Witad Awards 2020: Rising star (vendor)—Amy Ross, SIX

Amy Ross from SIX wins the rising star (vendor) category at this year’s Women in Technology and Data Awards. With over eight years at SIX, she has proven herself to be a change agent with an impressive trajectory, having been promoted seven times within the company. Today, as head of international IT services, she is responsible for the firm’s legal and risk compliance functions, client services, client and employee satisfaction, and budgeting, globally.

During her time at SIX, Ross has shaped the firm’s approach to technology and ways of working. She assessed the types of technologies the firm used and set out on a mission to reduce costs and automate low-touch processes. One example of that strategy is her decommissioning of a little-used conference call service that cost the firm €16,000 ($17,600) a month, replacing it with Skype. She developed policies, including business continuity plans in the US and spearheaded the firm’s decision to outsource the running of its datacenters to third parties, helping to offload the labor involved in managing the hardware internally. In her first year at SIX, she reduced IT costs by $1 million; she attributes much of her success at SIX to her previous 14 years at UBS, where she developed her skills in IT and operations.

“I think it was bringing that fresh set of eyes, that fresh set of skills and coming from such a large conglomerate that does it well in terms of operations, access management and continuity. I had experienced and spearheaded those [initiatives] at UBS, like running the continuity tests, and that experience really mattered a lot,” Ross says.

A significant part of her role is nurturing and developing SIX’s workforce. As part of that responsibility, she has introduced team-building exercises, promoted collaborative working and offered facilities to upskill employees. She has also taken on the role of mentoring women in IT. On separate occasions, she spent a year-and-a-half working with two women, helping to develop their skills, confidence and leadership qualities. As a result, both women are now managers on her team. “I’m always willing to give time to people and that’s a differentiator,” Ross says. “I think when leaders get very busy and bogged down with their reporting and management meetings, I always stop and prioritize people because our people are the assets of our company.”