The 2021 Women Leaders in Technology: Sara Eaton

Eaton says she feels honored for this recognition for this award, "Especially with such a broad group of women being considered for it. I have worked with such great female consulting technology leaders over the past 20 years at Accenture and Slalom.  I love solving tough technical problems for clients, and this award is such a significant intersection of all the things I love to do."

The advice she has received and would like to pass on? "It will never be a perfect time.  So, if you are waiting for the perfect time to do something, you should probably go ahead and take a chance. Because you miss 100% of the shots you don't take."

Q&A: What unique challenges have you experienced being a female consultant in the technology field?

"Some of my challenges have been more general to being a female consultant as I chose to get married and have kids.  There were not a lot of other traveling moms and that was always a struggle for me when I had to be on the road.  Specifically in the technology field, I have plenty of stories – having meetings at bars targeted for male clientele since that is where the rest of the team wanted to go after work, sitting at technical conferences and counting on one-hand the total number of female presenters at the entire conference, many times being the only woman in the room or on a team.  But there have been great moments as well, building awesome relationships with the few women on my projects and teams as we banded together, chatting with new moms as they learn the joys of childcare and juggling both worlds, seeing the excitement as junior team members tackle a new challenge.  I pushed for us to work harder to find female presenters, I volunteered to present or talk, I asked recruiters to make sure we were finding more female candidates for my teams."