Secret military work puts grad apprentice in the spotlight
Victoria Sinel said her career had “grown exponentially” during her combined study with Northeastern and employment at IBM.
LONDON — Victoria Sinel was so sure she wasn’t going to win at the Women in Tech Excellence Awards that she had her phone in hand ready to film the would-be winner.
So when they called out the IBM employee and Northeastern graduate’s name as Woman of the Year in the Tech & Consultancy category, it was quite a surprise for her.
When it was announced, Sinel was at a table at the Gillian Lynne Theatre in London with 12 other colleagues from IBM who had been nominated in different categories. In case one of her friends won, she wanted to be able to preserve their reaction.
“I was filming because I thought that somebody else was going to win,” she said. “For every award that was being announced, I was filming so that if one of them won, I could send them the video afterwards. But I was like, ‘Oh, this one is actually me.’”
Sinel said it felt “really unexpected” as she had “completely written off” having any chance of winning in the category since she is in the early throes of her career, having joined IBM fresh out of high school four years ago and had not previously studied technical subjects.
Three of her years at IBM have been combined with studying for an apprenticeship degree at Northeastern University in London. While holding down a job at the global technology giant four days a week, Sinel used the remaining weekday to study for her degree in digital and technology solutions. In December, she opted to continue her learning by enrolling on the two-year apprenticeship MSc in artificial intelligence and data science program at Northeastern.
The 23-year-old south London resident said her degree not only prepared her for future challenges in her job but has also accelerated her career progress. Sinel started at IBM as a trainee consultant in 2021 and has received two promotions in quick succession. She is currently a senior consultant leading a team of six employees, focused on the defense sector.
“My career has grown exponentially,” she said. “I shouldn’t have been promoted as early as I was both times, but having the hands-on and the theoretical knowledge go hand-in-hand, it really boosted my career.”
Alistair Robinson, academic director at the Centre for Apprenticeships at Northeastern in London, said Sinel’s award recognition in November “speaks volumes about the power of apprenticeships” and called her an “inspiration to other apprentices.”
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“It is inspiring to see an alumni, who started her apprenticeship with little technical knowledge, accelerate so quickly in her career and attain such well-deserved recognition,” said Robinson.
Tony Pigram, a former chief engineer at IBM who previously managed Sinel, said she was being noted as an industry leader after using her “dedicated commitment” and degree learning to “deliver phenomenal advancements and value to her clients.”
Pigram said: “Victoria has a bright and creative future ahead of her and, as she is continuing her education path by undertaking a master’s degree, I am sure she will continue to strive further ahead with her innovative approaches.”
Her fast-tracked career has already taken Sinel places. The nature of her defense consultancy role means she is more likely to be found in muddy fields and sparse deserts than IBM’s U.K. headquarters in Westminster, central London, as she works with military officials on creating the security technology of the future.
Even IBM was restricted in how much it could state publicly about Sinel’s role when putting her forward for the Women in Tech Excellence Awards, such is the confidential nature of her client’s work. They were able to declare that the technology her team is building, testing and experimenting with is “directly going to impact survivability on the battlefield.”
Despite the secrecy around her work, Sinel was able to tell Northeastern Global News about spending six weeks in Texas on a military exercise with the British Army, U.S. forces and other allies last year helping test new concepts.
“We build, create and test a lot of open source software,” Sinel explained. “And so we put a bunch of things that we were working on in a box, took it out to them and we spent time on the ground with the soldiers in these tiny rooms to see what we can do to help them.”
Sinel’s choice of working in technology and specializing in defense means she is faced with not one but two male-dominated sectors. According to a British Computing Society diversity report published in 2024, women account for only 21% of IT specialists in the U.K.
In her burgeoning career, Sinel said she has encountered sexism and has been treated differently from her male counterparts. She recalled how, when it came to choosing what subjects she wanted to study at GCSE (the General Certificate of Secondary Education in England, Wales and Northern Ireland that is usually taken when children are 15-16), her dance teacher at the time advised her against taking computer science as it was a “boy’s subject.”
It is why Sinel thinks recognition by the likes of the Women in Tech Excellence Awards is vital in terms of celebrating women’s contribution to the industry. Without women, there is a risk that technological advances, particularly in regard to AI, will not serve the needs of the public, she believes.
“When you have one group of people building tech for the wider population, no doubt there is going to be bias,” she said. “The general population is being impacted because the tech being built for them is not being built by them — and that’s why representation really matters.”
