OPINION: The Architecture of Intent - Why tech leadership must be built, not born

By Shiro Theuri, CTO at Glovo

If we want to truly transform the tech sector, we have to stop treating women's empowerment as a side project or a diversity metric. We need to treat it like any other mission-critical system: with high-intensity goals, clear ownership, and radical intentionality.

Moving Beyond the "Organic" Career

Early in my career, navigating fast-moving environments from startups to mobile technology, I learned a bold truth: formal structures rarely keep pace with innovation. In "move fast and break things" cultures, leadership is often assumed to be something that happens naturally to those who shout the loudest.

But for women in tech, "natural" progression is frequently blocked by a lack of access to high-impact projects or strategic inner circles. We cannot wait for talent to be "discovered" by chance. At Glovo, we view leadership development as a shared responsibility, not an individual one. This means shifting from passive mentorship to active, results-driven sponsorship.

I personally make it a point to mentor at least two women at any given time. This isn’t just about advice; it’s about providing a pragmatic roadmap for navigating complex systems and ensuring that "potential" is converted into "presence" at the decision-making table.

From Mentorship to Radical Allyship

There is a critical difference between a mentor and an ally. A mentor talks to you; an ally talks about you in the rooms where your career is decided.

Throughout my journey, many of my strongest allies were men. This reinforced a core belief: empowerment is a collective mission. To build a truly equitable tech ecosystem, we need to embed three things into our daily operations:

• Structured Progression: Programs like LeaderSHE at Glovo replace informal "coffee chats" with rigorous skill development. We provide women with direct access to senior leaders and clear development goals, reducing the reliance on "who you know" and focusing on "what you can lead."
• Ownership as a Cultural Pillar: We encourage our engineers to think beyond implementation. When an engineer takes responsibility for how their work performs across different cultures and operations, they develop the resilience and decision-making skills required for management.
• Deliberate Exposure: One of the greatest barriers for women is the lack of early access to cross-functional initiatives. We must intentionally place women in roles that sit at the intersection of technology, product, and operations. You cannot lead a company if you have only ever seen it through a code editor.

The Skills of the New Guard

As the next generation enters the sector, technical proficiency is merely the baseline. The true differentiators will be adaptability, resourcefulness, and the ability to navigate constant trade-offs. The technology sector is highly competitive, but it is also one of the few places where a single person’s curiosity can impact millions of users.

My advice to women entering the field is to stay hungry for complexity. Seek out the "stretch roles" and the projects that feel slightly out of reach.

A Call to Action for Tech Leaders

To my fellow CTOs and engineering leaders: the gender gap in tech is not a pipeline problem; it is a structural one. We must move beyond "support" and toward "intent."

When we treat empowerment as a core engineering principle (optimizing for growth, removing bottlenecks, and debugging our own biases) we don't just build better teams. We build a more resilient, innovative, and high-performing industry. The future of tech isn’t just written in code; it is written in the opportunities we are brave enough to create today.