Monica Sasso is Red Hat’s global financial services digital transformation lead, based in London. She is an IBM Industry Diamond for Banking & Financial Markets and is the Global Chairwoman for Red Hat’s Women’s Leadership Community. Monica provides strategic support to customers as they adopt open hybrid cloud technologies to drive business modernisation initiatives. Monica’s focus areas are digital transformation, operational resilience and compliant infrastructure. Before Red Hat, Monica worked in well-known financial services organisations in London on a global scale – from Nationwide and Barclays to Coutts and Deutsche Bank where she led regulatory and digital transformations on a global scale.
Recently, in an exclusive interview with Digital First Magazine, Monica shared her professional trajectory, insights on diversity and inclusion in tech, the secret mantra behind her success, her favorite quotes, future plans, words of wisdom, and much more. The following excerpts are taken from the interview.
Hi Monica. Please tell us about your career path. What experiences have brought you here?
We do this wonderful thing in our Women’s Leadership Community (which is our internal women’s network at Red Hat) in the UK where we tell our personal stories, and mine is definitely wiggly.
I would say there have been three big turning points or wiggles in my life that have brought me here.
The first one was when I went to orientation for my master’s degree I found out the programme I wanted to do was not available for master’s students – they did not tell me that until after they had my tuition cheque! I wanted to get my MSc in Industrial and Systems engineering and specialise in Financial Engineering. Instead, I specialised in management of technology and got out in nine months. I then decided that at some point I’d get into financial services – by hook or by crook.
The second was when I was travelling after I finished my master’s degree, I met this wonderful Dutch woman called Ilze, in Guatemala. Turned out her firm in the Netherlands was looking for systems engineers who had specialised in safety engineering. This was what I had specialised in during my undergraduate studies in Industrial engineering. So I ended up moving to the Netherlands right after my university studies to become an engineering consultant.
I moved from engineering consulting, into being an operations engineer at Intel, where I was able to blend my degrees and my upbringing – my parents had a construction company – to design factories and work with amazingly smart engineers in R&D making sure the next generation of computer chips were manufacturable. From there I met my now husband, an Englishman, and I have been here in the UK ever since.
I then moved back into consulting and emerged a programme and delivery expert. And finally I was able to get into financial services (FS)! My first role in an FS firm was helping build a data centre for a firm in the UK, and that was it. I was where I wanted to be. I carried on being a delivery lead, moving onto becoming programme director, head of transformation, head of global regulatory & risk change and then finally into a fascinating role where I established a digital business development function. The last role was so interesting to me, because it allowed me to take all the knowledge I had obtained by delivering large, global regulatory and digital transformation initiatives and use them to drive commercial transformation.
The third turning point for me that brought me firmly into tech and into Red Hat was about five years ago. I was working at a large universal bank, as the global head of regulatory and risk change, and I had just finished a massive programme, where I was increasingly frustrated by the giant wall between IT and the business. I remember so often going to my colleagues in IT, and asking, “what is the status of A, B and C” and being told a colour (a RAG status). I used to ask for more info and was always told, “don’t worry, you don’t need to know”. So I asked leadership if I could do some time in IT to understand how tech worked, because I thought as tech became more ubiquitous, how we changed the client journey and implemented new regulations would be more complex and in turn disrupt the client journey even more – I expressed a view that if we were more joined up and more strategic, we could save money and disrupt the business and our clients less. I was told, “it will take you off the MD path”, so I voted with my feet and came to Red Hat to learn about big tech. And I have never looked back!
What do you love the most about your current role?
The variety – some days I am writing a paper hoping to influence how Red Hat’s technology is adopted, others I am giving a speech or speaking to clients or working with my colleagues to enhance their understanding of how their financial services customers use new technology in a highly regulated environment.
But the thing that excites me the most – as someone who is a change agent – is that I get to use my experience from having worked in a bank, to drive real, meaningful change in terms of adopting open source and modern technologies to help banks to offer us – as consumers – better, more suitable products.
I look forward to expanding this to AI and data as well. I am quite excited about this next phase of AI adoption because AI represents more of a business transformation than a digital or technology transformation. The way I think about it, this is not just automating the function of a screwdriver by creating a power drill, but it is adding in different kinds of drill bits and tips to do totally different things. Generative AI will transform how businesses are run and how they deliver services to us, so I think it is quite exciting to be where we are now.
According to you, what are the main drivers for transformation in the financial services industry to keep an eye on in the next 12 months?
At the risk of being contrary, we use the word transformation a lot. I think all industries, but especially financial services, are actually evolving more than transforming – as we all are in our personal and home lives! I see three themes emerging that are changing how firms are run and offer us products and services.
We have been digitising many functions and operations across the piste. We have probably focussed more on the tools than the people and process elements. So I think the next big change will actually be more about how we use the new tools and who uses them versus the next fancy new piece of technology.
I’d be remiss if I did not call out the transformative nature of generative AI, which I think will actually impact HOW the work is done, and it will prove to be a business transformation more than a digital transformation.
I also am not sure if we could class generative AI as an evolution, but more of a revolution because in order to capitalise on it, new business models will emerge and silos will (and should) become a thing of the past. Firms are realising they have to think beyond the context of technology as an IT function – they are starting to look across the whole business; at the capabilities and resilience of their teams, the tools they use and how they work. I think we will see more cross-functional teams and an intensified drive towards agility. I also think we will need to see organisations embrace the type of collaborative, iterative and open working practices that Red Hat and the open source software community have been driving for a long time.
Lastly, I think there will continue to be a focus on operational resilience, which includes elements of cybersecurity. As we adopt more generative AI tools, increase our use of the open hybrid cloud and continue on this digital evolution, making sure that the systems – people, process, technology, business model, governance and culture – are resilient and adaptable will be key. To that end, I am seeing many firms getting fed up with complexity and are seeking a single, standardised platform that they can run anywhere, on any hardware utilising any silicon architecture. The more complex an IT estate is, the harder it is to monitor – and of course, the harder it is to mitigate threats. This is where having a consistent platform will become more appealing, as it removes risk when modernising and running the new software alongside the old.
As the Chairwoman of the Red Hat Global Women’s Leadership Community, what are your thoughts on diversity and inclusion in tech? How important is it to have authentic conversations with leaders, professionals, and changemakers to create more acceptance across the globe?
I come at this from two angles. The first one is, it took me a while to fully appreciate there was a problem, because when I was in university, as an engineering student in the late 1990s, there were no women. The boy to girl ratio was 6:1. I just stopped noticing it. And I know I have tolerated some behaviour in that past that would be a fireable offence now.
Time moves on, societal norms shift, and our views on these things change (thankfully!). But it was not until I was 20+ years in my career that I really started to notice, “wait a minute, I am the only woman not only in the room, but on the floor, on my team, etc.” I realised that this was not just about getting more women in the room, but about getting more diverse voices and points of view in the room. There is a copious amount of data out there pointing to the fact that a more diverse workforce arrives at the right commercial answers better and faster, that there is less risk taking (not all risk taking is good!) and that firms with diverse boards just perform better.
Now, I am all for poking my head above the parapet and saying, “we need to do better”, because not only does it make commercial sense (see above), but it is the right and fair thing to do. To those who say, “well, why should you get a job because you’re a woman”, and to the younger Monica who always wanted to get a job because she was the best candidate, not because she was a woman, I say: “how many opportunities were you overlooked for BECAUSE you were a woman, or how many bonuses / pay rises did you not get because someone assumed you’d go on maternity leave? Now is your time. Take it, sister.” As my husband and I discuss all the time, he has had unseen benefits and if he has to pay the tax of our fathers’ / grandfathers’ less than diverse behaviours, so be it, because it is the right and fair thing to help change the system to make it for everyone, not just men.
The most important thing when discussing diversity and inclusion is being open. Discussing it, sharing stories, sharing experiences is a logical place to start with these discussions. So many people don’t know what they don’t know or haven’t experienced themselves. So being open, being honest to educate everyone is I think how we create more acceptance across the globe. Of course, I can say all that coming from the UK, but I always bear in mind that every country has a different culture and culture really impacts diversity, so keeping that at the forefront of one’s mind is also critical in driving meaningful change.
Throughout your career, you have been honoured with prestigious awards and accolades including being recognized as an IBM Industry Diamond. Our readers would love to know the secret behind your success.
Someone asked me that question when they found out I was the youngest non-executive director at age 34, for a charity here in the UK. I would say there is no secret – just lots of focus and hard work! But my top three tips are:
- Learn from every project – and you might find that you learn more from failures than successes
- Network, network, network – some people might struggle with networking but connecting with colleagues is always beneficial. If you put the work in, your network will work for you – both professionally and personally.
- Being genuine, hard-working and showing what good looks like, helps you win people over – even to the naysayers who might not always want a girl in the room. Those three things always lead me to making sure that I am the expert in my topic when I walk in a room. Having that confidence comes with preparation, being genuine and believing I have earned my place.
If I may pull on that last thread of confidence – a little confidence and self-belief have never gone amiss in my career 🙂. There is no silver bullet for building confidence and finding your voice. Part of it is time and experience, and of course there are lots of cultural nuances at play. But I believe, and have experienced, that knowing your stuff and being an expert in your chosen field is key to finding your voice.
If you could have a one-hour meeting with someone famous who is alive, who would it be and why?
This was a tough one for me, I went from wanting to chat with groundbreaking female athletes such as Martina Navratilova to musicians such as Pink to politicians such as Ursula von der Leyen. But instead, I would like to have a cup of tea with Fiona Hill.
Fiona Hill is a British-American foreign affairs specialist and author. She is a former official at the U.S. National Security Council, specialising in Russian and European affairs. She studied Russian at St Andrews University and at Harvard, where she earned a Ph.D. in history. She is a Chancellor of Durham University, and was recently appointed defence advisor to the UK government. But those are not the reasons I would like an hour with her; it is because of her upbringing and how something her dad said to her changed the course of her life (that part I can relate to!) – which was, “there is nothing here for you, love”. That she had the fortitude to forge a unique career path is for me formidable and supremely interesting!
Is there a particular person you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are?
I can’t identify a single person that I am grateful for because I think, in doing so, I would simultaneously denigrate the multitude of people who have supported me my whole life and career and ignore my own fortitude and resilience.
I have always had a board of directors. Friends – old and new, people in my network, people I work with, people who I used to work with, and even my husband. I think it is important to surround yourself with people who are your fans – they will help you in the troughs of your personal and professional lives. And I always try to thank these people for supporting me and return the favour in kind. Life is short, and being appreciative is a pretty easy thing to do.
How do you keep your mind healthy and stay resilient? And how do you motivate your team?
I love sport – I cycle, I run, I lift weights and I love to do anything outdoors. I am vigilant about doing something physical every day before work. Furthermore, I think that level of discipline has helped me throughout my career by not only forcing me to be disciplined to fit it all in, but also helps me plan my day and “warm up or cool down” from my day. I also find, all my best thinking and problem-solving happens when I am exercising.
As a girl, I played loads of teams sports – even as a five year old I was the only girl on our local football team! Teams sports taught me how to play on a team, how to lead a team, how to compete and how to win or lose. Those skills are so important in any competitive industry.
I think as a leader the best way to motivate teams is to lead by example and of course, to genuinely care about your team.
What is your favourite quote?
I have two favourite quotes:
Dancing and running shake up the chemistry of happiness. Mason Cooley
Well-behaved women seldom make history . Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?
On my bicycle, with my husband, cycling around the world.
What advice would you give to women starting out on their career in the tech industry?
As someone who has struggled with my (personally perceived) lack of tech experience, I would say, it is key to understand that being a technologist comes in many different shapes and sizes. Being a technologist is not just an architect or a developer. After all, people use technology.
Always have a view of where you want to get to when you end your career, and accept that it will not be a straight line, there will be curves (and potholes), and being able to adjust and adapt your path is key to success. This is where a third favourite quote of mine comes into play, by the US president, Dwight D. Eisenhower: “in preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable”.
Most importantly, define success for you. Do not rely on others’ definition of success. You get to define it for you, and it could be about money, wealth, status, experiences or just about enjoying life. But it is your definition. No one else’s. When you have that definition, and you have your end point, the rest gets to be about choice and fun. It is quite liberating when it is about choice and fun!