Women in Tech: “Positions and opportunities in the technology field are endless”

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A research study by The National Center for Women & Information Technology showed that “gender diversity has specific benefits in technology settings,” which could explain why tech companies have started to invest in initiatives that aim to boost the number of female applicants, recruit them in a more effective way, retain them for longer, and give them the opportunity to advance. But is it enough?

Four years ago, we launched a diversity series aimed at bringing the most inspirational and powerful women in the tech scene to your attention. Today, we’d like you to meet Naama Saar, COO at SQream Technologies.

Today’s Woman in Tech: Naama Saar, COO at SQream Technologies

Naama Saar is SQream’s COO responsible for executing the company’s strategy and vision to become the market leader for solutions that accelerate Peta size data analytics. Naama has decades of hands-on experience leading teams of thousands of people worldwide driving exponential growth for IT and SaaS products, service operations, and solutions.

Previously an executive director at YNV group, Naama led the expansion of the customer base and an increase in customer satisfaction. Prior to that, as CEO of Wize Solutions, Naama headed up R&D and customer-facing to take the product from concept to a commercial solution. AS CEO of Tek Experts, Naama grew the company from 30 to over 5,000 engineers by establishing 8 operational sites in four continents supporting more than 50 cloud, CRM, infrastructure, ERP and security products.

When did you become interested in technology? What first got you interested in tech?

I began my career in agriculture to help develop and improve our family business. As part of my education, I studied information technology and business analysis and then used my training to become a team member, developing an ERP system for our nursery. From there I fully immersed myself in IT and today agriculture is a hobby I enjoy, and part of my joy and pride in life.

Let’s talk about your background. How did you end up in your career path? What obstacles did you have to overcome?

My career obstacles were around growth, innovation, and accomplishing the impossible. Being a woman in a male-dominated industry put me in the spotlight and drove me to succeed. I believe that gender differences are just like any other physical and emotional differences that may make you stand out from those around you, and your road to success depends on your own drive. It’s up to you whether the extra attention you may get from standing out holds you back or in fact pushes you forward, to new heights.

Did you receive support from your family and friends? Do you have a role model?

My father, who died when I was 15, is my role model. He was one of the inventors of drip irrigation back in the 50’s and contributed to the early stages of agricultural consulting and services provided by Israel worldwide.

Later, I had a business mentor, who is one of the smartest people I know – both in terms of knowledge, experience, professionalism, and people management skills. I am lucky to have had the opportunity to learn from him.

I always felt I had support from my family. I don’t think it’s possible to succeed without having support from our loved ones. I have three girls, each three or four years apart, and a grandson, and I have a great relationship with all of them, even if I did miss my share of ballet recitals and teachers’ meetings.

Some women decide to have children late in their lives or not to have kids at all, and instead focus on their career, and I absolutely respect that decision. My personal opinion is that without family you might lose your identity and personality – and it may turn out that your success isn’t worth the sacrifice. Integrating both family and a successful career is absolutely possible if we set our minds to it, we want it badly enough and we build the right support system around us.

I believe transparency and informal communication are critical for ensuring business growth.

A day in Naama’s life

My job as SQream COO is to make sure we delight our customers while providing our big data analytics platform. I am in charge of product, R&D and delivery, while also working closely with sales and marketing, finance, HR and legal teams, to build a robust, efficient, and scalable operation that supports our fast-growing market growth.

I am blessed to have highly professional leaders around me, so 60 percent of my day is invested in developing a strategy and innovative approach to support our growth targets.

I am a strong believer in teamwork. My team decided to give up fancy personal offices and sit together, so we could collaborate better and support each other on a daily basis. I hope to be able to implement this approach throughout the whole company. I envision strong multi-disciplinary teams, working together across different expertise, time zones, and cultures. I believe transparency and informal communication are critical for ensuring business growth.

What are you most proud of in your career?

I feel very fortunate to be born in the Western world, having access to higher education with the ability to pursue a career. I am constantly looking for ways of providing such opportunities to people who have fewer opportunities.

As part of my journey, I had the privilege of establishing a large IT support operation in Lagos, Nigeria, where we trained 1800 people to provide services to enterprise level customers worldwide. We leveraged the fact that there were 40,000 IT grads faced with 50% unemployment to establish a stable operation, that was recognized as the best IT operation in Lagos in 2021.

I hope that other vendors will follow suit, enabling the great talent in Nigeria – as well as other locations- to have access to today’s growing markets.

Why aren’t there more women in tech? What’s your take on that?

In some cultures, women are still not allowed to work in IT, because their culture believes they will not be able to have a career outside the home and raise a family.

I would like to continue to demonstrate that women, people with special needs, or others who are underrepresented in the technology workforce can develop their skills and succeed so the market can benefit from their talent.

We live in a fantastic world, where it’s possible to learn something new every day as technology drives us to stay ahead of our game.

How would our world be different if more women worked in STEM? What would be the (social, economic, and cultural) impact?

Diversity makes us better. In most markets, the customers are diverse – from different cultures and traditions. At the end of the day, we don’t sell and serve companies but a collection of people. The more diverse we are as a company, the more capable we are at understanding our customers, which is a key to every organization’s success.

What advice (and tips) would you give to women who want a tech career? What should they know about this industry?

We live in a fantastic world, where it’s possible to learn something new every day as technology drives us to stay ahead of our game.

The positions and opportunities in the technology field are endless because the industry is reinventing itself every few years. For people who like challenges, want to help shape the future, and can move fast, technology is the place to be.

There is a wide variety of positions available, including trainers, data scientists, business analysts, project managers, salespeople, customer success members, support engineers and many other positions in addition to the more traditional ones, such as developers, DevOps, etc. so there is a place for everyone to shine.

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