Brigitt Artesi (Lenovo) wins WIICTA Graduate (Vendor / Distributor) Award in 2021
As winner of the Women in ICT Awards (WIICTA) Graduate (Vendor/Distributor) award in 2021, Brigitt Artesi joined Lenovo’s graduate program at the beginning of June 2020 as the first marketing intern in the vendor's newly launched initiative.
Within six months, Brigitt’s ability to exceed expectations in any task presented to her led Lenovo to create a new full-time role for her. Today, Brigitt is poised to expand her knowledge to the point where she will soon be leading marketing campaigns.
What inspired you to get into the IT industry?
I guess you could say it was nostalgia. When I came across the Lenovo position, I was taken back to my year nine English class, receiving my first Lenovo school issued laptop, which I actually still have – talk about standing the test of time. But beyond that, I think IT is a space that can serve as a purposeful intersection with various other disciplines to solve some of our greatest challenges, and that’s pretty exciting.
What courses or programs did you take and how did this impact your choices?
At university I took a lot of arts and media courses, and they tended to be dismissed as irrelevant, but the arts delve into IT topics such as big data and algorithms, and so many key points in IT while relating it back to the individual so that we don’t just understand how it works but its impacts. And that’s one of the biggest shames about the recent cuts to tertiary arts funding.
Who or what has been your most influential driver?
I’ve been very lucky to have two intelligent women at Lenovo guide me with opportunity and knowledge. It was through them that I was introduced to the Women In Lenovo Leadership+ committee, which is built on fostering inclusive systems and inclusive leadership behaviours for Lenovo employees of all genders, ethnicities, sexualities and everything in between, and it’s here that I’ve really been exploring that intersection of IT and humanities.
Credit: ARN / IDG What are some of your professional ambitions?
I’m really interested in continuing to explore that meeting point of IT and the humanities. There are incredible projects where virtual reality (VR) has been used to show us the altered and increasingly stressful impacts humans are placing upon nature and animals by reflecting the world we’ve created back to us as seen by a female grizzly bear in Banff National Park.
There are also projects where AI has been used as an empathy machine to bring attention to the experience of refugees in camps. I’d love to see how I can leverage my communications background alongside my newfound experience in the IT sector to get involved in projects like this.
What do you think could be done to further enhance the experience for graduates coming through to the IT sector?
I think we need to start at the point just before graduates are coming into the sector. Students are trawling through countless internship or grad positions advertised online with the repetitive ask for one, two or sometimes more years of experience which, quite plainly – can be soul crushing.
And yes, you might find someone who ticks that box, but for those who don’t you never know what life factors are providing that hurdle – like the perpetual cycle of needing an internship to get experience but needing experience to get an internship.
So, I think less emphasis needs to be placed on requiring huge levels of experience and more on ensuring we provide the opportunities for all students to build on that experience.
