Julia Linehan is Founder and Managing Director of The Digital Voice.
Why did you launch the Digital Leading Ladies and what were you hoping to achieve?
We founded Digital Leading Ladies as an informal and inclusive group in 2018 with the aim to create a community of the most senior and entrepreneurial women in the digital advertising industry. With members from brands, agencies, tech providers and publishers, the essence of Digital Leading Ladies is to create an interactive group which connects, supports and provides opportunities for business and networking.
The mission of Digital Leading Ladies is Do. Love. Learn and I am so incredibly proud every day to see this being played out in our WhatsApp group and at every industry event.
We encourage all of our members to share their experience, provide advice and guidance; and create opportunities for members of the group to be involved in events, speaking engagements and to work together. To be part of creating this community makes me very proud.
What are the biggest challenges, and opportunities for women in the digital industry today?
Given I always like to look for the positive first, I will talk about what I consider to be a huge opportunity for women in our industry and that is the abundance of communities and groups that exist to support women.
We are creating opportunities every day for women in DLL and also I see it first hand in the other groups I am a part of, such as Bloom UK, The Women In Programmatic Network and SheLovesTech. These are just some of the many groups that exist and that are really helping women overcome challenges and also providing advice, support, careers and above all, connections.
What does the industry need to do to better champion women?
One thing that stands out has to be the gender pay gap. I find it strange. I’ve never paid a man or a woman more or less. I have paid the person and the role, the amount that it deserves and it warrants – irrespective of their gender. I find it bizarre that in 2022, we’re still having this conversation.
This years’ IWD had the theme “breaking the bias”. My hope is that the theme next year will be “broke the bias” or not even mention it because it no longer exists as a problem. Women will feel more appreciated if they are not constantly facing unfair challenges and discrepancies.
What is your biggest achievement in digital to date?
I am especially proud of tripling the size of The Digital Voice in the last 3 years. It felt like the right time to expand and I am so grateful to have created a company that our team of experts are passionate to be a part of. We are blessed to have a full roster of exceptional long term clients and a wait list of companies who want to be part of our PR family!
The next step is bringing in more technology, more content partnerships, more team training and creative solutions that really help our clients. Every year, I will layer on new technology and new expertise needed to drive The Digital Voice forward to be the very best we can as a small, but perfectly formed B2B ad tech agency.
