Being a Female CTO, with Sigalit Tsadok

By adminPublished On: April 17, 2018Categories: Blog, Podcasts, The CTO Studio

Welcome to another episode of CTO Studio! Today I’m sitting down to talk with my good friend Sigalit Tsadok, current CTO for the start up company Kelvi. On this episode, you’ll hear about Sigalit’s journey to working with Kelvi, as well as how she become interested in being a CTO.

Today, you’ll also hear about why Sigalit would love to see more women in CTO positions, how computer science became her passion, and so much more!

In this episode you’ll hear:

Why diversity in the tech world is so important.
What is Kelvi and how is it helping physical therapists?
How can networking help in a technology role?
The importance of having appropriate vendors in a start up.
What have been the biggest challenges and rewards in her career?
And so much more!

Sigalit’s experience in the technology world has not always been dedicated to computer science. In school, she enjoyed her science classes, but computer science never felt like the right fit until she graduated and began working in her first job.

After discovering her love and talent in the field, she began working for Pet Wireless, a company with a unique purpose and product. Pet Wireless, or Tailio, tracks and monitors cat health by placing a sensor under a litter box. The program can track features such as weight and trips to the litter box.

On this episode of CTO Studio, I spent some time talking to Sigalit about what exactly Kelvi is. She described Kelvi as a device used by physicians and physical therapists for patients who need cryotherapy or heat therapy. It changes temperatures within seconds, and can function from a mobile app that is downloaded by the person administering the therapy. How it differs from others on the market is it requires absolutely no ice in order to become cold!

After joining Kelvi, I was curious to know about initial hurdles she encountered when she first began working there. Sigalit shared that one big issue the team had was a difficult vendor. Through networking she was able to find a better, more suitable vendor to work with and they have been beneficial to Kelvi’s ongoing growth.

Next we move on to a topic quite near and dear to her heart: why more women are not taking on roles (such as CTO) in the technology/business world.

She theorizes that one prominent reason may be due to the lack of confidence for women in the STEM world, or the lack of interest. She mentions that there is a common fear that technology-based positions are extremely math-heavy, when in reality they are multi-faceted.

Sigalit stresses the importance of women not shying away from technology positions, including being a CTO. As a CTO there is a need for the person to embrace creative solutions and do so in an individual way, something to which women are well suited.

Continuing on a similar thought, we then discussed how we as a society can change to encourage more women to pursue careers in the technology world. She mentions that one huge help would be to change our culture, our TV content, and what we consume to be more inclusive of technology-based women. That way young girls will learn that a career in technology can be awesome!

You can hear more thoughts from Sigalit, as well as her current favorite books and websites, when you tune in to this episode of CTO Studio!