Read about Tiffany Grabski

What brought you to a career in technology at the United Nations?

Through my role with the United Nations Sustainable Stock Exchanges (UN SSE) initiative, I've always been part of a team that encourages innovation and the use of technology to enhance our efficiency and improve the level of service we provide our members. Early in my tenure with the UN SSE, I was responsible for managing our website, which led to my role in launching a new website with interactive databases in 2019. While I had minimal experience with web-based technologies, by working with different tech teams I was able to learn how we can easily and with minimal resources make our communications and online presence more effective and efficient. In 2021, when we launched the SSE Academy in response to demand from national stock exchanges to help build global capacity in key sustainability-related areas, I began leveraging a number of technologies together to be able to enhance our impact, reach, and effectiveness of technical assistance. My role is not necessarily related to technology, but by building my expertise in various technologies, I've been able to provide our members with quicker, more impactful, and more effective technical assistance without requiring additional resources.

What has been your favorite technology project or initiative at the United Nations and why? What was your contribution?

Launching the UN SSE Academy and integrating various types of technologies has been my favorite project so far. When we launched the academy, we had the aim of helping national stock exchanges through technical assistance to ensure that their markets were receiving globally consistent, expert-led, and impactful education and training resources. We had a limited budget, a small team, and a large goal - to ensure that the more than 60,000 listed companies and the millions of people in their value chains have access to pertinent, trusted, and useful training on sustainability-related topics. We had the benefit of a global network of stock exchanges that had unique access to their market participants, but we were only a small team of just a few people, partnered with the world's top experts. For each obstacle, we found new technologies to solve them. To enhance our reach, we used Zoom and provided training online. To ensure the knowledge was absorbed, useful, and impactful, we use apps for polling, quizzes, and interaction, combined with survey apps and data management tools and AI. To translate content, we use AI combined with human review. To improve efficiency as demand increased, we use apps for booking, scheduling, and coordinating. Through these tools, used together, we have been able to fulfill an important demand from national markets for free, accessible, expert-led, and quality education on sustainability-related topics such as gender equality in capital markets and sustainability-related financial disclosures. To date, we've trained more than 30,000 market participants, and we're improving our processes, offerings, and reach every day. This project has been incredibly fulfilling, and without the use of multiple types of technology, this wouldn't have been possible.

What advice would you give women interested in pursuing a field in technology?

Don't buy into the stereotypes, but do buy into the strengths. Women have on the one hand been stereotyped as being traditionally less technologically inclined than men, but on the other hand, through their roles as mothers and caregivers have become great multi-taskers. Technology should not be seen as an obstacle, but rather as a tool for efficiency, effectiveness and progress.