My Story: Roxanne Howdle-Rowe

By Roxanne Howdle-Rowe

I’m honoured to be nominated for the TechWomen4Boards Transformational Leadership Award by colleagues from across my recent data teams. Throughout my career, I’ve been driven by a personal leadership framework shaped by experience and inspired by thinkers I admire. This framework guides how I make decisions, empower teams, and deliver innovation that lasts. It reflects my personality, my values, and the kind of leader I strive to be.

Ideate \& Listen — inspired by Adam Grant

“Focus your attention and energy on others… success may follow as a by‑product.”

This stage centres on collaboration, curiosity, and deep listening. I work to understand the strengths, motivations, and interests of my teams, while engaging stakeholders to uncover the real requirements beneath the surface. My role is to connect the “technical and data red thread” — translating where people are today into the re‑engineered processes that will enable collective success.

At UBS in 2022–23, this approach led to the automation of data classification for ISO standards. By listening closely to frustrated business teams and the data management office, we introduced real‑time data checks that eliminated hours of manual remediation and significantly improved data quality and trust.

Innovate \& Design — inspired by Daniel Pink

“Three things motivate creative people… autonomy, mastery and purpose.”

Innovation thrives when teams feel safe to experiment. In this stage, I focus on building psychological safety, encouraging bold thinking, and creating structured spaces for creativity.

At the British Business Bank, I established an Innovation Forum and data uplift planning days — cross‑functional environments where ideas from the Ideate \& Listen stage could evolve into complex, actionable designs. These sessions enabled the organisation to prepare for the scale of increased government funding announced for 2025. Together, teams developed solutions such as cross‑vendor tooling integration, data kitemarks, monitored agents for regulatory outputs, composite models, and AI glossary foundations for DataOps. No single team could have solved these challenges alone — but together, the designs shone.

Build \& Operate — inspired by Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“Real change… enduring change… happens one step at a time.”

This stage is about disciplined execution. I bring teams together to translate innovative designs into robust, sustainable builds that can be tested, validated, and embedded into real business processes.

At Lloyds Bank in 2022, I led data engineering for the Interbank Offered Rate (IBOR) programme in Markets. This required orchestrating precise model, commercial, product, data management, IT, and cloud requirements. Through iterative builds, close collaboration with engineers, and rigorous stakeholder forums, we delivered the first critical‑data cloud solution on public cloud approved by the Prudential Regulation Authority in UK — enabling timely compliance with the new IBOR regulation and the retirement of existing rate, LIBOR.

Monitor \& Govern — inspired by Brené Brown

“Rumble with uncertainty… go underwater, stay down longer than feels comfortable, and explore what others won’t touch.”

In Financial Services, innovation must coexist with rigorous governance. This stage is where expected and unexpected consequences emerge — and where leadership requires courage, transparency, and partnership.

At UBS in 2024, I led the development of the firm’s first data product fully compliant with architectural and data management frameworks. Once built, we scaled with the business, monitored policy adherence, and designed governance frameworks to support ownership and issue management. This work entered greenfield territory for AI operations, laying the foundations for UBS’ future AI‑driven business capabilities.

My Leadership Philosophy

Across all stages, my leadership keeps innovation and risk‑awareness at heart — but people always come first. Coaching, elevating others, and creating environments where teams feel valued and capable is central to how I operate. Maya Angelou’s words guide me daily: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

I’m deeply grateful for this nomination and look forward to celebrating with fellow women in technology — learning from their journeys and continuing to lead impactful, human‑centred change in Financial Services.

Thank you for the recognition and for the work you do to champion women in technology. I am humbled and energised.