Sihame (pronounced as in the old name for Thailand: Siam) is a young woman whose experience with top-ranking women's rugby is serving her well in her professional life. “This sport taught me to alternate moments of calm with moments of action when you have to be determined to advance, regardless of the obstacles.” She's had to push “sometimes a little hard perhaps! But if I didn't I wouldn't be where I am today.”

And that is as Quality and Projects Director of Deveryware, a French SME which has, amongst other things, developed a platform of services dedicated to investigations and analysis that combine geotracking, big data and forensics to provide French police with powerful tools with which to collect and analyse data. When Sihame was appointed to her position four years ago she was the only woman on the executive board. Today she is no longer alone “and that's very good. The company has evolved where gender parity is concerned,” she notes. 

Sihame has had more than her fair share of hard knocks. At 16 she left her sports' intensive school “not because of the level of sports nor because of the teachers but because of the other kids. I was the only 'foreigner' there although I'm French. But my name is different and my skin is darker and I was frightened for my own safety. One day they'd painted swastikas all over my locker.”

So she transferred to another school that was introducing a women's rugby section and where she'd be playing that sport two hours a day. “I'd never played rugby before. I discovered that not only is it very complete physically but there is a team spirit and solidarity that I've rarely come across elsewhere. The scrum is really symbolic: everyone pushing to the same end.”

She stayed for two years, her team winning the French championship. Some of her friends and former team-mates are now in the French national team. “But women rugby players don't get paid, they have to have a salary-earning job as well, so at one point I had a choice to make because becoming a professional rugby player wasn’t going to get me very far!” So she opted for a Masters in physical education with the objective of becoming a sports' teacher. “My twin brother was studying medicine and had to deal with patients from year one. But in my course we didn't get to confront pupils until our fourth year and that's when I understood that I really didn't want to teach kids who are only doing sports because they have to. I'd always thought everyone was passionate about sports, like me! What a disappointment!” She stuck it out for a year and then, undeterred by her earlier disinterest in maths and physics, “I decided to become an engineer.” 

She applied to the same engineering school, UTC (Université Technologique de Compiègne), amongst the best in the country, as her then boyfriend, now husband. “To my enormous surprise I was accepted so spent the holidays catching up on maths and physics.” The next three years were spent not only studying quality and project management but also gaining a qualification as a rugby coach.

After turning down the offer of a job with the SNCF French national railway (“too slow and cumbersome”) she saw an ad for a six-month internship at Deveryware. She applied on condition they give her a six-month contract instead. “I emerged at the end of a four hour interview with the directors and the CEO, who also happened to be a rugby player, with a full-time permanent contract as a project leader. I think we'd spent 40% of our time discussing rugby!” she laughs. She was 23.

That was 10 years ago. “But some still think of me as 'the little young one'”, she remarks with a raised eyebrow. When she was promoted to her current job “my boss forewarned me that it would not be easy.” But she was rankled by some reactions. “I had to put up with all sorts of things, and really earn my place,” she recounts, adding unhesitatingly that “if I'd been a 50-year old man those things would never have happened, so I had no choice but to bare my fangs!” She reckons it took a full two years after her promotion to gain recognition and legitimacy from her peers. The Director General brought in a management coach who helped her deal with some of the situations and today she says she is very grateful to her hierarchy for their unwavering support because “without them I would not have got to where I am.”

Her advice to young women faced with male colleagues who make it clear they think the woman's promotion is due to positive discrimination rather than because she is the best qualified person for the job is to “persevere, never give up.”