Inspiring Profile: Dame Stephanie Shirley

Article by Ross Johnson

We take a look at the life of inspiring information technology pioneer, businesswoman and philanthropist, Dame Stephanie (Steve) Shirley.

“I decided to make mine a life that was worth saving,” says Dame Stephanie Shirley in her 2015 TED talk. “And then I just got on with it.” Remarkably pragmatic, it is in similar fashion that she considers herself feminist; “in deed but not in word”. It is these last words that perhaps retain best the ethos of her approach. From aspiring entrepreneur and innovative IT programmer, to philanthropy and the championing of young women in business, Dame Stephanie Shirley’s is a career in which obstacles are to be overcome through action and through practicality.

Perhaps such an approach is not surprising. She traces her determination to a single train journey, from Vienna to England in 1939, aged just 5. She explains, “I was born in Germany into a privileged family, but when I was five my parents did a very brave thing and arranged for me and my nine-year-old sister to come to England on the Kindertransport train. That two-and-a-half-day traumatic journey changed my life. It saved me from the Holocaust and gave me the drive, even as a child, to ensure I lived a life worth saving.”

With an extraordinary aptitude for maths, she decided against going to university and instead found a position at the Post Office’s Dollis Hill research station. Aged 18, she found she was developing an ever-increasing passion for computers. She also found that she was in a male dominated industry. “When I first started I was patronised, as women were, but when I began to make it clear that I was pursuing a vigorous professional career, then it became a more entrenched position to keep me out.”

In 1962, she would follow her own advice, and simply got on with it. From her kitchen table she set up her own software company, Freelance Programmers. It was a company innovative in that it employed only women who worked from home—a company for women, run by women. This, however, only marked the beginning of her getting on with it. “I discovered I got very little response to business letters which I signed as ‘Stephanie’, but that if I changed it to ‘Steve’, I was taken seriously. I’ve been known as Steve ever since.”

The company was to thrive, the team commissioned to programme the black box flight recorder used on Concorde. When the company floated on the Stock Exchange in 1933, with 25% now owned by its mostly female employees, it was a decision that resulted in 70 millionaires.

It was never an easy path to success. Shirley’s late son was autistic which, given the cultural view of parenting at the time, meant she had to balance the pressures of running a software company with the severe pressures of parenting. It was the company culture that she herself built that was the biggest support. “It was quite acceptable to show your weaknesses; for you to help me this morning and I’ll help you this afternoon—we knew we were part of that crusade to get women into business.”

Giving up full time work on her 60th birthday she instead devoted herself to philanthropy, an estimated £67 million being spent on causes she believes in, particularly autism charities and the championing and mentoring of young women in business.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, her advice for young women remains as pragmatic as her approach. “I’m disappointed that many young women today still feel they have a difficult time in business. For many years I was the ‘first woman this and the first woman that’, at a time where there were no expectations of us. I began to challenge conventions and it was never easy. Yes, life is still tough, but many women don’t really push themselves.” She continues, “We can’t necessarily change the world, but we can change the way we do things.” With Dame Stephanie Shirley, it is practicalities until the last.