Meet Stephanie Porter

Stephanie Porter graduated with an Honours Business Administration, Ivey School of Business, in 2008. She is currently a Partner, Technology Advisory at Ernst & Young. In her spare time she likes to travel, volunteer, and read sci-fi or fantasy books.

When did your love of STEM begin?

Growing up math was always my favourite subject - my father encouraged me to study university-level math in high school, while my mother helped me understand that math was an exciting focus area for women. As I grew up emerging technology became another passion. In business school I elected to pursue a technology-driven career instead of Finance...I joined IBM and began working with ERP systems. Now I'm a Partner in EY's booming Technology Advisory Practice where we are transforming businesses to be better positioned for the future and enabling their vision with technology.

What is the best part about working in the field of STEM?

It is a constant evolution. If your focus is technology, your skills and knowledge won't ever become stagnant - they can't! You've got to stay on top of megatrends in the world, changes across industries, leading practice processes, people and psychology, as well as emerging technology. In today's world technology is used to enable a strategic direction, achieve a vision, enforce process improvements, and improve the engagement and fulfillment of people.

What advice would you give young women interested in a career in STEM?

It doesn't matter if you have a technical skill-set yet or not - any good company can give you those skills. You need to excited about learning, unafraid to continually evolve, and willing to jump in...the rest can be taught. With technology changing all the time, deep skill-sets/expertise can become irrelevant, replaced, or mainstream, so we all have to learn new technology from scratch anyway. For companies like EY, mind-set is more important than skill-set.