Happy International Women’s Day from TELUS digital - Meet Laura

Culture · Mar 8, 2017

In our last post, we started our blog series to celebrate International Women’s Day. We’re excited to introduce Laura, who is a recipient of the Emerging Leader award, recognized across TELUS for inspiring and engaging our team by living the TELUS values.

Laura - Manager, B2B Outcomes


Tell us a bit about yourself.

Hi! I’m Laura. It’s a challenge to distill a person into a blurb, but here is my attempt :) 

I was born in Romania, and have lived in Montreal, Vancouver and recently moved to Toronto. It is my fourth month here, and I’m proud to have almost survived my first winter. I studied Marketing and International Commerce at the University of British Columbia, and have spent a good chunk of my career at TELUS in marketing, corporate communications and digital. I’m currently supporting the B2B marketing experience - telus.com/business, and very excited to keep evolving the digital journey for our business customers. Outside of work, I’m passionate about exploring the nooks of this great planet and try to squeeze travels whenever I can. One of my best life choices was taking 2013 and 2014 to travel in South America and Southeast Asia.

How did you get started in the Tech field?

I fell into tech a bit by chance, as my background was mostly in Marketing. I was working in corporate communications at TELUS and had an opportunity to lead the redesign of our corporate website, about.telus.com. It was my first digital/tech project experience and I really enjoyed the process, especially focusing on understanding what customers needed and validating the site as we built it. It was my first time getting exposure to end-to-end digital delivery and UX practices like usability testing, and I absolutely loved it. Since then, I’ve stayed in digital-related roles and grown my skill-set through experience.

Can you tell us about one of your success stories?

I received a TELUS CHLOE award a few months ago. CHLOE recognizes women at TELUS distinguishing themselves across different areas. I was beyond honored to receive the Emerging Leader award. What drove the nomination was both career and community wins, which included building out TELUS’ digital governance program from scratch, my involvement organizing events for Ladies Learning Code, and volunteering. I was humbled to receive this recognition amongst so many talented women in the organization, and very empowered looking back at how I was able to grow and develop my leadership skills during my career.

What do you think is the most significant barrier to female leadership?

Sadly there are still some companies, as you hear in the media, where there is a boy’s club mentality in tech. It is unfortunate that females still have to breakthrough in this predominantly male-dominated field in some organizations.  However, I’m happy to work for a company where women are empowered to step into tech leadership roles, can push each other forward in hiring practices and by knowing and owning our value in the workplace. 

What is one advice you’d give to women wanting to break into the tech field?

You CAN do it. If you’re passionate about the tech space, there’s nothing stopping you from kicking ass and leaving a legacy as a female. Whether you’re working for yourself or for an organization, know your worth and that there’s nothing that would prevent you from excelling in the field. I wrote a blog post last year with more thoughts and tips on overcoming the gender gap in tech - check it out here.

Authored by:
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Emelyn Ticong
Project Manager & Chair