Womenize! Wednesday Weekly is our weekly series featuring inspirational women from games and tech. For this edition we talked to Katie Kotadia, Assistant Store Manager at CeX Ltd. Read more about Katie in this interview:
Hi Katie! Having worked in the technology & communications industry for years, what are your top lessons learned as a manager?

One of the very first lessons I learnt as a manager was the importance of having an engaged team; almost every task is automatically easier when your people are happy. Another important lesson, in the same vein, is the old saying that you should praise publicly but challenge privately, and never underestimate how effective a simple well done or thank you can be. For me, the aim in managing people is to ensure you are fostering an environment where people want to come to work, and want to do well in their role.

Which game genres do you personally enjoy and how do you find the time in between your busy work schedule?

I’m a huge horror fan, so recently I’ve enjoyed the “Dark Pictures” series, but my all-time favourite has to be “Dragon Age”. I grew up reading choose-your-own-adventure type books as a child, so RPG gaming seemed like a perfectly natural progression from there! As for finding the time; gaming for me has always been a way to switch off and relax, so even during my busiest periods I’m careful to set aside some time for myself, be it in the evenings or on days off. I find this helps me manage stress and ensure I’m not taking it into work.

What does diversity mean to yourself?

I think it’s incredibly important – no matter what industry you are in, your target market is always going to include people from different races, religions, people of different genders from different cultures and more. If you have a diverse team with people from different cultures and backgrounds, it is much more likely they will be able to connect better with customers, and will naturally have a much wider variety of skills and competencies available. Plus, if people feel that they can be themselves at work, then they will naturally engage much more with both the business and their colleagues. This is why it is so important to me that success should not be dependent on someone’s age, race, religion, gender, for example, but should be entirely down to their expertise.

Thank you for your time, Katie!

Katie’s Links: LinkedIn

WWW Feature by Sophie Brügmann