Women empowerment at workplace

Interview with Sigute Kunceviciute, CEO of SumUp EU Payments 

Could you please describe the role of the Vilnius office at SumUp? What are your plans for Lithuania moving forward? 

In 2020, the number of employees at our Lithuanian entity doubled, and we expect this trend to continue in 2021. The Vilnius office is an important hub for SumUp operations in the Baltic states. It brings together specialists of different profiles, including business development, compliance and data protection, as well as operations. We have huge plans here, with SumUp Bank in the pipeline.
  

What are some of the strategies that can help women achieve a more prominent role in their organizations? 

Globally, 52% of SumUppers are women, and our share of women in technology roles is above the average in the tech industry. In our Lithuanian office, we are definitely above average. Nonetheless, we still see plenty of opportunities for us to go even further to empower women, especially in leadership and tech roles. We recently started to build our global Diversity & Inclusion team that will look into designing specific programs to foster the inclusion of women in all areas of SumUp. Some of our past organic initiatives around D&I included creating a women’s circle, Women’s Month programs, establishing partnerships with meetup groups and organizations that foster the development of women, and an employee resource group that worked on diversity promotion projects. 

 
Although there has been some progress made, the gender equality situation in corporate management still leaves a lot to be desired. What do you think is the most significant barrier to female leadership? 

The way the inclusion of women in leadership roles is often approached is by teaching women how to “play the leadership game,” while still following mainly masculine standards for what being a leader is.  
The main challenge we have as a society at this point is how to reinvent leadership to be more inclusive of the experiences of women as well as other underrepresented groups. Real inclusion comes not by making an underrepresented group fit the existing mould, but by transforming the mould to incorporate diverse experiences. I feel we’re on the right track at SumUp, as some of the core leadership principles we apply here steer away from the traditional and hierarchical leadership standards we still sometimes see. 

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