Gillian Arnold

Owner, Tectre

Gillian has extensive experience in the IT industry and setup her own IT Staffing and Services company, Tectre, in late 2009.  Tectre provides recruitment, training, and consultancy to CIOs, IT Managers and beyond, and focuses on helping companies with their positive action campaigns to attract more women into their technical teams.   

Most of Gillian’s early career was spent working for IBM in the UK where she held customer facing training, technical, sales, business development, strategic marketing and consultancy roles.  She proved her expertise in managing and establishing teams to support new software and hardware products, and running teams with cross-industry and cross platform experience across the UK and Europe.   

Gillian sits on the board of directors for the BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT and on the Institute of Coding Diversity Board.  She retired from the board of directors for WISE after 12 years. WISE is the UK organisation which supports women in Science, Engineering, Technology, Maths. She has a long involvement with work for Women in IT, supporting both industry and academic institutions in their work on diversity. Gillian was chair of the BCS Women Specialist Group from 2011 to 2016 and now Chairs the European Taskforce for Women in IT for CEPIS. Gillian won the 2012 Cisco / Everywoman In Technology award for ‘Technology Inspiration of the Year’ and is regularly listed in the Computer Weekly ’50 Most Influential Women in IT’.  In 2017 Gillian joined Martha Lane Fox, Dame Steve Shirley, and Dame Wendy Hall in the Women in IT Hall of Fame.  In 2019 Gillian was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Bath for her work on women in technology.