Ep. 85 Women in Water, Powered by AI: A Conversation with Melina Persson

WUN Advocate Julia Stichling speaks to Melina Persson who leads the water sector for Microsoft in the UK about women, technology and the future of water

They speak  about Melina's journey into the sector, why water matters (now more than ever), the role AI can play in helping the industry become more proactive and resilient, and why women need to be part of shaping that.

Key messages:

• You do not need to be technical to have a valuable voice in digital transformation.
• Women across the sector already understand the customers, communities, processes and operational realities that make technology useful. That context is powerful.
• If AI is going to serve everyone, everyone needs a voice in shaping it.

Melina Persson leads the water sector for Microsoft in the UK, working with organisations across the industry to apply technology, data, AI and security to some of the sector’s most important challenges. She also runs TechHer for Water, a programme focused on helping more women build confidence and capability in digital, cloud, AI and cyber skills.

As a speaker, mentor and passionate advocate for women’s rights, diversity and inclusion, Melina regularly speaks about the role of technology, representation and skills in shaping the future of critical national infrastructure.

Transcript

Speaker A: 0:03

Welcome to the Women's Utilities Network One for All podcast, our corner of the world where we'll be talking all things energy water, sharing personal stories and debating female issues.

Speaker B: 0:16

Enjoy. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Women's Utility Network Podcast. My name is Julia Stichling and I'm one of the advocates here at the Women's Utility Network. I'm very excited today to be joined for another podcast recording with the wonderful Melina person from Microsoft. She's the water industry lead there. Hello and welcome, Melina.

Speaker A: 0:41

Hi, Julia. Thank you so much for having me. This is super exciting.

Speaker B: 0:45

I'd like us to start off, for those of you who don't know you yet, tell us a bit more about your career and your kind of personal journey into the water industry and what drew you to learning lead and head that space up for Microsoft.

Speaker A: 0:58

It's really funny actually, because I don't come from a traditional water background. I've spent the last almost 10 years now in sort of the enterprise technology and commercial leadership space. A lot of my focus has been around digital transformation in various different facets in different parts of the organizations. But very notably I used to be a big part of running the construction sector at Adobe and there's a bit of a natural overlap there. I did loads of collaborations with Microsoft at the time, and when this opportunity came up, I couldn't possibly say no. And it's been a fantastic journey. I today lead the water sector, which really translates into a couple of different things. So we help the water companies understand how to solve some of their key business challenges using technology. We help them realize the benefit of the technology and the investments that they've made. I think very few fully understand and appreciate the importance that Microsoft often play in many organizations. We know it as the Microsoft Teams company or as the Word company. But even as a fun fact, if you were to break out Microsoft, Microsoft cybersecurity ARM or security ARM alone, that would be the largest security company in the world. And it's an unbelievable privilege that we are now a big part of the digital spine of most of the water companies in the uk And I spend all my days ensuring that we're doing that to the best capability that we can.

Speaker B: 2:17

Exciting. And from your kind of perspective, where do you think AI and digital technologies are transforming the water sector today? And kind of where do you see the biggest opportunities coming with that as well?

Speaker A: 2:29

AI is super exciting. I can see a couple of different areas where we are going to be able to see immense impact driven by AI. I Think one of the first ones is probably the conversation around asset health has been a big topic for us this amp. But by being able to effectively combine data in regards to our assets as well as our maintenance schedules, we can finally start to deliver on one of the biggest buzzwords in the industry which is moving from reactive to proactive as well. By being more effective in using our data and overlaying the AI capabilities, we can get better at understanding leakage and drive better prevention. We can be more effective in terms of driving our field operations and our teams be more dynamic in how we're deploying our stuff. We can massively already see big changes in how we're transforming the customer experience and how the customer now has a completely different view around having a dialogue with AI and are used to interacting with AI, which means that we are now able to better show up for our water customers the end consumers. But also by giving them AI capabilities we can help them with a lot more sort of at home and first time fixes as well as sharing back and communicating some of the challenges. If God forbid something were to happen locally at site, we can really truly be present with our customers because AI helps to carry some of that mental load. I also think it's going to have immense impact when it comes to regulatory reporting, making sure that we are better at articulating the things that we are doing as water companies. Back to what the future regulatory is going to be. I think it's going to have an immense impact on our sustainability efforts. We can now finally start to effectively measure and benchmark some of the sustainability initiatives that the water companies are running, especially with sort of non traditional ways of cleaning our water. And then finally, and this is obviously big for us, for me as Microsoft, which is personal productivity, one of the bigger buzzwords and what I talk about a lot when I speak about AI is AI is the democrat of information. And to put things some context to that, historically we used to go on Google and that would be our sort of. We'd browse around a little bit and look for information. 70% of searches now end in the AI summary tab. What it's done is allowed us to surface and understand information in a completely different way than what we historically had access to. Which means that we now as humans can drive far better outcomes and be far more efficient in terms of how we're running and operating. The other major thing that AI is doing is also the lowering the barrier of entry in terms of skills. I don't need you to be an expert anymore. I Just need you to be able to have a conversation with an expert and then said expert will help and walk you through how you could really do that. And whether that is how to update and change something on a pump or whether it's to change a formula in Excel, the principle is the same, but the skill set belongs to everybody. And I think that's super exciting.

Speaker B: 5:34

It's especially looking at the skills gap that we're facing in the water industry over the next coming years, I think, and trying to engage kind of new talent and different talent as well that maybe haven't considered the water industry as the ideal place to work. And I mean, you and me, we both work in the water industry, of course we think it's the best place to work. But equally, I think it's making the sector as attractive as possible. And by enabling people to learn these new skills and use the skills they currently have and then enhance them with AI, that should really give them a big benefit, from what I understand.

Speaker A: 6:09

Yeah, it's going to be huge. And it's something that I'm a really, really strong advocate for. Many women don't consider themselves digital or technical. Yet again, they spend their entire day sitting in front of a computer. And where this is going to be really pivotal now is women often have a really good grasp of processes and about the business and an understanding what work and more importantly, what doesn't. And to create the space where women can share that so that we can effectively look at how we address that. Using technology is going to be transformative to how so many of these organizations run and operate. And I think what's going to be really important for the water companies now is to ensure that there is now space for women, but for all in the organization to start effectively articulating this back so that when we are designing technology solutions, it's happening with people and not to them. Now, in difference to some of the bigger transformation projects that we've done, this is something that's going to have to be a collaboration with the entirety of the organization versus that's been delivered in isolation. And then you show up in the end with your great new shiny toy that's hopefully going to help and transform on how the business runs and operates. This is different. This is like us learning how to use the Internet all over again. And I say all the time, like, AI is the most exciting thing that's happened on the Internet since the Internet. And we need to think about it in that way where if we were to teach someone how to use the Internet from day one. Again, how would we approach that? And that's a similar way to when we're teaching people how to learn and approach AI. So that's where a lot of my time is being spent at the minute. And what I find super interesting, it

Speaker B: 7:48

is a really interesting topic. And for me, often when I have conversations, especially with women at one event around kind of AI and technology, I sometimes get the sense that they're feeling it might be a bit too late for them. They might not have the right background. So what would your advice be? How would you tell women to kind of get into the space that are curious about AI and technology?

Speaker A: 8:12

I think the benefit that you have is there are very few experts at this at the moment. People are learning as they're going, so are we. What we need now is people with a really rich business context and a drive to make a positive difference, which most women and most organization are primed to be able to do. Where women, women also don't necessarily credit themselves is they have incredible organizational skills and they're able to look holistically at a problem or a set of problems and draw really great parallels between each other. So women are actually better positioned to drive roles within technology and then within AI than they probably credit themselves for. So if I tell people, well, how do I get started?

Speaker B: 8:58

I.

Speaker A: 8:58

There's a couple of things that I would probably advise to. If you look at how you're running and operating your part of the business or even your part at home, et cetera, today, if you then can ask yourself if technology could help and solve the things that I like the least, what would that then potentially look like? And then start to challenge yourself in terms of incorporating AI and technology to start solving some of those problems. I really hate updating the spreadsheet or I hate meal planning for my family. Incorporate it in your day to day so that it becomes second nature. Very similar to the way we started using the Internet. And if we think about how pivotal that has been in terms of how we're running and operating today, that is how pivotal AI is going to be to us in the future and why it's so important to get on the starting foot of it now. Some practical tips. What I really love AI today is multimodal. Did you know? And if you don't know, you can have it and it can live in your phone so you can have a conversation with it. I use it to help and carry the mental load. For those of you who read the book, it's fantastic, but we carry the mental load as women at work and at home. The benefit that you have is an AI doesn't forget. Even for me, just to have a basic conversation with an AI to help me remember things and organize stuff and think about stuff. Sometimes, both at work and in your personal life, it allows you to offload your mental load and then have an AI structure it, start finding solutions to it and start generating some of the outputs. Whether that is write up an email to my boss or look for flights for my holiday. It can start to carry out some of those tasks for you, which means that you have more capacity to do the things you're really good at at work, or be a really great mom or a great partner or whatever it is that really matters to you.

Speaker B: 10:40

Yeah, I can only say from personal use that it really opens up the space to do things in a more efficient way and kind of get rid of these tasks that I don't enjoy doing. And I really like the idea of meal planning. That is something that I hadn't thought about. So I need to give that definitely a go as well. So Microsoft specifically as well is obviously interested in upskilling women in the water sector and industry. Tell me a bit more about the Tech her initiative and what the goals are of it.

Speaker A: 11:09

So if we take a step back from it, Microsoft, with our sort of incredible breadth, we also comes with incredible responsibility. We partner directly together with the UK government and drive an initiative called the National Skills Initiative, which means that we are committed to upskilling millions of people in the UK using AI and digital skills and help and drive sort of the diffusion of AI skillset into the UK as a nation where this has become an incredible passion project of mine. I have the great honor of leading the Tech her for Water initiative in the uk, which is a specific enablement stream for women within the water sector and where this originally stemmed from. I spend a lot of time looking at how we can run and automate processes and improve how we better operate these businesses. I walk into most digital spaces and talk to loads of leadership within the water sector. In many places, women are shining with their absence, whether that is contributing to finding solutions or at board level. Although it's increasingly much better than in some other sectors, there is still an apparent skills gap that we clearly need to address and we know from running these type of programs in other places it's often because we're not addressing training for women kind of in the right way. And with that, we've then stood up what we call Tech her for Water Tech her for Water is a sort of purpose designed digital upskilling program that spans across five different topics that helps to give this sort of level 101 knowledge in terms of what do I need to know when I'm walking into any kind of digital conversation to be able to comfortably add value to that? Why we did it for women only is because we know that when we're doing training just for women, women often feel safer to ask some of the stupid questions. We build greater communities around it and we tend to see that we have a higher impact and a better sort of outcome at the back end of it.

Speaker B: 13:03

So with Tech her, have you seen any success stories or standout examples from women that have gone through the program and how they've been able then to apply these skills in their roles?

Speaker A: 13:14

Absolutely. So what we've learned. So I will say take care for Water. We just concluded our first round. We are super proud that we got close to 700 women registered. About 500 women graduated, which meant that they took part of four courses or more, which meant that they now have an official badge that they can put on their LinkedIn page. They can put it on their email signature. It means that their organizations now know they have the level one on one understanding in terms of some of the core digital sort of knowledge and skills that you need to have. What they also get access to is sort of professional skills certificate that you can then go and you can dive really deep into certain topics. Whether you're super interested in AI or infrastructure, Microsoft will actually pay for you to take that kind of certification. So should you want to pursue it, that's an option for women to do if they want to try to pivot into a digital role. We've had about 30 women take us up on professional certification at the back end of the last session we run. We're monitoring that really closely. We don't know quite what the outcome of it is yet, but we've seen some really great success from it. When we've run this for government where there's some women that are now sort of going into more digital adjacent or even digital core roles because they feel far more confident in showing up in those kinds of conversations than what they did before. And that's why we're doing this in the first place. It's deliberately helping to create base and the skills and the knowledge so that we can change the trajectory and what the makeup of what people who work in technology look like today.

Speaker B: 14:45

That sounds absolutely amazing. And am I right to believe as well that obviously because you're part of the National Skills Initiative. You will be running more of these in the future and continuing to upskill women in the water sector in the uk?

Speaker A: 14:58

Absolutely. I think it's one of the biggest sort of passion projects of mine and this is really only to get started. You know, we are so grateful and almost overwhelmed by the level of commitment that came across from the sector as a whole. So we've seen leaders from various different parts of the water organizations and their ecosystem show up and recommend that women take part of this. And now it's within our gift and our responsibility to ensure that we continue to drive from that. And there's a couple of things that we learned as a part of running this program. We've now done our sort of level 101 training. I think it's important that we build on that. So maybe how do we have a level 2 or specific deep dives and workshops so that we can really look at building these skills. So we're looking at what that potentially could look like in the future that will run alongside the main program. We're also looking at, is this something that we should try to translate to in person? Workshops, enablement. There's also opportunity for mentorship within Microsoft and our partner ecosystem. Is that something that we should do? I think we've only really scratched the surface around where this potentially can go. And especially in partnerships with WOON and with British Water and Water uk, we're really here to help and drive positive change into the sector and to sort of help and close the sort of perceived, at least the digital skills gap that's existing at the moment.

Speaker B: 16:22

That's super interesting. Where would you say some of kind of the key barriers for women are in the water sector that they face when it comes to then actually adopting these digital and AI skills that they've built up? And what can an organization do to help close that gap?

Speaker A: 16:38

I mean, that's a. That's a really great question. I think there's a top and a bottom responsibility here which I spend a lot of time talking to the watcher companies about. We'll start at the top water companies. Whether you are directly working for a water company or you work somewhere in the supply chain, it is their responsibility to equip their very valuable, incredible people with the best tools so that they can do their best jobs. Now I work for Microsoft, I have a biased view. But regardless, I think part of the challenge have been that we haven't been fast enough in terms of equipping our people with the right tools so that they can effectively adopt these technologies and drive positive change within the sector. So from a leadership level, they need to lean into a couple of different things. Leadership has to lean in, openly advocate and talk about this. Let's remove the stigma, let's normalize it and let's actually push forward in terms of adoption and utilization of these technologies. And we've seen in the companies that are actively advocating for this, shout out to Emily Timmons at Anglian Water, for example, there's a massive transformational shift in productivity, in employee satisfaction and in creativity when you're supposed to supplying people with the right tools and the right leadership mentality. But the tools and the leadership mentality is only going to take you so far. You as an individual have a responsibility within your organization to always be curious and to proceed whether you are comfortable or not. I think women, sometimes they hinder themselves because they don't know it all. They discredit themselves and they say, and therefore I don't know anything. We are now on a learning phase where it's our responsibility to try and I say to people, if you're not using AI every day, several times a day, you are falling behind on the curve. If you start to incorporate it into your thought process and into how you're running and operating, you then will be AI powered and you'll be a step ahead of everybody else. And I think that's the part of the big challenge is women aren't really stepping in in terms of learning and adopting these these skills to the same rate as some of their male counterparts are. Where tech her then shows up and where organizations need to do better is they need to deliberately create space and time to learn and pick up these skills, not just advocate and support for it. These are two very different things. And then finally we also then have to create actual opportunity for these women to then go in and do something different within their organization. And again I can just say a leading example from Wine Gain Water, they've taken some people that's currently within their waste team out of their sort of day to day operational jobs. Looking specifically around how we can leverage AI to better improve how we're running and operating this part of the business. And it's by creating that deliberate space we can then start to see some of the positive impact that these technologies really can have for women, but also for the sector as a whole.

Speaker B: 19:39

You've mentioned there obviously women not leaning in potentially as much and therefore falling behind on the skills. But I think there's also another aspect to look at, which is kind of the risk factor that if women or in general underrepresented groups are not really involved in shaping how technology is designed or how AI is used, adopted and governed, then I would see that there's a bit of a risk to that as well, because that then impacts how it's rolled out and how it's being used within the business, but also how it's shaped. What's your thoughts and your take on that?

Speaker A: 20:12

Absolutely, and I think that's a really, really good point. It kind of goes back to what I spoke about earlier, which is where technology has been done to us, where we now and where organizations need to be better is to bring business along on the process as we are designing and evolving and building out tools and capabilities. And then that has to be a diverse group of people that are representing various different parts of the organization. Where these people then need to show up is first and foremost properly show up and come prepared and want to drive a difference that says itself, but also effectively be able to advocate for how this potentially can solve challenges for you, whether it's from a woman or minority, maybe your English is in your first language. So that we can. We can look at addressing a wealth of different challenges, not just the immediate ones that come to mind. Because most of the water companies that I work with and its ecosystem, the gender split and the diversity that exists within these teams, it's a big challenge across the sector. They will only be able to know and to solve the problems they know exist. And it's probably one of the major learnings that I've had, both in my professional career, but also as a whole, is if no one knows the problem exists, how on earth are we going to try and solve it? So it's really important to speak up, to advocate and for organizations to create, to then be in a position to

Speaker B: 21:33

actually listen and looking ahead, what excites you most about the future for the water sector itself, but also looking at the role that women can play in it, and also AI, obviously.

Speaker A: 21:44

I mean, where do I start? AMP8 biggest investment in the history of time. I think this is going to be the era of intelligence. So in our previous amp, there was a lot of focus around measurement and collection of data. Where I think it's going to be really pivotal as a part of this amp is then how do we then turn that into something that's truly actionable on behalf of our water companies? We now have. And one of the leaders from one of the water companies said, if we have an explosion of data. It lives everywhere. The challenge is it's nowhere where we want it to be and we don't know if really we can trust it. One of the great capabilities that AI have is starting to help and solve that problem, which then means that we can take all of these various different data sets and start turning that into true intelligence. But it also does. It completely changes the type of jobs that we're effectively doing. There will always be a bit of a manual labor element to the water sector, but as it's becoming increasingly more digital, we're now needing a completely different type of skill set than what has historically been a lot of focus on very manual labor. If we're looking into a control room now, we need. We have various different screens that needs to be interpreted. We need to look at a press, the different problems in different systems. Women do incredibly well there because that's how we run and operate our lives. So in places and as a part of a water company where we haven't really seen women show up in the same way before, deeper within operations, et cetera, we're now seeing a pivotal shift where women can play a massive contributing part, leaning into some of the things that they're just many are sort of naturally more prone to being really good at in the first place.

Speaker B: 23:22

I think this is also something where we can not just engage more women, but also we mentioned before a lot of kind of underrepresented groups and we're again coming back to that kind of skills gap, closing that skills gap, engaging these people and using the talent that they have, enhancing and powering it with AI and digital skills to then kind of help us solve the challenges of the water industry in the next couple of years. Because like you said, unpaid and obviously going ahead will be a huge investment period for the water industry and we will continue to need, need good and intelligent people to help solve these challenges massively.

Speaker A: 24:03

And I think the main. We're now at such a pivotal point, the rate of technology is so fast that when we're looking at hiring people, we're no longer looking at hiring people for the job that they're doing today. We need to look at what is their aptitude, their curiosity, their willingness to learn and adapt, because it's going to end up changing so quickly. Which means that when we're looking at whether we're hiring youth, underrepresented group, et cetera, we need to be really deliberate in terms of what our makeup is, so that whenever we have problems that are being deployed and new challenges and new opportunities we have a breadth of different skillsets within our organization that we can deploy against that. Long gone are the days where we have a set job description that would tell someone, you go off and do that and then off you go. That will exist in smaller and small, increasingly smaller pocket and over the course of time it will be more around how can you sort of dynamically use digital and intelligent to help solve all the problems of the organization? And then we'll have robots going down into our, into our sewers eventually to help and to help and alleviate the pressures that being put on humans.

Speaker B: 25:09

Thanks so much, Melina. Before we're going to finish the podcast today, I've got three kind of rapid fire questions for you. So let's start off with the first one. Where is your one piece advice for women who do not feel ready yet?

Speaker A: 25:24

I don't think there is such a thing as ready. I have never felt ready and I think we need to let go of our perception of ready. It's the classic of like growth happens outside of your comfort zone. But more importantly, try to reframe your imposter syndrome. Like it's growth pains. We will only feel confident after we've done something so just can do it anyway.

Speaker B: 25:45

I love that. So what's one practical way to start using AI?

Speaker A: 25:50

This week we spoke about voice. I hope everyone took away on that. The next is imagery. So let's talk about our busy brains and us carrying so much of the mental load. You can start to take imagery of your to do list of an email. You need to rewrite of your fridge. If we're going to look at meal planning and start asking questions to the images or start extracting information across from images to incorporate that within AI. And then so for example, I'm going to a big conference in a couple of days. I'm going to take pictures of loads of slides and things that are happening. I will put all of that into an AI and then help have the AI build a briefing pack for me and my team of the main sort of big takeaways from that conference. No major overhead for me. No more women sitting and taking notes. We don't have to do that anymore. We can show up and be fully present. All you need is your camera.

Speaker B: 26:41

Camera and the last one. One thing you hope listeners are going to take away from this conversation, I

Speaker A: 26:48

hope that what we managed to to convey is AI is a massive opportunity. I know it's being spoken about a lot. I know that we're getting really tired of it. But collectively as women in the water sector or in the energy sector in the utility sector as a whole. We have such an immense opportunity to drive a change because because no one is the expert yet. But if you are willing to put in the time to learn and become just a little bit more adept in terms of using these technologies you can truly help and change the trajectory of the company that you're working for. And I know that's why we're all here in the end. So I hope you'll take away that.

Speaker B: 27:26

Thanks so much Melina. I really hope that our listeners will feel empowered now to try something that they maybe haven't used before. Thank you so much for your time and for your knowledge. I'm very sure that this will be a great episode listen to for our W members.

Speaker A: 27:41

Thank you so much Julia and thank you so much to the W team. Always a pleasure. I'm sure I'll speak to you guys soon. Sam.