We are excited to announce our Meet the GDA Team blog series showcasing the incredible people working on the GDA vision every day! By building a diverse group of individuals, we push forward our mission and through this series, we look forward to connecting faces to the names of our innovative, driven, fun, and creative team. In our first Interview, we sat down with Lorna and Sharon Haddock.
What do you do at GDA?
We are maintenance workers at a data center in a small village in Örträsk, Västerbotten, Sweden
What’s a typical day like for you?
The focus of our days is to maintain the miners and improve the hashrate of the data center. A typical day includes essential miner maintenance, hardware repairs, software upgrades and ensuring optimal environmental conditions within the data center.
What’s the most exciting part about your day to day work?
The most exciting part of our day to day work is the variation and problem solving, our days are never boring or mundane. One day we can be battling a snow blizzard, the next day we can be working with colleagues from another data center troubleshooting problem miners. We enjoy the remote forest location of the data center and that we get to work outdoors in all seasons. We really appreciate that our daily work is so varied and is both physically and intellectually challenging.
What can the blockchain & crypto industry do to get more women involved?
That’s a tough question. I think without a cultural and societal shift surrounding women working in traditionally male-dominated industries this imbalance will persist. Since moving from the UK to Sweden, we have encountered a definite positive difference within the perception and acceptance of women working within all traditionally male-dominated industries, including the technology sector.
Who inspires you most? Why?
Sharon: Delaney Bayles. In my twenties I worked with a juggling company and practiced juggling for hours everyday. Her juggling technique is unreal and the tricks she is performing are pushing the boundaries of what is possible in modern day juggling. The dedication and commitment she has to achieve this level of juggling is mind blowing.
Lorna: Laura Kampf. When we moved to Sweden our house needed a lot of renovation, including water damage from cracked water pipes and the worst wallpaper you’ve ever seen! The scale of the work was overwhelming, but she inspired me to have confidence in my own capabilities. I enjoy her different approaches to problem solving, and her attitude that no problem is too large, you just need the right knowledge and tools.
If you could visit any city in the world, where would it be? Why?
It would depend on the season! In the summer months we would love to visit San Francisco and travel around the national parks in California, as we love backpacking and hiking. In the winter season, we would love to visit Red Mountain on the powder highway in British Columbia, Canada. We both love to ski and are qualified CSIA ski instructors, with Red Mountain being firmly on our skiing bucket list.
