Episode #23
Not Technical Enough, Not Strategic Enough: Dinah Davis on Building Code Like a Girl
Dinah Davis spent eight years at BlackBerry, first as a software developer, then leading the team that built cryptographic protocols nobody had built before. She has a master's degree in cryptography and the patents to prove it. None of that stopped her from being told, at different points in her career, that she wasn't technical enough. Or, from different people, that she wasn't strategic enough. Same person, two opposite verdicts, and a pattern more women in tech will recognize than most companies would like to admit. In this episode of Leadership Recalibrated™, Dinah traces her path from the bleeding edge of mobile security to founding Code Like a Girl, and talks candidly about the parts of corporate leadership she never got good at, and why she's not sorry about it. This is a conversation about the standards that get invented after the fact, the cost of caring too much in a system that doesn't reward it, and what happens when you stop trying to win a game you never agreed to play. About Our Guest: Dinah Davis spent 20 years in tech, from writing cryptographic protocols at BlackBerry to leading engineering teams as a VP, most recently at Arctic Wolf. She holds a master's in cryptography and multiple patents. In 2016, she founded Code Like a Girl, a publication amplifying women's voices in tech, which she now runs full-time. She writes about careers, leadership, and the parts of the industry nobody puts in the recruiting brochure. Connect with Dinah: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dinahdavis/ Subscribe to Code Like A Girl: https://substack.com/@codelikeagirl Subscribe to She Writes AI: https://substack.com/@shewritesai
