In Conversation With...Dame Stephanie Shirley is a workplace revolutionary, tech entrepreneur and ardent philanthropist. In 1962 she founded an all-women software company that pioneered remote working and redefined the expectations and opportunities for working women. Her company, Freelance Programmers, was ultimately valued at almost $3 billion and turned 70 of her staff into millionaires. She’s also the author of two books – her memoir ‘Let It Go’ and ‘So To Speak’ an anthology of some of her speeches. Both are available via her website SteveShirley.com – and all proceeds go to her autism charity Autistica. Since retiring, Dame Stephanie’s focus has been on philanthropy – over the last 30 years, she’s given away almost £70 million to good causes, primarily in the fields of autism and IT. Together, her three autism charities – Autistica, Prior’s Court and Autism at Kingwood – employ close to 1,000 people. Here, she joins SheerLuxe Founder & Editor Georgie Colderidge Cole to talk more about her incredible life and career, and the personal reasons which have informed her work with autism and neurodiversity.

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