Interview with Jo Connell OBE DL

Jo Connell was born in Windsor in January 1948.  She is the eldest of three children. Her father was a railway clerk and her mother was a hairdresser by trade who worked part-time while raising the children.

Jo went to her local infant school, followed by the Royal Free, a state primary school in Windsor. She says: “I was usually in the top few in the class.  I used to have a competition with another boy, who could come first or second.” Having passed her Eleven Plus Jo went to Windsor High School for Girls. Jo’s favourite subjects were maths and science. Having been top of the class in primary school Jo was uninspired at Windsor High and found that she didn’t work as hard as she knew she could, she says; “One of the things my parents did bring us up to do was to be very conscientious.  Not necessarily work hard academically, but if you did anything, you committed to it, and you should deliver it.  I didn’t apply this when I was at high school, but I’ve certainly always thought about it during my working life, and it’s now my motto if you call it that on my coat of arms, hard work reaps reward.”

Jo achieved seven O levels and progressed to A levels in zoology, maths and botany.

In 1966, with an ambition to be a maths teacher, Jo applied for teachers’ training college.

However, things changed when her mother got her a summer job at Mars in their computing department. She explains: “In those days, they hard-coded in things like the Purchase Tax rates, and the Purchase Tax rates had just been changed by the Government, so they decided they’d put me in the computer department to get me to change the rates in the programs. I was doing an element of programming, easy bits.”  At the end of the summer Mars offered Jo a job to train to be a programmer.  She adds: “In my father’s eyes that was a complete no-brainer, because that meant I was going to be paid exactly the same amount of money as an annual salary, as I would have done after three years of training to become a teacher.”

Jo says that she has had pangs of regret over the years about not having gone to university, “but given what was happening in the computing industry, getting in at the very start and gaining experience was probably more important to my career than going to university and then coming in at a later stage. It’s just that, never having gone to university, you feel a bit sort of second-class when people are talking about it.”

Having accepted the role, Jo was sent to Honeywell to train to do programming. Mars used computers for the back-office functions and had a Honeywell CPU which sat in the middle of the open plan office, while the tapes were kept in an air-conditioned room. Jo recalls: “The CPU was just sitting in the office and it had a line of cigarette burns all along the edge because you were allowed to smoke in the office in those days. Before the computer operator could go into the tape room to change a tape, they’d leave their cigarette on the side of the CPU and quite often they’d burn down the edge of it.  It’s just fascinating.  There were things like punch cards, and paper tape. It was an entirely different computing setup to anything you would find these days.” The other difference Jo notes was the number of women working in the computer department.

After a couple of years, Jo moved on to Aspro-Nicholas, in Slough, to take a promotion and become an analyst programmer.

 Jo was now working on a Burroughs machine but still working on mainly corporate systems such as payroll and accountancy. She says it was fascinating because they wrote their own payroll systems. Jo says: “It wasn’t hard because of the nature of how you did it; you wrote coding on coding sheets, sent them to the punch room, it was punched up and then you had a turn-round of your program.  Sometimes you had to wait quite a long time to have a turn-round of your program, so the key thing was accuracy in those days. You had to make sure you were as accurate as possible in the very beginning, because there wasn’t any way you could keep changing and putting something back in.  You’d have at least an overnight.  And then when I went on to work from home, you were coding on coding sheets, you were putting the stuff in the post, it was going off, and you were lucky to have a turn-round once a week.  Things had to work.”

In 1971, Jo joined CMG as a systems and programming consultant.  Jo says of it: “It hadn’t been going that long and was very open. It was a great model in those days because they were very open about what everyone was paid; you could even go and ask to look at somebody’s personnel records.  They were great at communication, there was a regular monthly staff meeting where they told you everything that was going on. They encouraged share ownership. It did systems and programming as well with both a Honeywell bureau and a Burroughs; so, I had the right sort of tech experience when I joined.”

Jo says she learnt a great deal at CMG which stood her in good stead for the rest of her career. She adds: “You were measured in terms of your chargeable utilisation. I can look at that and I can see a project in terms of that and when I moved into Freelance Programmers Limited and became a project manager, it certainly helped me in terms of the professionalism of management project.”

The role required flexibility as Jo could be sent to any client at very short notice to work on different types of projects. This worked well and fitted Jo’s life at the time with a husband. However, when she had her first child Jo knew that didn’t want to work full time.

Having had her son in 1976, Jo decided to go to work for Freelance Programmers Ltd (FI) in 1977. The company had been started by Dame Stephanie Shirley (aka Steve Shirley) and employed only women who all worked at home. Jo says: “If you were female, you had heard of Freelance Programmers Limited.  You knew what they offered; everybody spoke about it.  In the industry, even if you went back to work, it was very rare to hear of a part-time job. Even if you went back to work full-time, or you were part-time, if you were female with a family, you were overlooked for promotion.  People just didn’t think you could do a competent day’s work in the same way that full-time salaried men and perhaps women could. You weren’t treated in the same way. I knew of FI.  I applied, I was interviewed, and I started life as an analyst programmer working for FI.”

Jo joined as an analyst programmer, went on to do systems analysis and then quickly progressed to be a project manager and then an account manager. She says: “I found somebody who would look after my son for two days a week so that I could go out twice so that enabled me to have some sort of client interface, but quite often at home I would be doing my work in the evenings.”

Through her forty-year career, Jo witnessed many changes to the IT profession, she says: “I saw the changes really from the point of view of working in Freelancers International.  I’m very, very, very, fortunate to have worked for that company which was very forward-thinking, everyone was equal, and Steve wanted to create a share ownership model amongst the employees. In particular, the Eighties and the Nineties were such an exciting time, computing was taking off.  People got their minds round the Internet and computing was becoming more and more important in businesses.  The market was growing like Topsy.  There was plenty of opportunity for companies providing external services.  It was absolutely amazing.  It was a wonderful time to work.”

In 1992, Dame Stephanie Shirley retired and was succeeded by Dame Hilary Cropper, who had worked for ICL.  She saw the opportunity for FI to expand into applications management and to sell outsourcing into large companies, where FI took over the responsibility for those systems.  Jo explains: “They were tending to be ones written in COBOL, ones that were more back office, retail systems, banking systems, and that developed eventually into business process outsourcing, where you could take over the business process. On the back of that, FI grew fantastically.”

She continues: “It was a wonderful, wonderful time and as the company grew, so opportunities grew. I was a project manager for some projects.  I then became an account manager.  I then sold, and I was quite successful at selling some new big projects.  I became the regional manager of our southern region and I eventually became Manager of  the South of Engand. I became Sales and Marketing Director and Chief Operating Officer.”

Of her success, Jo says: “I can’t say my technical skills contributed greatly; after a certain point, I wasn’t really using them.  I think that, what got me on were, my interpersonal skills, my people skills.  I just love motivating teams and managing them.  I also like project managing things.  I’m either the chairman or I’m a completer finisher.  I’m not an amazing ideas person.  What I’m good at is delivering things, and I’m good at chairing meetings.  And having a clear focus.  Clear thinking is an important aspect because you’ve got to be quite focused on what you’re trying to do, and not get distracted.”

Jo ended her corporate career as Group Managing Director of the FI successor, FTSE 250 company, called Xansa which she ran until she chose to retire at the age of 55 in 2003.

Of women in computing in the seventies, Jo says, “When I was in the department at Mars, probably a third were women.  When I look back at the Aspro-Nicholas department, 50 per cent were women, 50 per cent were men. In those days, there wasn’t this feeling that tech was for testosterone men.  … It was seen very much as a gender-balanced opportunity.”

However, many of the roles were mainly occupied by younger women without children, Jo adds: “A big problem was you could work, you could be treated equally at that level, but once you had a child, you sort of were deemed as different. It was a very peculiar situation; they didn’t see you as the same, they couldn’t rely on you therefore you didn’t deserve promotion.”

Jo tells the story of when she was recruiting at CMG as part of two-person interview panel: “CMG themselves were quite into equality. There wasn’t this ‘them and us’ with women and men and if somebody applied for a job, they had to be interviewed by a consultant as well as being interviewed by a manager, and they had to pass both tests. It was my turn to interview someone so when they turned up, I showed them into the interview room and asked whether they wanted a cup of coffee. I went and got a coffee, brought it back, and then I sat down. They were absolutely gobsmacked.  They thought I was the secretary; they did not think I was a consultant. There was this perception that women did the secretary roles, and not necessarily the higher, computing roles.”

On solving the lack of women in IT today, Jo says: “I think, people think it’s all techie stuff, and nerdy stuff.  Sadly.  What they don’t realise is that, as well as the programmers, and you do need programmers, you do need clever technicians, but there’s so many other roles, in terms of project manager, in terms of account manager, client-facing, where actually what you need is, good interpersonal skills.”

 She points to the many initiatives and charities that encourage women into IT, adding: “I personally fund a scholarship at the university to try and attract a computer science and engineering woman to take a degree in computing. I guess it’s at school where you fix your career really, where you decide what you’re going to do at university.  It all comes out from schooling. We need more schools like Hammersmith Academy that focus on information technology and computing.”

Jo had always had in mind that she would retire at 55 in order to spend more time doing things that she thought made a difference. She had been introduced to philanthropic work by Dame Stephanie Shirley who encouraged senior staff to take on one or two external roles. For Jo, these included being a Trustee and then Chair of Help the Aged and Non-Executive Director of Thus, an Internet company that was part of Scottish Telecom and Governor and then Chair of the University of Hertfordshire. Post retirement she became a Trustee and then Chair of her local hospice, The Hospice of St Francis.

She says that while there was not a big difference to her in the way that she worked with the organisations, there was a big difference in the way that they worked from corporate entities. She explains: “I think one of the things that I was able to bring to those organisations was actually more business management.  I wouldn’t wish any of them to be a business, because, they needed focus on the caring aspect of what they’re doing.  In the hospice the key thing for them is that they look after patients at the end of life, but there’s no reason why they can’t be run in a business-like way. When I joined them, there was quite a lot one could do to make them more businesses-minded in how they approached board meetings, committees, finance.”

Jo has achieved much in her charitable roles from project managing the building of a larger hospice, helping the University, to uniting Help the Aged and Age Concern England.  She says: “If you look across the sector, so many of charities could really benefit from doing more together, but a lot of them get started with a passion for something, and their founder doesn’t want to do anything with another charity. I think the Charity Commission have often said they would like to see more mergers in the sector.  It would make the sector more efficient, but they have this passion that makes them want to put their arms round their charity, and they can’t see how they could possibly work with another organisation.”

 Other roles include Chair of the Communications Consumer Panel for Ofcom which ensures that telecoms developments are suitable for older and disable customers. Jo was also invited to be a Deputy Lieutenant in her county supporting the Lord Lieutenant as the Queen’s representative in the county, a role that every county has.

She says: “I’ve been very lucky, because I’ve been able to choose the paths I wanted to take, because I was financially secure.  That doesn’t happen for everyone.”

Jo was Master of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists in 2008/9, and then went on to chair the charity for eight years or something, before retiring.

Jo says of her work with WCIT: “That’s just been another fantastic aspect of being able to give something back. I just think that’s really important.  I’ve been able to establish a scholarship at the university for a girl doing computer science and engineering.  I’ve been able to establish an endowment fund at the Hertfordshire Community Foundation, to be able to donate and make grants to help older people.  I’ve been able to become one of the guardians at The Hospice of St Francis supporting their bereavement centre, and I’m also a patron there.  So, it’s all sort of linked together and it’s just absolutely fascinating.”

Having become so incredibly busy with her many charitable roles, Jo now has plans to cut back a little, however, she says that she will always be open to interesting opportunities to continue giving back to society.

Jo was awarded an OBE for her services for older people following the merger of Help of Aged and Age Concern.

Jo says of the technology today and in the future: “It’s changed so much.  It is life. Life cannot exist for anyone really without computers these days.  The industry in the UK in particular has changed so much.  It’s really quite sad.”  Jo goes on to point to the loss of many UK companies such as CMG, Logica and Hoskyns. Adding: “There isn’t the home-baked industry in the UK anymore, not in that way.  But what we do have is a very entrepreneurial, technical industry, so, we have a lot of start-ups and a lot of good things happening in the UK.”  But I think in the future, some aspects are for good, and some aspects not so good.  And I just think it’s so difficult to say.

 On the subject of AI as a force for good or bad, Jo says: “I think all technology is down to how it’s applied and used and that means it’s down to human intervention.  Technology has the power to be good all the time, but it’s not always used that way.

I think AI is a force for good, in that it can be used to make charities far more efficient and expand their operations but, there’s an ethics side to AI isn’t there. And, whoever’s implementing it needs to be very careful that they are observing the ethical requirements.”

For anyone thinking about a career in IT today, Jo advises: “I’d go for it; IT or engineering, because they’re very intertwined in some ways. You do need to be a bit of a maths, a bit of a technology, person.  Try and go into the technical end, the computer science bit.  When I was recruiting graduates at FI, we recruited half our graduates from computer science degrees, which you need to get the technical bit, and we recruited half our graduates from language and arts degrees, because those are the people that seem to be better at dealing with people.  Having those interpersonal skills.  Running big projects with big teams.”

For anyone who has time or is looking towards what they might do post-retirement, Jo says: “Giving back, either financially, or giving back with your time, to help those less fortunate is a very rewarding thing to do.”

Interviewed by: Tom Abram on the 21st November 2019 at the WCIT Hall

Transcribed by: Susan Hutton

Abstracted by: Lynda Feeley