Anne-Marie Imafidon: From Computing at Eleven to Opening Doors in Technology

One of Anne-Marie Imafidon’s earliest memories of a computer involves changing a colour. As a small child, she typed her own version of Little Red Riding Hood on her father’s machine, substituting purple for red. She later recalled her delight at finding the story still there the next morning. The attraction was creative: something she had imagined could be made, saved and returned to. Long before her examination results attracted attention, technology offered a way to experiment with the world around her. ¹

An East London childhood full of questions

Imafidon was born in Barking to Nigerian parents and grew up in East London. At primary school in Walthamstow, she wanted to move quickly through mathematical ideas she had already understood. A teacher recognised that she needed more demanding work and suggested accelerated learning. In a later interview, Imafidon credited the adults who treated her energy and curiosity as abilities to encourage. Their response helped turn frustration in the classroom into an opportunity to learn at a different pace. ²

At home she was the eldest of five children, in a family of four girls and a boy. She remembered a supportive family in which technical interests were not divided into activities for sons and daughters. Her early enjoyment of computers sat alongside an interest in languages and the logic of how they worked. In her oral history for Archives of IT, curiosity and pleasure recur more often than an ambition to collect exceptional qualifications. ³

The qualifications were nevertheless striking. She passed A-level computing at eleven and later completed a master’s degree in Mathematics and Computer Science at Oxford at twenty. Keble College’s account of her life records these achievements alongside her subsequent work encouraging other young women. Her earned Oxford degree should be distinguished from the honorary doctorates she later received. The early results show what she could do; the later career also asks how many other children might flourish if their interests received support. ⁴

Oxford and the work behind the screens

Oxford involved more than academic adjustment. In an interview recorded in 2019, Imafidon remembered feeling homesick on arrival and staying in close contact with a friend through Skype. A new friendship with another student soon helped her find her feet. She valued the degree partly because its achievement could not be dismissed: the work had been examined and was there in the institution’s records. She also described university as a place where she encountered ways of life unfamiliar from home. ⁵

Her professional experience included work in Deutsche Bank’s technology department. She was part of a small team supporting an internal collaboration platform used across the organisation. This was computing embedded in other people’s working lives, requiring a team to maintain and develop something that colleagues depended on. It also gave her experience beyond the classroom: technical knowledge had to meet an organisation’s needs, and the decisions made by a few developers could affect many thousands of people. ³

A turning point came at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in 2012. Hearing about women’s participation in technology led Imafidon to reconsider her own experience of being one of very few women on her university course. The problem became something she wanted to address directly. The account preserved by Stemettes connects this event to her decision to create new opportunities for young people who might otherwise conclude that science and technology were closed to them. ⁶

Building Stemettes with others

In 2013, Imafidon co-founded Stemettes with Jacquelyn Guderley. The organisation brought young women into contact with people already working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, collectively known as STEM. Early activities included panel discussions, events where participants worked on computing projects, and mentoring. Guderley’s later presentation to an intellectual property network included an appeal for women who could offer schoolgirls practical information, contacts and work experience. Building the organisation meant building relationships with people willing to share their time and knowledge. ⁷

The approach put enjoyment and welcome at the centre of learning. Activities were free, with food and an emphasis on having a good time while exploring technical subjects. The organisation developed its work with girls, young women and non-binary young people, and included the arts within the wider term STEAM. This reflected a broad understanding of creativity: designing, making and solving problems could bring different abilities together. A participant could begin with curiosity, without having to arrive already certain of a career. ⁶

Practical access mattered as much as the invitation. In an interview with IEMA, Imafidon explained that Stemettes did not select participants by checking their grades. Support could include train fares, food and travel for a parent accompanying a younger child. Those details explain the difference between telling someone that an opportunity exists and helping them use it. Interest alone does not pay a fare or arrange supervision, and a programme can lose potential participants before the learning has even begun. ²

Giving young people room to experiment

The Outbox Incubator programme expanded this work in the summer of 2015. Imafidon’s later account recorded 115 young women taking part across six weeks, with support from Salesforce.org. The programme gave participants space to develop business ideas as well as technical interests. In reflecting on it, she emphasised the relationships formed among young people and the opportunities to encounter working women in industry. Their own ideas could be taken seriously within a community built around experimentation. ⁸

A documentary, Eat. Sleep. STEM. Repeat., subsequently followed the programme and the participants’ lives afterwards. For Imafidon, the film also raised questions about the influence of media. Images and stories can narrow people’s understanding of what is possible, or introduce possibilities they have never considered. Recording the young women’s experiences allowed the work to travel beyond the people physically present at the programme. It showed learning as a social process, with friendships, difficulties and developing confidence alongside the projects themselves. ⁸

The organisational work also extended through the registered charity Stemette Futures, which works alongside Stemettes. Its stated priorities include taking activities to places with low participation in technical subjects, providing recognised qualifications free of charge, and sharing resources with parents, teachers, former participants and volunteers. These are different forms of support, reaching people at different stages. They show why a lasting educational programme needs more than a succession of inspiring appearances: it also requires accessible information, continued contact and opportunities to develop skills. ⁹

Whose names belong in the classroom?

In 2024, Stemettes published a curriculum white paper calling for broader representation within GCSE and A-level STEM subjects. The project drew on roundtables, interviews, surveys and written research. Its recommendations addressed government, professional institutions, industry, educators, parents and carers. This spread of responsibilities was significant. What a pupil encounters in a lesson depends on decisions made by several organisations, and changing the range of people associated with scientific achievement requires work across those relationships. ¹⁰

The paper argued that women and non-binary contributors should appear consistently within teaching, rather than being confined to occasional enrichment activities. It also asked for examples of contemporary workers and people whose careers had taken less direct routes. The proposal was educational as well as representational: pupils should encounter a fuller account of who produces knowledge and how a working life can develop. The recommendations were a campaign for change, not evidence that every examination board or school had already adopted them. ¹¹

Asking who shapes technology

Imafidon’s argument about participation extends to the technology that reaches the public. In a 2024 article, she explained why the people affected by a product need a place in its development. Her example was a service designed for jobseekers: people actively looking for work should be involved in testing it. Understanding a social situation is part of making something useful. Technical skill and lived experience can inform one another, especially when a system is intended to serve people whose circumstances differ from its designers’. ¹²

She has also drawn attention to the decisions hidden within apparently neutral processes. In a 2022 interview, she discussed how choices about data, goals and measures of success can influence automated recruitment and advertising. The concern is not limited to whether software functions as its developers intended. It also involves asking who set the intention, whose experience supplied the data and who might be excluded by the result. Her argument gives a practical reason for widening participation in technological decisions. ¹

Making that participation sustainable requires resources. Speaking to Computing in 2024, Imafidon questioned the distance between companies acknowledging the importance of women in technology and providing the funding or organisational changes needed. She pointed to differing circumstances, including caring responsibilities and unequal access to computing at school. Employers needed to recognise varied routes into the industry. The responsibility therefore continued after recruitment: workplace expectations and opportunities for progression could either support people’s contribution or make it harder for them to remain. ¹³

Writing for children and a wider public

Her work with the publisher DK included How to be a Maths Whizz, published in 2020. The book uses activities to connect mathematical ideas with familiar things: a model city can introduce three-dimensional shapes, while a treasure map can help explain coordinates. Its approach gives children opportunities to make and investigate. That is consistent with the pleasure Imafidon describes in her own early encounters with computers, while providing activities that families can explore without needing to reproduce her accelerated academic path. ¹⁴

She’s In CTRL, published in 2022, addressed a wider readership. It examines women’s under-representation in technology and encourages readers to see technical systems as things people can question and influence. The book draws on Imafidon’s experience and the work of other innovators, connecting participation with decisions about how technology is used. Its central invitation is practical: a person does not have to accept the existing arrangement of power simply because a service is delivered through a computer. ¹⁵

Broadcasting offered another way to make mathematical ability visible. In 2021, she began a period handling the numbers on Countdown while Rachel Riley was on maternity leave. The role brought her into an established television programme and before an audience different from those attending technology conferences or educational workshops. It was one of several settings in which she communicated beyond her professional field, alongside writing and her term as president of the British Science Association in 2022–2023. ¹⁶

Opening opportunities and influencing decisions

In July 2024, Imafidon was installed as Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University. Addressing graduating students, she connected her interests in mathematics, technology and helping people with the institution’s educational history. The role includes ceremonial responsibilities and support for the university’s ambitions. Her appointment brought someone known for widening access to technical subjects into a position concerned with the public value of education, while linking her East London beginnings to another part of Britain’s university life. ¹⁷

A further appointment followed in December 2025, when the UK government named her Women in Tech Envoy as it launched a taskforce on participation in the sector. The group’s remit included barriers to entering technology, remaining in it and reaching leadership. This extended the discussion beyond individual encouragement to government and industry decisions. The appointment itself should not be confused with completed reform; it created a setting in which experience from education, business and campaigning could inform proposed changes. ¹⁸

Looking back on her upbringing in the Oxford interview, Imafidon challenged the idea that her family’s academic achievements could be understood simply as a special inheritance. She pointed to the other young people her family had helped and mentored, and to adults who had allowed her to take things apart and explore. That observation gives her own story a wider purpose. Exceptional examination results may attract attention, but encouragement, opportunity and useful experience are things people can provide for others. ⁵

Sources

1. McKinsey Global Institute — Forward Thinking on democratizing technology with Anne-Marie Imafidon.

2. Sarah Mukherjee, IEMA — Interview with Anne-Marie Imafidon on inspiring the next generation of women in STEM.

3. Archives of IT — Interview with Anne-Marie Imafidon.

4. Keble College, Oxford — Anne-Marie Imafidon, Portraits of Keble.

5. Oxford Alumni — Anne-Marie Imafidon, interview recorded in 2019.

6. Stemettes — About Us.

7. IP Inclusive — Mojitos, Music and Mentoring: report of Jacquelyn Guderley’s presentation.

8. Anne-Marie Imafidon — The Outbox legacy: Eat. Sleep. STEM. Repeat..

9. Stemettes — Stemette Futures.

10. Stemettes — Curriculum White Paper 2024: project overview.

11. Stemettes — Equitable Curriculum Reform, 2024 white paper.

12. Anne-Marie Imafidon — A diverse STEM workforce leads to more inclusive AI development.

13. Computing — Building a vision of progressive tech.

14. DK — How to be a Maths Whizz.

15. Penguin — She’s In CTRL.

16. Anne-Marie Imafidon — Official biography.

17. Glasgow Caledonian University — Future is in our collective hands, Chancellor tells graduands.

18. Department for Science, Innovation and Technology — Launch of Women in Tech taskforce, 16 December 2025.

Image credit

Anne-Marie Imafidon at a Digital Learning Week panel in 2014. Financial Times photos; cropped version via Wikimedia Commons. Photographer not identified. Image source; CC BY 2.0.