The computer engineer and mother of two joined one of Sweden’s largest telcos two and a half years ago after a 20-year career in fintech.
Lindmark previously worked as CIO at Nordic insurance company SPP for eight years. There, she led a successful digital transformation project that involved creating a common platform for data and applications.
TechInformed spoke with Lindmark in Stockholm at Sweden’s largest tech show, The Tech Arena, where she participated in a panel discussion on quantum AI and future security threats.
Why did you make the leap from fintech to telecoms?
I think exploring a new industry, while leveraging experience from similar industries, is good for your brain synapses.
What have been the biggest challenges in this career transition?
In many ways, things are similar; there’s a lot of legacy tech, and they’re both highly regulated industries. There’s also a lot of outside digital pressure forcing change.
There are differences, too. In telcos, technology is the core, so being an engineer [she holds an MEng] is exciting for me.
What are your priorities now at Telenor?
We’re exploring new use cases in terms of 5G — both business and consumer applications.
At this point, it’s mostly B2B, but we will see what happens; it’s still hard to predict.
Autonomous vehicles and transportation are one focus for us [using very low latency via 5G to retrieve information from the environment to identify queues, speeds, traffic lights, etc].
What are the biggest tech challenges for you as CIO?
Things are getting more expensive. It’s harder to get Capex investment, and we’re still dealing with a lot of legacy technology in this industry and at Telenor.
So, modernising; moving to cloud. Most of our IT applications are on public cloud now. With that change, we see improvements in the speed of development and overall performance working in a more cloud-native way.
We’re also investing in data analytics — to be more productive and more precise in customer interactions.
How are you using AI?
We have a lot of pilot cases running. And then more traditional machine learning.
With generative AI, we’re piloting speech-to-text for next-level customer service. We are also using genAI in the IT department for productivity and code generation, developer tooling, and testing and documentation.
We’re also working closely with several hyperscalers using their language models for various use cases.
We’re forming some good partnerships in that space. I’d say we are entering a trial period in our relationships with the hyperscalers.
Now that Sweden has joined NATO, what impact does that have on your organisation in terms of cyber security?
Sweden joining NATO is obviously extremely important for us from a security perspective. It brings us even closer to our Nordic neighbours, and the Nordic cluster is stronger than it has been for centuries.
For a company like Telenor, which has operations in Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Sweden, this should present opportunities to work even closer with our sister companies to serve customers on a Nordic level and develop services and technologies together.
Telecoms still comprise a predominately male workforce. How can the sector encourage more women into tech roles?
When I left SPP, 45% of the IT staff was women, so I know it can be done. It can change if you work persistently at it.
Do you ever wonder what sort of products might be developed if there was more of an even gender split?
Yes. The sad part is the innovation and product development, as well as perspectives on security, that we may be missing out on.
When you get only half the population’s viewpoint on a problem, you do not see the whole picture.
What do you do to switch off from work?
I go to the stables. My daughter has a horse, that’s the best way of relaxing — putting on some ugly clothes and doing some physical work!
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