Leaders who draw on varied life events and non-linear career paths bring a different lens to decision-making — one that challenges assumptions, surfaces blind spots, and keeps teams honest about who their technology is really built for. The results of this study highlight that while many enterprises are using AI, they are not seeing the results or ROI they expected. This drives questions on what is behind AI implementations — who are they built for — are they not supporting business goals? The ability to embrace disruption rather than resist it creates leaders who can pivot under pressure, develop resilience in their teams and keep focused on multiple goals at once. Ultimately this builds teams who have a deep understanding of both technology and customer needs and can marry the two together with great success.

Actively pursuing the unfamiliar

In a technology landscape that regularly reinvents itself, the ability to learn faster than change happens, becomes a strategic capability in its own right. Leaders who immerse themselves in unfamiliar cultures, and contexts and actively bring in people with a different perspective develop a particular kind of empathy — an outsider’s instinct to ask the questions that insiders have stopped asking.

In a global technology ecosystem, that capability is essential — it keeps teams focused on designing products that are multi-dimension, well-rounded, more comprehensive, intuitive, accessible, and locally relevant, rather than optimised for one route or method.

Leaders who champion diversity bring more than advocacy — they have a different style of communication and additional curiosity. By asking questions and giving space for different viewpoints, more is discovered, and with additional context, a more fulsome solution is developed.

When considering how we adopt newer technology like AI — this experience matters. Unchecked biases in training data or system design do not stay contained — they scale. Questions around data management - governance, duplication, how trustworthy it is,  who has edited it, how has it been cleaned — these are all issues organizations are wrestling with. Those who have had a different experience will be the ones who ask, clarify and check before making a decision. Without this checkpoint, there’s a risk of implementing technology that really does not meet customer needs.

In natural language processing, models trained on narrow demographic inputs misinterpret queries and reinforce stereotypes. At enterprise scale, these are not theoretical concerns — they affect customer trust, regulatory exposure, and revenue. Including diverse perspectives in all stages of development means building in the critical thinking that meets wider customer needs.

Technology built for all

When teams reflect the people they serve, they design solutions that are practical, accessible, and inclusive. Without that representation, the gaps become solution failures — recruitment tools that embed historic gender bias, health tech that misses women’s physiology and voice assistants that misinterpret female speech patterns. These are not edge cases. They are the predictable result of homogeneous design.

Women tend to bring a distinct communication style and are curious which leads them to ask not just what a system does, but why it was built that way, and for whom. That instinct to surface the emotion, motivation, and develop awareness of a problem leads to more complete solutions. It is the difference between a fix and a design that genuinely serves everyone. Leaders who have already learned to embrace the unfamiliar and other viewpoints rather than resist it are not just more resilient, they are more effective.

The question is no longer whether diversity matters — it is whether organizations will treat it as the strategic priority it has always been. That means moving beyond top-down directives and building the systemic support that allows women to advance and stay — deliberate mentorship, real opportunities, and non-negotiably, flexibility embedded into how work actually operates.

When organizations provide the platform and conditions for diverse talent to succeed, they gain something in return that cannot be mandated — the breadth of perspective that drives genuine innovation.