Thoughtworks CFO Helen Barlow-Hunt wins women’s tech award

Established to promote gender parity and female achievement in tech, the Women Leading Tech Awards has announced this year’s winners, including Thoughtworks CFO Helen Barlow-Hunt.

Helen Barlow-Hunt, the chief financial officer of the Australian and New Zealand arm of global technology and innovation consultancy Thoughtworks, has won the inaugural CFO category at this year’s Women Leading Tech Awards.

In addition, the technology consultancy also featured three other finalists across the 29 award categories – Claire Nelson, Karen Davis and Victoria McGloin – mirroring the firm’s recognition at last year’s awards.

_{From left to right: Thoughtworks team members Karen Davis, Claire Nelson, Helen Barlow-Hunt, Ingrid Buenaventura and Pallavi Johnson.}

“Having three finalists and a winner in the awards for their extraordinary contributions in tech is a spectacular result and reflects our ongoing commitment to make Thoughtworks a home for all technologists,” said A/NZ managing director Karin Verloop, a former digital vice president at McKinsey and IBM executive who has spent more than a decade in leadership roles with Thoughtworks in various parts of the world.

Barlow-Hunt has meanwhile been with Thoughtworks for close to eight years, joining in 2015 in Sydney after a two-and-a-half-year CFO stint at local brand app developer 3RD Sense. Prior to that, Barlow-Hunt was the CFO at UK publisher Octopus for six years, bringing her earlier experience gained as a UK finance director at Reed Books. As a CFO, Barlow-Hunt is both data-driven and an advocate for sustainability and social impact.

“I would like to thank everyone within Thoughtworks for their help and encouragement to get to this point,” Barlow-Hunt said in a post to LinkedIn. “Thoughtworks is a place where I get to work with inspiring colleagues and have a broad remit which provides me opportunities to grow and learn. It truly is a place that enables and inspires you to become a strong leader that can help to make an extraordinary impact on the world.”

Barlow-Hunt also noted her pride in her fellow Thoughtworks’ Women Leading Tech finalists; Claire Nelson, head of CX and product in the Design category; lead data consultant Karen Davis in the Data Science category; and Technology, Government & Public Sector lead Victoria McGloin for Engineering.

Coming from a variety of backgrounds, all three have joined Thoughtworks between the past eighteen months to five years.

Thoughtworks’ second-consecutive triumph at the Women Leading Tech Awards is little surprise, with the consulting firm having achieved a 40 percent rate of tech roles being held by women and underrepresented gender minorities, a figure reflected in its global leadership team. Locally, the firm has won a swag of recent employer awards, including being consistently named as one of Australia’s best places to work for female employees.