Nurturing the Next Generation

On Women's Day, we honored the strength and brilliance of women everywhere. From breaking barriers to nurturing societies, their contributions are boundless.

This month, Frost will be sharing the stories of our women leads. These stories shed light on their expertise and influence on the company’s growth. We hope these stories inspire others to be the best they can be!

Leigh

Frost CEO; mother of six

Thirteen-year-old Laurize has always looked up to her aunt, Senior Web Developer and Frost Technical Lead Anna Enriquez.

“She asked me, ‘Tita, how do I earn a lot of money?,’” Anna laughs, remembering the amusing conversation she had with her niece.

“She was interested because she could see me buying all these fancy things. Sometimes, she would ask me to buy her stuff and I would. As her tita, it’s my job to spoil her.”

Most people emphasize interest and ambition in the “What do you want to be when you grow up?” talk with children. That’s all well and good, but Anna also believes there’s something to be said about enticing them with how lucrative and rewarding a career in IT or, in general, STEM could be.

Anna believes there’s something to be said about enticing kids with how lucrative and rewarding a career in STEM could be.

“So I asked her, ‘you want to earn a lot of money? why don’t you take up programming in college, too?’” She said it jokingly but she knows that if that got a foot or even a toe in the door, if Laurize showed even an inkling of interest because of it, then the veteran web developer would support it 100%.

Girls Studying STEM

This pragmatism is certainly a welcome approach, particularly in the Philippines where only three in every 10 workers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields are women. That is according to the 2023 World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report.

Engineering, IT and technical programs such as the ones offered by MFI Polytechnic Institute, of which Anna is a proud graduate, are opening opportunities for young girls to explore the world of STEM.

“There’s certainly a disparity between the number of boys and the number of girls we had in our school,” she admits. However, she is also hopeful because there are now more and more women entering these programs.

In the Philippines, only three in every 10 workers in STEM fields are women.

“There were 13 passers in the IT program during my time, and five of them were girls, including me,” Anna continues.

Anna

Technical Lead

In the Field

As a Senior Web Developer for TV5, a Filipino television network, she would further discover that her field wasn't as male-dominated as it once was.

“My only teammate was a woman, our head was a woman, a majority of our department was surprisingly women.” Anna recalls. While her situation is certainly a special case, it is indicative of a promising upward trend when it comes to women in STEM, particularly in IT-related jobs. There is still a long way to go but she is positive about the way things are going.

Being a Leader

Anna’s journey toward being Technical Lead at Frost was not without challenges.

“On my second day at Frost, they sent me to work on site at the client with a team  of my own,” she says.  “It was also my first time  managing people!”

She admits that she had no experience as a manager and being thrown in the thick of things with multiple people relying on her leadership was certainly a gamble on the part of Frost. However, that gamble proved to be worth it because Anna shined.

“I don’t know how I did it, but I made it work,” she says, chuckling. Anna says it was a humbling experience but, at that point in her career, she was no longer a stranger to managing projects. “I was doing production alongside the team, and I had experience with project management– delegating tasks, liaising with SPOCs, and all the necessary work that comes with a project like this.”

She was nervous, to be sure, but that was where her strength showed itself. The project encountered issues in the earlier parts and Anna sought help from Frost executives JP and Leigh. “It was difficult to ask for guidance because I was on-site with the client. The rest of Frost was far from my team. Thankfully, we found ways to support each other despite the distance.”

Working for the Future

In the end, it was this first hurdle that sparked an interest in Anna to learn more about being a leader. “I know I still have a lot to learn about people management so I really appreciate it when my team speaks up about things that I may have overlooked in our work.”

“I know I still have a lot to learn about people management so I really appreciate it when my team speaks up about things that I may have overlooked.”

Related readings

Frost: A Certified Great Place to Work!

Forging Through - The Journey of Frost’s Chief Creative

Beyond Boundaries: the Frost Team Building Expedition