We Are PoWEr Podcast

Ethical AI, Burnout, and the Resilience Every Entrepreneur Needs

• powered by Simone Roche MBE and Northern PoWEr Women

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In this episode, we speak with our Northern PoWEr Women Awards 2025 Outstanding Entrepreneur winner, a self-taught coder who built her first products from a bedroom, grew a software platform during COVID, and later made a bold pivot into robotics when the market shifted. 

She shares what values-led growth looks like in real life, from backing small businesses to building an 80% women team, and why staying power matters more than hype.

We also talk honestly about the climate impact of AI, the realities of burnout, and how resilience and purpose guide the next stage of her leadership.

You’ll hear:
 ➡️ How a self-taught coder built, scaled, and pivoted with purpose
 ➡️ Why small businesses shaped her growth strategy during COVID
 ➡️ Her story to becoming an 'Outstanding Entrepreneur'
 ➡️ The hidden climate costs of AI and the need for practical guardrails
 ➡️ What burnout taught her about resilience, clarity, and staying in the game

Find out more about We Are PoWEr here. 💫

SPEAKER_01:

Hello, hello, and welcome to the We Are Power Podcast. If this is your first time here, the We Are Power Podcast is the podcast for you, your career, and your life. We release an episode every single Monday with listeners in over 60 countries worldwide where you'll hear personal life stories, top-notch industry advice, and key leadership insight from amazing role models. As We Are Power is the umbrella brand to Northern Power Women Awards, which celebrates hundreds of female role models and advocates every year. This is where you can hear stories from all of our awards alumni and stay up to date with everything MPW Awards and We Are Power. Well, welcome to this week's podcast. I am absolutely thrilled to be joined by our 2025 Northern Power Women Awards, outstanding entrepreneur winner. That's a there should be a big drum rubble and everything there. And we'll give it to you. Do it again. I love that. That works really well for those listening, but for those watching. You are really welcome. And you are the founder and CEO of Digitech Oasis. Can you describe yourself and what you do in three words?

SPEAKER_00:

In three words. Ooh. Exciting, unpredictable, spontaneous.

unknown:

Nice.

SPEAKER_01:

Nice. And do you think they're the good traits of an outstanding entrepreneur?

SPEAKER_00:

I would say so, yes. You would have to to be an entrepreneur. So I studied uh my master's in entrepreneurship and innovation. And there was actually a course on traits and what are the traits of an entrepreneur. And definitely I think you have some sort of agility to being an entrepreneur anyway. So 100%, those are three traits that and you studied entrepreneurship.

SPEAKER_01:

Was that on the basis that you always wanted to be an entrepreneur? Because that doesn't always follow.

SPEAKER_00:

No. So I actually went through different kinds of phases. I wanted to be a doctor first, and then all of a sudden I couldn't stand watching blood or anything on the TV. Like it just made me sick. And I said, that's not gonna work out. Um then I remember in my final year of high school, I wanted to do corporate law. Um and I'm glad I didn't do corporate law because we did have a corporate law module in my business course. So basically, I went to school to study business, the most generic course ever, but that's because I was very unsure as to what I wanted to do. Um, so back to the corporate law module, I just remember thinking I don't have the brains to remember every single article and clause, and that that that was my decision. So I went to school for business, not not entrepreneurship at first.

SPEAKER_01:

And you are a tech leader, you're a social entrepreneur, an advocate for ethical AI. Which of those roles kind of excites you the most?

SPEAKER_00:

All of them. I would say I'm very big and passionate about getting more women into STEM, and that was why I founded the company six years ago. Um, so yes, I would say all of them excite me. Um, but definitely advocating for ethical AI. I think the world that we live in now, technology is moving incredibly quick, um, but the legislations to support it are not moving quick enough. Um, and so you have people building data centers in in places that they shouldn't be building data centers, for instance. And back to the topic of climate change, I think people forget that to an extent, um, and not even to an extent, very much so, building data centers and using AI, you have to have some personal responsibility on how you use it, because it does have impact on the environment, which most people are unaware of. Um, so yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And you talked about so you did the most generic core course because you didn't know what to do, and you kind of uh thought a little bit, a bit like a pinball thinking, doctor to corporate law, to then entrepreneur. At what point would tech fit into this? Because tech has been on such and continues to be on this massive um roller coaster.

SPEAKER_00:

So I was always interested in tech. I remember in high school, every single time that we had a project to do, I incorporated technology in some kind of way, whether that was filming some videos or using um technology or in some kind of form in my presentations. Um so I was always interested in tech. Where it came from was in my second year of uni, I did a placement at Google, so a summit placement, and I didn't go back home. Um, and nobody was around the campus, and I said, hey, I'm a little bit bored. I need to do something.

SPEAKER_01:

Typical entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I was definitely quite bored, and I didn't uh book a flight to go back to Kenya that summer. And I got the placement, got super interested in tech, and then I ended up teaching myself how to code. Um so when everybody was partying in second and third year uni, there was me on the weekend sitting on my laptop trying to code something. Um so that's where it started. And then I started freelancing for businesses around the West Yorkshire area. So started making websites for them and apps and just trying to, I guess, make their businesses more efficient in that capacity. Looking back, um I'm not sure why anybody paid me for the apps that I built. They were quite dreadful. I mean, they served the purpose, but yeah, design-wise, they were not the best. Um, but yeah, that's where tech started from. So I I spent a lot of time in my bedroom in solitude, coding and teaching myself how to code.

SPEAKER_01:

So that's where tech goes. You talked about your business is tech for good and you've talked about ethical AI. Um did you always have that goodness in you, if you like, to make sure that whatever I'm doing, it's gotta be done less about profit, more about being good and true, value-led.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's it's profit with purpose, right? And um, so the business is robotics. It didn't start off as robotics, it was actually a software company at first. Um, and we were helping small businesses um automate and improve their business operations. So things with their customer relationship management, their enterprise resource planning. Um and I was just very passionate about making an impact. And typically you would find that that most companies, in order for you to have embedded tech, it's quite expensive, it's an investment. And it was very much enterprise were the ones that had the technologies and the capabilities to move quicker. And so when I first started the company, it was, of course, you're looking at the target market, who are you gonna serve? And it was very easy for me to say, I think we want to serve small businesses. And the reason for doing that is because small businesses actually contribute the most to the economy in the first instance. So why shouldn't we be the ones to serve them? So that's where that came about.

SPEAKER_01:

And what ideas along the way? Because you said you started a software and then into robot robotics as part of your entrepreneurial adventure. What ideas didn't make it along the way?

SPEAKER_00:

What didn't make it? Ooh, good question. So many things didn't make it. Yeah, I think so many things didn't make it. And your first product is never the product that you end up with, right? So I remember it it was it was quite a bit of a journey. We started by by assuming that we wanted to A be in the digital marketing space. I think that was the initial goal and the initial reason why we started the company. Um fast forward down the line, we realized I, first of all, absolutely am not a if anybody goes on our social presence, it's the worst kind of social presence. So I would be, why would we be in the digital marketing space when we cannot even do that anyway? Um so what didn't make it? I remember what didn't make it was we we wanted to do some VR and AR, some virtual reality headsets, and that didn't quite make it. Instead, we did pivot. Um and instead of us actually building the virtual reality kits, we partnered with Oracle. Um, and Oracle also partners with mental health facilities. And so instead of scrapping the idea entirely, we decided that 10% of our profits would go for tech for good initiatives. And so we help uh foster mental health treatments in adolescents and teens using virtual reality, but of course, we don't um make the headsets, we we partner with Oracle for that. So I would give that example as what didn't make it. But it's it kind of made it. And it inspired the good, right? No, exactly. So that's not something that we we sell, it's something that we sort of give back um to society, and it's one of the values that we uphold in the company.

SPEAKER_01:

And as you've grown your business and pivoted your business and um expanded and developed and created things, uncreated things, if that's even a word. Um what was the big sort of was there a big turning point along the way or a series of turning points? People sometimes have different assumptions about entrepreneurship and you know, assume that it all went really right well right from the start.

SPEAKER_00:

No, it never does. And you also have to get good at spotting the opportunities and spotting when you should pivot. And for us, we had the software product, it did really well. Um, we were saving before coming here, so in 2022, um, business started in COVID, we're doing very well in COVID. So compared to other businesses where maybe things didn't go according to plan, we happened to be in the right place at the right time, and people were forced to automate things and digitalize their processes. So we scaled super quick in COVID, and we had about 3,000 clients across 33 countries, and those were small businesses. Um, so f naturally everybody would say that that's a good progressing business, and why should you change anything? Um, I came here to the UK, and in the three years of me building the business prior, I had never spotted a competitor product doing the same thing that we were doing. Um maybe something similar, but not particularly the same. The second I landed here, I seen a company that started that year, so in 2022, um, with the exact product that we had been servicing for the last three years. Now I sort of just sat with myself, and yes, at the same time, the speed of AI is moving super quick, um, meaning that people are able to build and deploy products equally as fast. Um, and that was the turning point of the business. We we had already knew that our technology could be repurposed and repackaged to serve other vertical markets. Um, but it was at that particular moment when I spotted that business, people would be like, well, if you had to change your business and because of competitive, that means your business was not the best anyway. And we were like, no. Um I think it was a bit of a forward-thinking, forward-thinking agenda, knowing that if they can do it, any other business is gonna do it. And to be honest, people were completely right. What we didn't put on our business plan at that time was we didn't anticipate the integrations that we were making, all the other big tech would be able to do that. So we had to pivot the business at some point.

SPEAKER_01:

And what was the best advice you got along that way? Because there's that there's some big decisions to be made there.

SPEAKER_00:

Best advice. Best advice would have had to have come from our um my business mentor at the time. And he essentially sat me down and said, in business, which is true, in business, things may not go according to plan. And there's so many examples of as to when things didn't go according to plan. But he basically sat down and said, the most successful entrepreneurs are not the ones who are the geniuses, they're not the ones that have all the resources, they're literally the ones who can stay in the game for long enough. And I think it stuck with me because every every single time nothing was going my way or nothing was going the way that the business had anticipated. The only thing that would bring in my mind was he said, entrepreneurship is who can play the game the longest. Um and I think there's a level, there's a nuance to this. I think you also have to be very passionate about what you're doing. Because if you're not passionate about what you're doing, it's very easy for you to give up. And that's where you find most people that start businesses, start businesses not with the passion. They start the business because they want to, back to what you said, the profit, they want to make the money. And I think that's the detriment of all businesses because so many good ideas have just fallen off solely because the person who started it was not the person who was meant to take it forward, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01:

It does. And you've worked at big companies like you've mentioned Google before, Barclays, the UN. What did you learn from those big gigantic organizations about the culture you wanted to drive within Digitech Oasis?

SPEAKER_00:

So culture in big corporate is completely different to culture in startups, right? And so I can't say that there's anything in those companies that that translated to the kind of culture that we were building in at Digitech. Um I would say when I started the company, it was very clear I wanted to put more women into STAM. Today the company is actually 80% women. Um and so we fostered a culture where one, everybody's opinions and ideas were valid. Two, it wasn't bureaucratic. So, I mean, we were a small team, we we didn't really have too many processes at the time. I think when you get to a certain stage, that's when you have to implement certain systems and processes to scale. Um and probably different to all my entrepreneur friends because most entrepreneurs will say my employees are not my friends. Um at Digitech, I think everybody's friends. Everybody sort of looks up to me like they're I'm their big sister or I'm their sister or their little sister, right? And so they're very comfortable to come to me with any problem, any any idea, any thought. And the culture was very everybody needs to be open and everybody needs to help each other get to the main goal.

SPEAKER_01:

And do you think it's part of that? If 80% of your organization uh identify as female, is that a big part of that openness?

SPEAKER_00:

I think so, because naturally women are more nurturing, right? Um I wouldn't speak to the fact that if it was 80% male, it would be different because it could have been the same. It could definitely very well build the same culture, whether it was male or female. But I do think a big part of the openness and the willing to help each other in the business comes from the fact that we are women and and that's by nature women are just more nurturing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

How many in your business now? 25. 25. And you've got sort of various kinds of um products, if you like, or campaigns. So you've got your tech bridge that's reached 5,000 people, probably more now in East Africa.

SPEAKER_00:

So the software, yeah. So the software product, um, before we ended up pivoting the business entirely, we served over 5,000 users across 68 countries. Um what then happened was when we pivoted to do the robotic solution, we sort of went back to these clients and we did an upsell um to the robotic solution. And from those, we've had about a 50% conversion. But now, target market-wise, because the investment to deploy robotics in a warehouse in the first instance is huge. And you find most people that have warehouses or distribution centers are enterprise clients. So a lot of our clients are now enterprise, and I guess the go-to-market sort of shifted. Um, but for the good, I think. Definitely not for for any other reason but good.

SPEAKER_01:

And we've talked about tech for good, and we talked at the start about ethical AI, and it's very complex. Um, what do you think is the biggest challenge in that area now about how we tackle it? You talk about data centers being in the wrong place. So, what would be the biggest challenge and how what's the magic wand? Budget and resource unlimited, say.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and the legislation, right? I think there's a huge agenda with governments now to say, hey, we want to be the leading AI um country, we want to be the ones that are leading um this innovation, but I think there's also some education to be done. Um it's one thing to say we want to be at the forefront of AI and we want our company or our country to be um the leading players in this. But I would still take it back to legislation. There needs to be some some legislation, and that that goes back to working working groups. You could you could engage small businesses in different regions and I suppose obtain some kind of intelligence and do a fact-finding mission and understand what these businesses need. Because at the end of the day, the businesses are the ones that are the experts in this. So if you were going to lead the way and lead the change to be the first AI um superpower, the first thing that comes with that is also implementing the right rules and regulations for businesses to use AI. And I think that's what's missing. And it scares me every day. Um and the reason it scares me every day is of of course on a personal level, people say what you will, people assume that maybe climate change is not real, but 100% it is real. Um we see it, we see the weather changing in different parts of the world. Um so it would be a bit it would be a bit, I guess, naive to say that climate change is not real. Um so as much as people say AI, yes, we want to use AI, even down to I I don't know if you were uh aware, a couple of months ago there was this trend where people were making um images on Chat GPT and it was like a toy, a toy box, and it just went everywhere. And I think people don't also understand just putting certain things into um Chad GPT and saying, hey, generate this image takes a lot of power to do and a lot of processing. Um, and that still goes back to the data centers and the kind of um emissions that come from data centers. So there is a level of education to be done, not only by the consumer, but also the people that are deploying these solutions. And it's it seems innocent, right? Like, hey, we're just having fun with a tool that's gonna generate this box and with my face on it, and I'm gonna be a toy for the day. Cool. Seems innocent, but it's really not. Um and I think little things like this is what probably drives me to do what I'm doing and building AI in the most ethical way within the company and implementing solutions that are also very ethical. Um, so long answer, but definitely the legislation.

SPEAKER_01:

And educate as well, because people won't realize that. They just think, oh, I'm just going on to use it, like I'm using Google. Yeah. Or whatever's like, it's very interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And I don't blame them. Like it's not like I I watched people use it and I judge them.

SPEAKER_01:

I was just like, well, no, you are you've talked about, you know, a real campaign to get more women into tech. Uh but equally you're really passionate about young innovators and mentoring. Um, what do you enjoy m most about inspiring that next generation?

SPEAKER_00:

So I people people always wonder where I get the time to do this, right? Um, I I enjoy when people hear my story and say, hey, uh I wanted back to the I actually met somebody the other day and she she said she wants to go to school for medicine. Um, but she heard the company pitched. So we were down at London Stock Exchange last week and um yeah, pitched the business. Six companies pitched in front of the London Stock Exchange. And she came down to me afterwards and she's like, Yeah, I just finished sixth form. I was gonna go study law, but that sounds super interesting. Um, and just give me some advice. So we had a whole conversation about tech and the impacts of tech and where tech is going. And she all of a sudden said, Hmm, I don't think I'm gonna go to school for law anymore. And so I said, Hey, take my number if you need any career advice. I'm always gonna be happy to pick up the phone and and speak to you. Um so what I enjoy the most is making sure that underrepresented communities are aware of the opportunities in tech because sometimes some people think that the opportunity is not for them, right? And and that's just a natural, natural way of life. I think you will always go for the things that you think that you can achieve, and some people don't think that they can achieve some some things in life. So what I enjoy the most is making them understand that your voice needs to be intact. The statistics behind women or even underrepresented founders or even underrepresented communities in general in tech are needed. Those are voices that are 100% needed. And big motivating factor for me is making sure that as we move to industry 4.0, I think our decisions, underrepresented communities, need to be involved in these industry 4.0 decisions. Absolutely. If they if it's going to impact you, you've got to be at the table. 100%. And so that's that's a big, big part of what I enjoy.

SPEAKER_01:

And there's a great quote quotation by Barbara Corcoran that you love witches.

SPEAKER_00:

Love Barbara.

SPEAKER_01:

Share is that quote that you love.

SPEAKER_00:

If I could have she has so many quotes, which quote was it?

SPEAKER_01:

Don't you dare underestimate the power of your own instinct.

SPEAKER_00:

100%. And and Barbara just has all the quotes. I I wish I could meet her today and I would kidnap her as my as my mentor. I'd be like, listen, I need 10 hours with you. Um, but yeah, Barbara has incredible quotes. That's one of them. I think another one of them that she's she said is about Gret. And um she makes me laugh, right? She said that when she was sat on Shark Tank and she was having a debate with one of her colleagues. I think I forget who it was. It might have been two, I forget who it was entirely. Um, but your natural um Stanford graduate comes in and she's like, I don't invest in kids that go to Stanford and Yale and Harvard. And her colleague was like, Why? She's like, they just don't come with the grit that they need to survive to run a business. I said, fair enough.

SPEAKER_01:

And at what point, uh, at one point you wanted to be a DJ playing international shows. What would be your floor filler? What would be my floor filler? I don't know. You must have a fave tune. What's the one that when you're like, yeah, I'm I'm putting this on in the car, on the headphones, on the walk, in the office, this is the one.

SPEAKER_00:

Anything by black coffee. Okay. Um, so very much afro house techno kind of music. So any any tune by black coffee would be there. Any tune by an artist called Cabza DeSwall, who is a South African. See, you've got to put you've just created a playlist. See? Yeah. I already know what kind of music I would be playing for sure, but um I still do. I I would still love to buy myself a deck in my new apartment and actually just play some tunes. I would love to do that.

SPEAKER_01:

I did that this year in advance of this year's awards. I I did some DJ lessons. I bought some lessons for a friend. I got the chance to go to, and then at the awards uh this year, I played a little set um in the show, which was very good. And it's really interesting because it you have to be intentional. You can't just be, oh, it's just as easy as pressing a button or do this. You've got to be totally in there. What did it mean to you to uh to win the award this year? And whilst you're thinking of that, I'm leaning, I'm leaning in to our power jar. So while you're thinking why you know why the awards, what did it mean? I'm gonna ask you to delve in and grab a question from one of our previous guests, um, which they have posed for someone in our power jar. So, what did the awards mean?

SPEAKER_00:

So, everything that would be number one. And the reason I say everything is because I had um I was in a bit of a weird space this year. So when everybody talks about burnout, I don't think I could relate. Um, and it was not until I went back home. So I hadn't been home for the last three years. I went back home in December. And of course, I had a crazy year last year. I was here, there, everywhere. Um, from sitting on panels to going on uh trips to Lisbon with Google or Helsinki, I was literally everywhere last year, and I didn't I didn't anticipate that my body was that exhausted. So when I went back home and I came back in December and January, I just couldn't get myself out of bed in January. So I said I'm gonna go back to work January 3rd, couldn't leave the bed. Um and for the first time in a really long time, I understood what it means to just listen to your body, and I just stayed in my bed. I call I called my colleagues and I said, Hey, I'm not coming in to work today. Um, and I still didn't go to work for the whole week, actually. Um and so what happened was it was coming at a time where I also didn't know that if I wanted to continue this journey, I'd been running the business for the last five years, well going on six years now. Um, no stop, just full gas, full gas, yeah, just full steam going ahead. Um and for some reason this year I was just questioning my entire existence as an entrepreneur. And so when you ask me what it means, I think it came at a time where I probably needed to hear that. Um very un unexpected because the names of everybody that was nominated are all incredible, all phenomenal women. So absolute honor to have been able to take that away. Um, but yeah, it definitely did mean everything. And and to be honest with you, if if if I didn't sit in that room that day and hear all the inspiring stories from all this from all the amazing women in different paths and walks of life, in different career spaces, I don't think I would have gone back to build the business how I would have built it. So it sounds, it sounds a little bit of a stretch, but that's definitely what that moment meant. And it was not only about winning, it was exactly the conversations that we had with the people on the table, the people that we met in the networking portion, the people that we met after the party. And should I not have been in that room on that day, I don't think I would have been.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow, that makes me now.

SPEAKER_00:

What is your question, I ooh. What has been your biggest silent supporter, someone who never takes credit but always had your back? My dad. That was an easy question to answer. Definitely my dad. Um, yeah, definitely my father. I think my father was one of the first people to believe in this crazy idea. He made he's 74 years old. Um when I started this company, he did not know what AI was. I was in his house after graduation. He just sees me on the laptop all day, every day, thinking, what on earth is this woman doing? He is me trying to explain to him, actually, I have a business, but he comes from a generation where how can you have a business when you just sit on your laptop the whole day? What kind of business are you running? He didn't get it, not one bit. But he was always there to support me. And even when I said that I was leaving the country to come back to um England, he didn't question it. He just had full faith that what was gonna happen, Mohammed. High five Muhammad. Mr. Mohammed. And to this day, actually, his profile picture on WhatsApp is uh the picture with the king, and so he alternates between me and the king or me in front of uh 10 Downing Street, and those are his profile pictures that he like alternates between. And I just think, oh, bless your hearts, love the guy.

SPEAKER_01:

Love him. Even more proud. Thank you so much for joining me today for having so many lessons, so much wisdom. I'm really excited to um find out what's next. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Subscribe on YouTube, Apple, Amazon Music, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave us a review or follow us on socials. We are power underscore net on Insta, TikTok and Twitter, or we are power on LinkedIn, Facebook, and we are underscore power on YouTube.

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Simone Roche MBE

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