Toronto – This year’s Rising Star winner Aoife McMonagle took a chance on an up-and-coming solution provider back in 2011 and has never looked back.
McMonagle, the director of marketing and communications at CDN Top 100 Solution Provider Scalar Decisions, just moved from Ireland to Canada and was looking to find employment in her field of marketing, when she came across Toronto-based Scalar Decisions. Back then the company sported only 35 people. Today, Scalar is more than 200 and with the merger agreement with fellow CDN Top 100 Solution Provider Mainland Information Systems the company expects to be one of the more high profile firms in the channel community.
Aoife McMonagle
“It’s a great honour to be recognized as I am surrounded by phenomenal women in the IT channel on a daily basis,” McMonagle said.
McMonagle is the second recipient of Rising Star award presented at the 2015 annual CDN Women of the IT Channel Recognition Luncheon. The award was created in collaboration with CDN and Ingram Micro Canada and honours someone with five years or less experience working in the channel.
CDN along with Ingram Micro Canada believe that up-and-coming women workers in the channel should be recognized. Last year’s winner Laura Wittig of Clear Concepts, CDN Solution Provider of the Year for 2013, was the first ever winner of the award.
The Rising Star award was voted on by the Canadian Channel Chiefs Council.
“Organizations like CDN play a huge role, so it’s great to see you put on events like this. It’s important to give adequate media coverage to women in technology so that women early in their career have role models to aspire to. I do also think tech is a very network-based industry – that’s amazing once you are in that network, but I feel we could do more to ensure we look beyond traditional networks when hiring in order to ensure a more diverse pool of applicants from the outset,” McMonagle said of the Rising Star program and the CDN event.
She added that being a woman in a male-dominated industry has never held her back. When she arrived in Canada, McMonagle had no previous experience in IT before joining Scalar. She told CDN that earlier on in her career a confidence boost was needed. “I’ve made conscious efforts over the past few years to push myself outside of my comfort zone and accept challenges, even if I don’t feel quite ready for them.”
She believes that everyone’s career experiences are different and do not always related to gender.
If fact, the only solution McMonagle said helped her succeed in the IT industry is simple “hard work and passion.”