Katy Wigdahl

Katy Wigdahl worked at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, for a year before joining Unilever's graduate scheme, she told WeAreTechWomen. She is now CEO of Speechmatics, the speech recognition company headquartered in Cambridge, England, where she joined as CFO before moving to CEO.

Rolling Out Dove Across Europe for Unilever

Wigdahl is a qualified accountant, but much of her early career at Unilever was commercial. She started as a commercial manager in the household division, working on brands such as Persil and Comfort, and later led the European rollout of Dove as it grew from a bar of soap into a product portfolio. She also led Unilever's implementation of SAP business software in several European countries.

Running the Sale of Transversal to Verint

After a period as a management consultant, she moved into tech at Transversal Corporation. She calls running the competitive process that ended in Transversal's acquisition by Verint Systems her biggest career achievement. The process took more than 9 months and secured an exit for a 19-year-old company.

"Don't assume this sector isn't for you because you didn't grow up taking motherboards apart," she told WeAreTechWomen.