Interview
Deep Tech Community Builder – Sally-Ann Williams
We’re really excited about the wonderful guest we have for you on episode 169 this week: Sally-Ann Williams.
Sally-Ann (aka Sally) is CEO of Cicada Innovations, Australia’s leading deep tech incubator for startups and scaleups with everything from quantum computing to life sciences, ag-tech, space and hydrogen startups. Cicada provides office space, custom labs, specialised equipment and training.
Over the years, Cicada has helped its resident companies raise 1.7 billion dollars in funding and they’ve also had 1.4 billion dollars in successful exits.
And right at the heart of the Cicada ecosystem is Sally.
Before joining Cicada, Sally spent nearly 13 years at Google in diverse roles mostly in the engineering team. There she was responsible, amongst many other things, for bringing street view to Australia and influencing school curriculum to ensure better teaching of technology and STEM subjects. She’s also always been a huge proponent for the start up ecosystem and women in particular.
In this episode you’ll hear how
- Sally coped working with Google’s tech engineers without any technology background
- How she goes about building or harnessing diverse systems to deliver positive long term change
- The biggest challenge Sally faces running a deep tech incubator
- Why she thinks seaweed is actually more exciting than generative AI; and
- Her strategies for coping with chronic imposter syndrome.
Sally definitely sits in the box seat of what’s happening at the forefront of tech so we’re confident that you’ll find this conversation with her super interesting.
Enjoy this episode with deep tech and community champion, Sally-Ann Williams.
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