The New Tech Table: How AI is Opening Doors for Women in Tech | Manuela Venturi & Ioana Codoban | the blueprint S2 E2
A special episode of the blueprint starring Manuela Venturi, Director of Data Analytics, and Ioana Codoban, Director of Program Management for AI and Data at team.blue, in which they discuss how AI can empower founders to build faster while also opening an opportunity to close the gender gap in tech.
At a recent AI conference, Manuela Venturi found herself counting heads. Out of roughly 300 attendees, she was one of three women in the room. Around the same time, she came across a popular AI podcast called “Super Data Brothers”. Same picture.
"In both cases," she says, "it really struck me how men are back to being in the driving seat of this disruption."
It is a jarring observation for someone who spent years at CERN working on the discovery of the Higgs boson, and watched data science conferences go from 10% women to 30 or 40%. The AI wave felt like a reset. But Manuela and her colleague Ioana Codoban — who brings a background in psychology, human-computer interaction, and a decade co-founding and scaling tech companies — believe the story is not yet written.
Manuela: So, is this really about catching up, or is something bigger happening?
Ioana: What is happening is that the advantage is shifting. Until now, the most valuable person in a tech room was often the one who could code the fastest. What matters now is the ability to frame the right problem, understand the customer, and navigate ambiguity. Those are things women tend to do very well.
Manuela: I think of AI as the great democratiser of tech. AI-skilled workers already earn more than 50% more than non-AI-skilled workers. If women invest in those skills now, it is the fastest path to closing the pay gap.
Ioana: What would you tell a woman starting her career in AI today?
Manuela: Do not wait until you feel ready. With AI, that logic breaks down, because nobody has mastered it yet. Everyone is starting from roughly the same point. The people who will be ahead in three years are the ones who started experimenting today.
Manuela: What strengths do women bring into the AI era?
Ioana: Attentiveness to people's needs, the ability to place a problem in its wider context, and a comfort with ambiguity. Those translate directly into better problem framing, which is the most valuable skill in an AI-driven world.
Manuela: I would add that AI can be a powerful antidote to impostor syndrome. Using generative AI as a thinking partner helps stress-test ideas before sharing them publicly. What you bring to the table ends up sharper, and you feel more confident standing behind it.
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Manuela: How is team.blue making this more than just a conversation?
Ioana: Through the AI Champions community, a large internal network at team.blue focused on learning about AI and spreading that knowledge across the organisation. Two members stand out, and both are women with no technical background.
Baukje Korsten, head of customer service in the Netherlands, used BlueChat, team.blue's internal AI tool, to build an onboarding assistant the team calls “Collega”. New joiners ask it questions. Experienced team members use it too. The experts got their time back.
Siham Rais, who leads customer service in France, built a pricing chatbot on BlueChat that answers complex questions instantly in Slack. The pricing team's workload dropped significantly.
Both stories show the same thing: the most powerful AI applications come from people who understand a problem deeply and care about solving it.
Manuela: You mentioned an open invitation at the start. What does that mean in practice?
Manuela: We are actively hiring for data engineers, data scientists, software developers and data analysts at team.blue. If you are ambitious and looking for the right environment to grow, reach out to Ioana or to me directly.
The full episode is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.