Meet three women from three different countries who are leading the ticketing technology product development at Red61. Currently in an exciting company product growth phase, Red61 asked our product experts to talk about how they got into the industry to find out what inspires them, their thoughts on product development within ticketing and what skills women can bring to technology.

Nancy Moore, Chief Product and Technology Officer

Nancy is from Edinburgh, Scotland, and is leading the product team. For her, Edinburgh is the most gorgeous city and one that has provided her with many career opportunities in technology. Nancy has an educational background in humanities where she focused on English, history and art. She studied graphic design and got into software development in the ‘90s.

Suelen Gajus, Product Analyst

Suelen is from Brazil and moved to Edinburgh initially to study, and then returned to find a job. She previously worked at the biggest bank in Brazil and was looking for a smaller company where she could make a difference and be part of the decision-making process, all the way to the delivery of the product. Suelen has worked in technology since she was a teenager and studied data processing and systems analysis at university.

Gabriela Satrovskaja, UI Designer

Gabriela studied journalism and press photography. Gabriela is from Lithuania and a move to Edinburgh gave her an opportunity to rethink her career — to think about what skills she had and what she aspired to. She started in a position as IT support for a hardware and software company. Here, Gabriela gained an in-depth understanding of the importance of good design in maintaining high-performance systems, which is the motivation at the core of her role as a UI designer.

Inspiring Other Women Interested in Technology

Nancy would encourage other women interested in technology to “Come and join us! It is a fascinating, exciting and great environment in which to grow your career. Working in ticketing technology development is helping to support an important industry, and it’s a fantastic team culture, certainly at Red61.” The woman that has most inspired Nancy is her mum. “She has always been intensely interested in the world around her, challenges the status quo, is independent and values intelligence and integrity above all else. It is pretty cool to have a mum like that!”

Nancy pictured on the left with her mum

Suelen maintains connections with other women in technology. She was part of a community in Brazil called “Mulheres de Producto” (Women of Product) where they produced podcasts and communicated through groups and Slack channels to discuss how to overcome the challenges that women in the industry experience. She is currently looking to join a new Women of Product community group in Edinburgh.

Suelen with Morcega developing product in her home office

To increase the number of women working in technology, Suelen believes that companies should spend more time training and give those interested in working in the industry opportunities to learn and access the market, and not just for women, but for anybody not traditionally hired in those roles. “In schools, they need to tell the girls that science is for them as well. Girls can be great scientists. They just need to be able to go and try.”

Gabriela is always happy to see other women joining the technology team and seeing women developers choose this career. She thinks there needs to be a balance and that any career should not necessarily be female or male friendly. “The more mixed and more different the team is, the better it is. When people come from different backgrounds, different geographical places — the more creative the company becomes.” She is inspired by other designers and by the people who surround her including friends, family and colleagues. With any person she meets, she wants to know, “What can I learn from you? What don’t I have that I admire in you?”

Gabriela exploring Trossachs National Park in Callander, Scotland

Before Ticketing

Nancy’s route into technology was sparked by her interest in graphic design, but she started to get involved in user interface design. Coupled with her interest in the way businesses operate and the automation possibilities for manual processes, technology became a clear career choice for her  — not just for technology’s sake, but more in terms of how it could improve operational processes and experiences for customers.

Suelen created a blog when she was a teenager and realized that it was way more interesting to change the way the blog would look rather than what was in the personal blog itself. She learned that changing the way it looked was actually a profession, and when seeking a university, she looked for a program of study that could help her make the blog look better. Suelen then worked on the finance side at a major bank in Brazil for most of her career.

Gabriela joined the nonprofit organization “Scottish Tech Army,” where people with different types of skills can volunteer to help charities and nonprofit organizations. She designed websites for many people and their companies. One of the projects involved allowing businesses to have a digital presence, leading to a successful collaboration with that volunteer team.

Working in the Ticketing Technology Industry

Nancy is new to the ticketing industry and has been fascinated by the complex ecosystem that supports the arts industry. “It’s easy to underestimate the complexity of what’s involved.  Providing a smooth, reliable, consistent but highly flexible platform while managing all the variables that come with live festivals and events was a whole new world for me.” She observes how all industries are becoming more omnichannel, and ticketing is no exception. In ticketing there are many user groups to cater to — the people who are going to the shows, producers who set the events, venues that organize or host the show and the ticket office are key cohorts, all with different sets of requirements and demands on the ticketing platform.  “We have to get it all right to make sure it all goes swimmingly when they need it to.”

What does Suelen like about ticketing versus finance? “It’s a fun business. It’s good to bring money to something that actually matters. When you work in finance, you make rich people rich. When you work in the arts, you bring more than just money. It is the ‘propósito’ (the purpose of the business).”

Suelen Gajus, Product Analyst at Red61

When she first joined the industry, Suelen was surprised to find that ticketing is not simple at all. The business has so many opportunities that she couldn’t have imagined. When previously buying tickets as a customer, she never paid attention to concessions, options or prices. When she joined Red61, she thought ticketing would be something quite simple, but on getting to understand the product and seeing the product roadmap, Suelen has learned about the intricacies of ticketing software.

Gabriela was also surprised to find that ticketing was that complicated and discovered that for her, she finds the most important thing is the performance or performer that the ticket is for. If the performance is not interesting, ticketing doesn’t matter. She says, “No one wants to go to boring events, no matter how good the ticketing system is.” She has also learned that marketing is very important — how to support the performance and how the industry helps performers to reach their audiences.

Empathy and Emotional Intelligence in Business

Nancy says that the value of EQ (emotional intelligence/quotient) is becoming more prevalent in business and that this is a good thing. “If we look beyond the more traditional authoritative ‘management’ qualities and look for the softer skills in communication, empathy and influence, we will naturally start to build more diverse leadership teams. It’s not something that was perceived as a ‘management skill’ when I started out. It was much more about how tough and authoritative you could be. I’m glad that’s changing. I don’t think you can overestimate the power of emotional intelligence in senior roles in an organization”.

Nancy Moore, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Red61

Suelen says, “Women are perfectionists. We want to make sure everything is really, really correct!” Working with other women in IT, she has observed how women in product development tend to do more testing and think about more detail. She finds that women tend to be more empathetic in product development, that they evaluate more scenarios and use cases and are good listeners.

Gabriela also finds that women tend to be more empathetic and thinks this is a benefit when working in technology. In her experience, women tend to support other women within companies, whether it is a technology company or not.

Pride in Their Work

Gabriela is most proud of the new fundraising features that Red61 has developed. She worked on these features from the beginning and finds it has been the most successful feature that she has personally worked on, based on initial client feedback. “The development was all very connected, we brainstormed a lot and had many discussions. The team found their ‘sweet spot’ when everyone was mutually excited about it.” All the media reports she has been reading point to the fact that people are willing to donate more because of the pandemic. Even with a war happening, people are still wanting to do good for other people, so she is happy to have worked on a feature that will help many people in that way.

Gabriela Satrovskaja, UI Designer at Red61

Suelen is also proud of the work she has done at Red61 in developing the recent fundraising features. She loves to see existing clients amazed and didn’t imagine that these features would be so well received within Red61’s operating regions. She is also proud of the work she did last year on Red61’s digital solutions and how she could contribute to transforming the solution, and she is especially proud of the digital wallet. This feature has been recognized by the industry. The digital wallet received a 2022 Service Excellence Award at the Festivals and Events Ontario’s annual conference.

In her leadership roles, Nancy is most proud of seeing other people grow and develop, and seeing teams gelling, building and delivering products that they are proud of — to see the pride on people’s faces showing that they have been a part of making something happen. She thinks there is a great team at Red61 and that the company is lucky to have them, to see them pulling together and continuing to deliver software under ever-changing and challenging circumstances in such a fast-paced industry.

About Red61

Red61 is a leading worldwide Ticketing as a Service software company, providing audience management and ticketing solutions for festivals, venues, agencies, and attractions. Red61 makes the ticketing process quick, easy, and organized for clients across the U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Papua, New Guinea and the United States. From the very beginning as the ticketing solution for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, the world's largest arts festival, Red61 has worked collaboratively with our clients in a spirit of constant innovation to completely transform the customer journey and increase sales. For more information please visit: www.red61.com.

This article was sponsored by Red61.