Celebrating Women at Magnolia

Grabbing the occasion of Women’s History Month, we wish to turn the limelight on all the wonderful ladies helping Magnolia to be the visionary company that has become over the past years.

Creating a gender-equitable workplace permeated by a healthy and respectful culture shows in the experiences of people daily.

We’ve been asking around in different departments to find out more about Ching's experiences working for Magnolia in Singapore, Moïra in Basel, and Marta in her global-hybrid role.

Ching has been Marketing Manager at Magnolia APAC for over a year now and she finds that working as a woman in the tech industry is “never boring”. Learning from her counterparts about the latest developments in the tech space makes her job exciting and rewarding.

In the Marketing department, there is a very good balance between male and female employees. It has never been an issue for her to share her views and thoughts with her colleagues. Collaboration between teammates is always easy and smooth, and there is mutual support regardless of which gender one belongs to.

“I got married a few months ago and it was a hectic time juggling the wedding, house renovation, and work. My team and boss were all supportive and had my back through it all. Our culture works in a way that one takes charge of his or her own time and work, and there is a lot of autonomy to plan one’s schedule to juggle both work and personal commitments.”

Moïra’s favorite thing at Magnolia is the approachability of the people and their communicative nature.

“Whenever you ask for help they are ready to support you. You can learn something new from everyone, even non-work related things. That’s one of the reasons why we have such a pleasant atmosphere here at Magnolia.”

If you are lucky enough to pay a visit to our HQ in Basel, there is a great chance you will meet Moïra at the Frontdesk. She started her internship with Magnolia back in August 2022 and shortly she shall be taking on more responsibilities and moving toward a permanent role in the company.

Magnolia is Moïra’s first full-time job. “It was a step out of my comfort zone. After a few months, I noticed that my social skills had drastically improved. I have become more open and it has gotten easier for me to approach people and engage in conversations.”

The most exciting thing for her so far was to help with the organization of the Company Days last year. During these few days, all Magnolians gathered in the beautiful surroundings of Interlaken, Switzerland, and spent two days with leisure activities, teambuilding or just simply sharing great moments.

“Even though it was a lot of work and challenging for most of us, it paid off by meeting so many Magnolians from all over the world and connecting with them. Seeing how people appreciated it and had a good time made me happy.”

Marta, our Head of Engineering was somewhat of a tomboy as a child. She always played with cars and remote-controlled vehicles. Her dad has always “treated her as a boy” and has taught her mechanics and woodworking.

Being raised in North America in a family where both of her parents worked in IT, she never thought of an engineering career as something less usual for a girl. Yet, she never wanted to be stuck behind a computer all day.

Well, that has changed ever since. She became Head of Engineering at Magnolia and she now has several teams reporting to her… so, sitting behind the screen it is for most of the day. Yet she enjoys her leadership role at Magnolia and finds it rewarding to work in a multicultural environment where everyone is treated equally regardless of their origin, gender, age, or nationality.

In her opinion, being a leader is more about one’s personality than one’s gender.

However, there is one thing about her decision-making that sets her apart from her counterparts: at times, she decides based on her intuition: “Sometimes, I can't explain why I feel like something needs to be done. I can't give you data or facts. I just feel like it needs to be done.”

Her advice for women who want to advance in their careers is to be more daring. To apply to those jobs where they don’t fulfill the job requirements 100% because the idea is to be in a work environment “where the company is actually willing to help you grow”.

And with this thought, we would thank Ching, Moïra, and Marta for sharing a snippet of their Magnolia experience. We believe that choosing one’s ways and means is the basis of being authentic, and with us, you can always “Be you!”.