I'm just such a stubborn person.
When adversity hits, I'm more motivated.
I'm not going to do this.
I'm not going to let them get me down.
My childhood made me able to cope with change
and eventually to love change.
I arrived on the Kindertransport with my older sister.
I can really only remember the childish things.
One little boy that kept being sick.
Losing my doll and then finding her again.
These are ingrained in my personality.
It has made a big impression on my life.
It still impacts me.
I want to make sure that the life that was saved was worth saving.
I don't fritter my days away, and that goes back 75 years.
The sort of sexism that I experienced -
being fondled, being pushed against the wall -
after one of those instances I really decided,
"I have had enough."
I went home, thought about it
and the following day came in and gave my notice.
Society was very different.
It was conventional to stop working
on marriage or when your first child was expected.
So my computing world was full of people with experience
who were basically being ignored by the workforce.
I had everybody working from home,
and started not paying by the hours that somebody worked,
but rather the tasks that they achieved,
and that was a big change that really made a difference.
We see it now in the gig economy,
that these social changes are not overnight,
they don't just come with the changes in technology,
but gradually society adapts to them.
My dear husband had thought,
"Well are they not replying because you've got this
Stephanie Shirley at the end? This double feminine?"
And we decided to write the same letters to the same people
but signing them Steve Shirley,
and surprise, surprise we began to get a few replies.
Managing the dual pressures of running a company and coping,
and that was the right operative word,
with home demands, was not easy.
I can't say that my husband didn't suffer.
It was not a good time in our lives
but it can be done and, of course,
if you have to work from a financial point of view
it will be done.
And if you have to work
from your own professional competence point of view,
it will be done and I was the latter.
Tech is just such a wonderful opening into the future.
I think everyone should just embrace it.
It opens up so much for you.
There's no doubt that artificial intelligence is going to
really replace a lot of jobs
and we don't know what's going to happen
but that's part of the exciting thing.
We can actually be in there and be a part of making it happen.
One of the things that I did in my company was to share
the ownership of the company with the staff.
I got this idea of how pleasant it was
to be able to make something happen
with the money that I had made earlier in my life.
It's ridiculous to keep it all for myself
and, to be selfish,
I get such enormous pleasure from my philanthropy
that I can't imagine doing anything else.