This week, Adrian Weckler talks to two women directing crucial operations in two of the world’s biggest tech companies.

The Big Tech Show travelled to Seattle to meet Emma Williams, the Dubliner who’s now Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Office Products Group.

As she tells Adrian, it was originally the study of Old Norse and Anglo Saxon English in Trinity College that gave Williams a propensity to learn open source code.

20 years on, Williams is directing some of Microsoft’s most important products, having left her mark on Bing, artificial intelligence and one of its newest initiatives, Microsoft Teams.

Adrian then met Emily Vacher, Facebook’s director of trust and safety.
A former FBI agent, Emily recounts why she joined America’s famed law enforcement agency and how that led to a career in Facebook. She also talks about the tech giant’s latest initiative in Ireland, where Facebook has teamed up with An Garda Siochana to distribute alerts whenever there is a credible threat of a child being abducted.

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