Joana Santos

United Kingdom

Amazon

Thank you for your interest in me and my journey. I am a Tech leader working in Strategy and growth centric roles, with experience in Europe, Africa, and South America. Today, I have the pleasure of leading Sales Strategy for the UK & Ireland at Amazon Web Services (AWS), where I get to think big about the future of AWS and the cloud industry, and innovate on behalf of our customers. Before this, my experience in the Tech industry included leading our Sales Strategy and Operations team for South America at LinkedIn’s digital advertising business, and setting up the Process Improvement function and driving Sales and Customer Experience improvements at M-KOPA, the leading African Tech start-up providing access to energy, TV and other life-enhancing products to hard-to-reach rural customers. My previous experience includes working in strategy consulting, in the UK Parliament, in banking, and for a human rights organization.

In my day to day role, I aim to inspire and empower other women in three ways. Firstly, I mentor a total of ten women in and outside of Amazon, who are at various stages of their career; I get a lot from these relationships and hope to give back a fraction of the support and guidance I have received as part of my career, in helping me grow and guiding me through various decisions. Secondly, at two previous employers I have been involved in revamping our recruitment process to ensure we maximize the diversity of our recruitment funnel, not only for women but also for other underrepresented groups in the Tech industry. Finally, this year I will be participating in GetIT ’23, an initiative designed by AWS to encourage 12-13 year old girls to consider a career in tech – challenging long standing gender stereotypes. The initiative invites teams from different schools to an app-building competition to solve real issues faced by their school or community. Along the way, participants learn practical digital and IT skills, experience working as a team, and gain self-confidence by presenting ideas to wider audiences – all while being exposed to IT as a potential career.

Digital Leader