Women in Tech Profile: Lucy Munanto

Thanks to a supportive family, Lucy found a love of math early and this influenced her STEM career path. Her engineering degree helped her find a love of tech and then studying at Carnegie Mellon set her passions firm. 

Today, Lucy enjoys her role as a Business Analyst and Scrum Master at Lexicon Digital so much so that she has one simple answer when asked if others should follow her into tech - “Just do it!”

She’s inspired to create global solutions to problems - including eliminating paper forms forever! We’re with you there Lucy!

You can learn more about this inspiring woman in tech here:

Can you tell us about your diverse background? Do you think it's helped your tech career?

I was the only female that graduated from my software engineering degree that year! And yes I think being female in tech in 2021 has been an advantage since many tech organisations are looking to improve their gender diversity. My ethnic background is Chinese Indonesian, my family placed a huge emphasis on being good at Math, this has influenced me to choose a STEM career pathway.

Can you tell us about the journey that led you to a career in technology?

It was all a serendipitous accident! I chose Informatics in my first year of Engineering degree because I didn’t like the other options. The first two weeks they taught us how to do print statements and I thought this was the easiest class I’ve ever attended. The third week it started getting harder and I wanted to switch classes but it was too late. By the end of the first semester, I passed the class with semi-flying colours and thought “this is not so bad after all”. I then went on a study abroad to Carnegie Mellon in the US, the #1 school for computer science in the world. That experience changed my perspective forever and cemented my will to pursue a career in Tech.

Since entering tech, what has your career progression looked like?

I started my career as a Software Engineer, developing algorithms for speed and traffic cameras. However, I realised that I didn’t enjoy sitting in front of code 8 hours a day. I then went down the Tech Consulting route, starting at Accenture which gave me a good exposure to different industries and technologies and solidified basic consulting skills. After 4 years, I decided to pursue roles in digital boutique agencies as I valued their work culture and lean ways of working. I joined a digital agency specialising in mobile apps as a Senior Business Analyst, then finally came to Lexicon Digital a little over 3 years ago. At Lexicon Digital, I’ve been a Business Analyst and Scrum Master for our client teams working on both web and mobile apps.

Who or what inspires you as a woman in technology?

Recently I read a blog by Melanie Perkins, the founder of Canva. Her story just blew me away. Her resilience and persistence in her vision is something to aspire to. Everybody now only sees her success at Canva, but the blog highlighted the treacherous journey she took to get to where she is today. Success always comes at a price, and her courage to believe in herself and her winning idea is something I hope I can emulate one day.

Why do you think diversity in tech is important?

The most important thing diversity brings is differing perspectives. Having a wide range of perspectives allows us to make better decisions that avoids marginalising particular groups of people. We don’t know what we don’t know, and without having a good mix of people in the room, it can be difficult to design products or policies that cater for everyone. Since technology touches people from all walks of life, it makes sense to have teams that contain a good sample of your end users and customers. It’s like you wouldn’t choose an all-male team to design bras for women!

Do you have advice for women or diverse individuals who might be considering moving to a role in tech I’m going to borrow a line from Nike here; JUST DO IT! With every organisation in the world going online, they’ll need at least one tech person if they want to be able to survive and thrive in the 21st century. The result is that there are more tech jobs than there are qualified people. The good news is that it’s not hard to become qualified, there are many programs specifically designed to re-skill people to the tech industry. It is such a rewarding career to use technology to solve real problems for real people. How many jobs can you say have the ability to create global change from the comfort of your desk? I say this to everyone looking to career-pivot into Tech; if it doesn’t work out you can always go back to whatever it is you were doing. Seriously, you have nothing to lose!

What is your dream or goal for the future of tech?

The future of tech is limitless but I’m going to aim small here and eliminate a pet peeve of mine; paper forms! Imagine a world where we no longer have to use paper forms! Life changing isn’t it? I don’t have a printer at home which turns the simple task of filling out a paper form into a complicated one. And it’s also highly inefficient as you know that someone at some point will probably have to enter the data from my paper form electronically anyway! Think of all the trees and storage space we would save, and no more paper waste! It sounds like something incredibly simple, especially with all the free online tools that we have to capture form information, but alas you and I both know that we still have a long way to go into making this a reality.

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What's the best investment you've made in your career under $1000 My Canva pro subscription. What's your favourite quote or mantra? We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are. Name a book that's inspired you? The Hard Thing about Hard Things - Ben Horowitz One piece of tech you can't live without? My iPhone.