Tributes to IT pioneer and tireless campaigner

TRIBUTES have been paid to “visionary” computing pioneer Dame Stephanie Shirley, who died on Saturday.

The businesswoman, later turned philanthropist, was the founder of British freelance software and systems services company Freelance Programmers, later known as F International, which
she started in 1962.

She was best known by her nickname “Steve” which she adopted to help her succeed in the male-dominated business world.

Dame Stephanie, who was 91, had been a Henley resident since the mid-Nineties.

After coming to Britain as a Kindertransport child refugee in 1939, she was often quoted as saying she wanted her life to be “one worth saving”.

Dame Stephanie would go on to found a company that pioneered outsourcing and opportunities for women, and reached a shareholder value of $3bn. Her team’s projects at F International included programming Concorde’s black box flight recorder to NATO’s software standards.

The mother of an autistic son, she founded a number of charities, including Autistica, one of the UK’s leading autism research charities and was appointed by the government as Ambassador for Philanthropy from 2009 to 2010.

Hilary Gilfoy, who worked in the sales and marketing departments for F International from 1982 until 1987 said Dame Stephanie had a talent for encouraging those around her.

“She was a very strong personality.” She said. “She had a rare capacity to share a vision with people of what she wanted to achieve.

“And that was both true of her company and her charity work as well. She had a gift for engaging people.

“There was a very strong sense of community in F International and which stayed as it became a much bigger company. She created a culture in which people thrived in.”

“I joined F International when my first child was three months old, and I had my second child while I was there.

“In that environment, it was a given that women had children but continued to work and that was very important.”

Ms Gilfoy, who is a former trustee of the Chiltern Centre in Henley crossed paths with Dame Stephanie again later in life and was appointed as Chief Executive of Autistica from 2005 to 2010.

“You always felt you had to do your best work for her.” She said

“I will remember her as a somebody of exceptional vision and as somebody who persevered.”

“She had the ability to create a vision and see it through and to achieve all the things she did.

“She was a really remarkable person, and it was a privilege to have been able to work with her.”

Close friend Lynn Hart, who worked as Dame Stephanie’s Head of Communications for the last 15 years, described her as a “visionary”

She said: “It’s just been an absolute honour and a privilege to work with her for so long.

“She was always looking forward to see what we could do next. She was an ideas person without any doubt at all and she worked up until the very end.”

Ms Hart recalled travelling around the UK and Europe with Dame Stephanie to a number of public events. She recalled that the last three speeches she delivered in London received standing ovations.

“She was a very modest lady,” she said. “She was very kind, very giving and very caring.

“She has a presence in the room. She was the most amazing networker I’ve ever known. She would walk into a room of 200 people she’d probably know 197 by the time she finished because she would work the room.

“She’d always keep in touch with people, she’d give someone a phone call because she was thinking of them or she’d write them a letter or note.

“She worked at her friendships, but it wasn’t like work – she absolutely loved people.”

Born Vera Buchthal to a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother in Dortmund, Germany, in 1933, Dame Stephanie was just five years old when, along with her nine-year-old sister Renate, she boarded a “Kindertransport” train from Vienna to London.

The sisters were raised in the West Midlands by loving foster parents, and although Vera did have contact with her mother and father from time to time, their relationship had been put under impossible strain and never fully recovered.

After choosing not to go to University, in the fifties Dame Stephanie worked for at the Post Office Research Station in Dollis Hill, where she built computers from scratch and wrote code. She took evening classes for six years to obtain an honours degree in mathematics.

She founded the software company F International in 1962 with a capital of £6.

Having previously experienced sexism in the workplace she wanted to create job opportunities for women with dependants.

297 of the companies’ first 300 employees were women until this policy was outlawed by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975.

After a series of rebrands, the company was later acquired by French company Sopra Steria in 2007.

Dame Stephanie moved to Henley in 1995 with her late husband Derek, who died in 2021.

The pair wanted to be closer to their son Giles, who had a severe form of autism and was under the care of the old Borocourt Hospital at Wyfold Court in Rotherfield Peppard.

Determined that Giles should not live his entire life in a hospital environment, in 1994 she founded Kingwood in Didcot, a residential home for autistic people, now known as Autism at Kingwood.

Giles was the first resident in the home. He sadly died following an epileptic seizure, aged 35 in 1998, and Dame Stephanie went on to found two further charities Prior’s Court Special School near Newbury and the research charity Autistica.

Dame Stephanie was made a Dame in 2000 and was later awarded the Order of the Companions of Honour in 2017, an honour only given to 65 people at anyone time in the world.

She was also the first female President of the chartered British Computer Society in 1989.

A strong public speaker, she regularly appeared on radio, podcasts and at events and continued to work up to the final weeks of her life.

Her memoir Let It Go was first published in 2012, and during lockdown in 2020, she produced her second book, So To Speak, a collection of 29 of her speeches given over the last 40 years.

One of her most famous speeches was a TED talk given at an event in Vancouver in 2015 to an audience of thousands, including Bill Gates.

Entitled “Why do ambitious women have flat heads?” she explained that ambitious women suffered from being “patted patronisingly — and we have larger feet to stand away from the kitchen sink”.

Outside of her work she was said to enjoy swimming at Danesfield House and to be fond of pussy cats and a good cup of tea.

Ryan Campbell, Chief Executive Officer of Prior’s Court, said: “Steve will forever be the inspiration for what we do.

“Though she will be deeply missed, Steve’s spirit, courage, and remarkable legacy will continue to inspire, shaping the future for generations to come.”

Sarah Butcher, Chief Executive Autism of Kingwood said: “Steve’s enduring legacy is defined by her unwavering drive, passion, and commitment - qualities that will continue to inspire and guide our work with autistic people.”

James Cusack, Chief Executive Officer of Autistica, said he was “immensely proud” to have Dame Stephanie as the charity’s founder.

“Her values and beliefs are embedded in our charity and drive our commitment to innovative problem solving, acting with urgency and embracing difference.

“Steve often said that she wanted her life to be ‘one worth saving’. She achieved that in so many ways. She leaves behind an incredible legacy for autistic people and their families, of support, research and policy change, that will continue to change lives for generations to come.”

Dame Stephanie is survived by her niece, Clare.

ENDS