Luli Adeyemo: Leading the Charge for a More Diverse Tech World

This International Women’s Day, ADAPT is celebrating the female game-changers making an indelible mark in tech.

Luli Adeyemo, recognised as the Emerging Leader in Tech at the Women’s Agenda Leadership Awards, stands out not just for her leadership roles at Best Case Scenario and TechDiversity Academy but also for her deep commitment to diversity, showing us all how inclusion is key to sparking true innovation.

From outsider to inspirational leader

It was the year 2000 and Luli Adeyemo remembers feeling out of place and uncomfortable in a “sea of white” at her first Gartner Symposium.  

As much as Luli would have liked to turn around and run in the opposite direction, she stayed, realising that she wanted to be part of a conversation around the next Industrial Revolution, driven by technology. 

She had a desire to take the conversation to diverse groups of people outside that event.  

“That was the first step in my little way of trying to create a bit of diversity in the tech sector,” she tells ADAPT.  

These days, she is passionate about diversity and inclusion in this sector. She is on a mission to highlight the power that it can bring to boardrooms across Australia. 

 Luli, who is Australian event director at AIMed Australia and program director at the TechDiversity Academy, among other roles, says there’s positivity in being different and why it’s important to just be who you are and keep true to your purpose. 

Highlighting diversity within genders 

At the TechDiversity Academy, Luli is taking the gender diversity conversation a step further than just encouraging women to enter IT. Instead, she talks a lot about “diversity within gender.” 

“It’s easy to focus on one area and by doing so, not actually address the challenge or realise the opportunity,” she says.  

In 2013/2014 when Luli began her involvement with the AIIA’s NSW Council, tech diversity was just a special interest group, created as a “side hustle” for the industry association, she says.  

“There were a lot of groups that talked “females in tech, women in tech”, but they didn’t have that broader lens. When we talk about inclusion, we’ve got to have a place where everybody belongs,” she says. 

 This was the motivation for setting up the TechDiversity social enterprise. 

“We have a responsibility to get this [diversity] right. The clever thing is realising that this is not a quick fix. The clever thing is needing to commit to the change,” she says. 

The world needs everyone in tech 

Luli feels that the tech industry needs to do a better job of amplifying the needs of everyone who wants to work in the sector. 

“The perception for people outside of tech is unless they are coming from a STEM background is that they don’t think that they belong.  

“Technology is a part of every element of our lives…if we haven’t got representation from everybody in our society in our industry, then more often than not, we are not going to be designing for all,” she says.  

She says that the tech sector spends billions of dollars trying to understand the needs of external customer groups but fails to invest in getting a better grasp on diversity inside its own internal organisations. 

“Imagine how much more successful we will be as an industry if we have representative voices from everybody in society informing what technology should be doing to improve citizen outcomes, social outcomes, environment outcomes, health outcomes.  

“It [tech] is an industry that everyone belongs in,” she says. 

As we mark International Women’s Day, Luli Adeyemo’s vision and achievements remind us why diversity and inclusion are non-negotiables in the quest for tech advancement and societal progress.

Her leadership and advocacy efforts make her a role model for aspiring techies and a force for positive change, urging the tech world to aim for a diverse and inclusive future.

Watch other Remarkable Women in Tech – Peggy Renders, Katie McDermott, Claudine Ogilvie, Pooja Singh, and Marie Johnson’s full interviews or our compilation of their stories.