Women To Watch: Spotify’s Sophie Paterson

At B&T, We are staunch believers that every woman and her achievements should be celebrated, every day and always.

However, unfortunately, the achievements of women often go unnoticed. That’s why we launched our annual B&T Women in Media Awards – to recognise the amazing accomplishments of women across the marketing, communications and advertising industry.

In honour of our WIM Awards, we’re chatting to industry powerhouses; women we should all be keeping an eye on — women to watch.

Today we’re hearing from Sophie Paterson, Spotify AUNZ’s head of PR & communications.

sophie paterson

I am a big believer in “if you can’t see it, you can’t be it”. By shining a light on the amazing achievements of women and increasing visibility of these accomplishments, it enables those younger women coming through the ranks to be inspired, motivated, and, moreover, hopeful.

Name the most influential woman in your life.

There is no one woman I could single out as the most influential woman in my life, but rather a vast collective of women I know, have known, or have admired from afar. That is, the single working mum who is there for every school pick up, some former bosses, my strong and wonderful female friends, Jacinda Ardern, Jameela Jamil, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and, of course, my mum.

What’s the biggest impediment to equality in the workforce as you see it?

The lack of intersectional female representation, visibility, and/or inclusion in gender equality conversations, I believe are the biggest impediment to equality in the workforce. Gender equality, in the traditional sense, only takes the conversation so far and tends to only focus on white women. To drive real change and equality we must see and hear from more women of colour, queer women, disabled women, woman from different scoio-economic backgrounds (and so on). Only by being really intentional about intersectionality, can we solve problems and achieve true equality.

If you don’t have access to formal unconscious bias training programs, jump online and take a free test and/or a training simulation. Unconscious bias exists in everyone, the degree in which varies vastly from person to person but we must have an understanding that this issue and prejudice exists in the first place to start to change our mindset.

Quickfire Questions

If you were PM, what law would you change/introduce right now to improve equality?

Make gender and race based pay discrimination illegal; introduce laws that require all companies to demonstrate that their wages are fair, and enforce fines for non-compliance.

What is the best advice anyone has ever given you?

Treat others as they wish to be treated.

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Sophie Paterson Spotify Women in Media