It was while working in IT at Qantas that Muruwari and Kooma woman Cheryl Bailey first came up with the idea of using her tech skills to help Indigenous businesses with their technology and IT support. But when her search for an Indigenous business specialising in technology services that could support her skills and learning came up empty-handed, she decided to launch her own tech company, Indigenous Technology Group, in 2019.

Today Indigenous Technology Group is providing services to government agencies, corporate Australia, industry, and community with a key focus on developing an end-to-end platform that supports training, skills, and career opportunities for First Nations Peoples to start a career in the technology sector and remain successful.

"My ambition is to become one of Australia’s leading, female-owned, 100 percent Indigenous-led tech companies for First Nations Peoples," Bailey said.

As a Muruwari and Kooma woman, Bailey has become an ambassador for and invited to be a contributor across a number of technology advisory boards to improve the representation of First Nations Australian’s needs and capabilities in the broader IT community.

But she is also part of a small but important cohort of channel leaders who are finding there is strength – and business opportunity - in diversity.

The diversity opportunity

The lack of diversity in Australia's technology workforce was laid bare in the Australian Computer Society's report Australia's Digital Pulse 2022, which found just 31 percent of the workforce was female, while only 0.65 per cent were of First Nations background - well below their 3.3 percent representation in the broader population.

Despite this, as more buyers ask questions about their suppliers' diversity programs, some channel leaders have found that building diversity not only boosts their teams' performance, but also translates to improved commercial outcomes.

For Bailey, advocating for diverse teams is also equally important, and extends beyond simply having Indigenous representation in the workforce.

"I believe investing in a diverse workforce represents modern Australia, and Indigenous Peoples can contribute in a meaningful way.”

Other channel leaders are noticing similar benefits from diverse teams. For Victoria Kluth, founder and chief executive officer of the technology consulting firm Araza, being a woman running a business that employs 50 per cent women creates opportunities with clients.

"When responding to RFPs, where there is a scoring system, usually diversity programs/gender response is quantifiably valued, and we know this will be a positive score," said Kluth.

"We also know - because they tell us - that Araza clients respect our values, and it is one of the reasons they like working with us.

"They consider working with a diverse team (to be) a plus, but you have to have the best people with the highest quality outcomes for a client to keep using you."

Growing the diverse talent pool

However, the ability to benefit from diverse teams is only possible when there are sufficient people from diverse backgrounds who also possess the skills that clients demand. That has led many diversity champions to support skills development programs within their businesses and the broader community.

For Bailey, this has led to her backing programs for First Nations peoples that bridge the digital divide between urban and remote communities using technology. Bailey believes Indigenous participation will only change when communities are given better access, equal opportunities for work, and increased investment in technology training certifications and skills development.

Last year, ITG  finished an extensive strategic planning process which resulted in her business actively helping to recommend best practices in sourcing Indigenous Peoples talent, educating urban and remote mob on the benefits of a career in the tech sector, partnering with likeminded technology service companies, providing genuine employment opportunities with tailored health and well-being programs, and helping organisations and government agencies to understand how best to support Australia’s First Nations People.

"We need to bring forward the same tech opportunities for our First Nations Peoples within our industry, no matter where they are in Australia or the Torres Strait Islands, and can succeed by leveraging technology as an enabler to ultimately close the gap in providing genuine job opportunities on country," Bailey said.

"Key to our success will be having access to the right technology resources, with established connectivity and networks, to ensure our First Nations Peoples can participate and be included in Australia’s digital future. We are currently working with our client base and key industry stakeholders to progress development of our platforms, programs, and solutions to help achieve this goal."

Bailey has been actively targeting primary, secondary, and university First Nations students to generate interest and opportunities in a tech career, with a particular focus on advancing tech careers for women through their Indigenous Technology Mirrinj Student STEAM Community Program.

“I feel privileged to work in this industry and make a difference for our mob,”  she said.

Building engagement to boost capability

These actions come at a time when many more businesses are seeking to strengthen their engagement with First Nations people through Reconciliation Action Plans (RAPs) and other actions.

Gubbi Gubbi man Alan Holmes launched his channel business Towcha Technology in 2016, and today Towcha provides services to some of Australia largest corporations.

"The corporate support for businesses like Towcha has always been relatively good, but I think it's getting better," Holmes said.

Holmes has also launched an MSP to service the needs of smaller organisations. This is creating opportunities for Towcha by enabling it to service the needs of other small Indigenous businesses, while also creating training opportunities for Indigenous people.

"We are providing employment opportunities, but we are also helping the indigenous economy digitise as well," Holmes said.

As Indigenous businesses such as Towcha grew, Holmes believed they become more prominent and act as a beacon in the community.

"We'll get to a point where we can provide a genuine pathway for Indigenous people to be participants in the sector, because they can see others, and see it as something they can do," Holmes said.

Providing leadership

While diversity within the Australian technology workforce is already low, it is lower still in leadership roles.

"You don’t see it very often," said Kluth.

"There are so few women who start them. It is harder for women to get both the money and the opportunity."

Today Araza employs a workforce that is 50 percent female, including its executive and sales team. Kluth said this was only made possible by her willingness to look beyond specific qualifications in favour of the overall value that a candidates delivers.

"It does not matter if they are men or women – Australia is short of certain technical roles," she said.

"What I do is to tell my recruiters to keep hiring people who are awesome, who are really good quality, and that have the Araza spirit and honour our 'be grateful' values. And that gives us a whole different set of candidates that we don’t have to place at just that one time."

This approach is also supported by extensive training and development activities, including a graduate program and another for people aged 50 and over, as well as an initiative to train more women in cyber skills.

Building capability

Boosting the various measures of diversity within the Australian technology sector has become a specific focus for the trans-Tasman information technology services company Datacom and its managing director Alexandra Coates.

“My enduring frustration with the tech sector is a diversity imbalance that is proving difficult to shift," said Coates.

"The optimists might say the gap is better than it was, but the current gender stats in areas of tech that will govern our future are confronting.

"The current gender balance in cybersecurity is 13 percent female, in artificial intelligence it is 20 percent and in cloud computing its 15 percent. What this ultimately means is, for all the young girls and women considering their career pathways, it is hard to be what you can’t see.

“As Australasia’s largest homegrown technology company, we believe we have a critical role to play in ensuring our workforce reflects the community within which we operate. Ultimately, we believe that a diverse team brings diverse thinking when it comes to solving problems – and that can only be a positive for our customers, our business and the country as a whole.”

Datacom has launched several initiatives to encourage women and people from underrepresented groups to consider careers in technology, including training initiatives and partnerships that cater to everyone from high schoolers and career starters to older workers seeking to change careers.

It has also taken up the challenge of boosting participation from Indigenous Australians through its Indigenous ICT Traineeship Programme, which was launched in 2022 in partnership with the Indigenous Defence & Infrastructure Consortium and provides trainees with learning practical experience in conjunction with study at TAFE NSW.

One of Coates' key ambitions is to inspire these people to consider a consider a career in IT.

"We’re making sure our business leaders are visible and sharing their experiences of building their careers in tech," Coates said.

"We also make sure that the language and imagery we use, and the stories we tell, show that opportunities in tech and in our business are open to everyone."

Creating the vision

As Bailey, Holmes, Kluth and Coates have all found, boosting team diversity can lead to commercial opportunity – but only when there is a suitably skilled diverse workforce to tap into.

This makes boosting awareness of the opportunities from technology careers critical for increasing the ranks of diverse talent – and something that might have led to a very different career path for Natalia Scheidegger, co-owner of the Sydney-based MSP 3rdmil.

Scheidegger never intended to build a career in the Australian IT channel, but a family tragedy in 2014 led her to step away from her career in corporate strategy to join her mother running the business.

Today Scheidegger oversees a company that has doubled in size and successfully transitioned to a cloud-based model.

"I didn’t have a technical background, but over the years I found I've quite enjoyed the industry and growing the business and being an entrepreneur," she said

However, the steep learning curve Scheidegger faced when joining the family business has led her to understand the importance of encouraging people from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds to consider careers in IT from a young age.

"What I dream of doing when I make my mark is to go back to the school level where young women are making that choice, because that is where the fundamental problem is," she said.

"Way back in the beginning is where the change needs to happen."