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INTERNATIONAL

We need to make sure we are building the pipeline for our
leaders of tomorrow. That is a job that can't be done by ITU
management alone. We need the support of our members.

Q: What specific challenges are therefor women in lead-
ership positions in organisations with diverse cultural,
commercial and government stakeholders?
In general, diverse teams can be the strongest teams. I am
very fortunate to be leading an amazing team in my posi-
tion at the ITU. I believe when you empower your staff,
motivate and challenge them, they deliver their best.

When it comes to women leaders, there are not enough
of us. So we don't have a network of female peers around
us. We also struggle with work-family balance, and hav-
IkAp
ing the time to deliver what is expected on the work front
without sacrificing the time with your family. We learn to "Studies show that gender
juggle, and to be extremely well organised.
balance in the boardroom can
The former Secretary-General of the UN, Mr Ban Ki-
moon did a very good job in hiring very qualified women make a difference for business
to lead UN organizations. I understand that the newly
elected SG will do the same. From my own perspective, if as well as in decision making."
you are the only woman on board, it is not enough. Stud-
ies show that gender balance in the boardroom can make
a difference for business as well as in decision making. ers, 4 digital natives, with multiple devices. Parenting in
the physical world is already a great challenge. Parenting
Q: Innovation is advancing at a phenomenal rate. What in the virtual world makes this exponentially more dif-
do you see as the future? ficult. Not one parenting book back at that time prepared
The future is definitely mobile. With broadband growing us for what was to come!
like crazy, the future is your mobile device. We will con-
tinue to see advances in artificial intelligence, robotics, My husband and I talk to our children regularly at the
the Internet of Things (JoT), the application of big data, dinner table about what is appropriate or not in terms of
and probably very soon self-driving vehicles. on-line behaviour. We also try to enforce limits on the
time spent on their devices. This often calls for creative
But where we really need to be looking is to innovation parenting.
for development. We still have over 50 per cent of the
world's population that are deprived of connectivity. In I am proud to have been one of the architects of ITU's
the Least Developed Countries, only 15 per cent of the Child on-line protection initiative, as well as part of a re-
population has access to the internet. cent study we launched in 2015 on Cyberviolence against
women and girls. Raising awareness amongst children,
We need to connect the next 1.5 billion, the last 1.5 billion educators, parents, policy makers, and working close-
and all of those in between. We can only do this through ly with industry players can help ensure that ICTs do
global collaboration, and multistakeholder partnerships achieve their potential in "accelerating human progress"
combined with enabling and investment friendly policy en- as called for in the UN 2030 Agenda.
vironments. We need to ensure that access is affordable and
that content is relevant and available in local languages. Leaving Ms Bogdan to go back to her work, we realise
the enormity of her job. The internet is becoming more
Q What other challenges do you see in the ICT space? and more important in our lives, and so is the mobile de-
There is a growing concern around cybersecurity and vice... We need global cooperation and collaboration-ena-
trust in the network. This continues to be an important bling frameworks and who is better placed to look into the
issue for ITU, but also for the global community. benefits and disadvantages than ITU We wish Ms Bogdan
the best of luck in this endeavour because a single woman
Cyber-safety, particularly for children, is a top priority for among the men, in such a male-dominated field might
me, not just as a professional, but as a parent of 4 teenag- make all the difference.

INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMAT - DIVA 11