Words by Robbie Clark
Photography by Clare West
When Dame Stephanie Shirley founded the British software company F.I. Group in 1962, the young upstart was tackling not only a fledgling new programming industry, but also pioneering the workplace innovation of conducting business from home. And while the company did grow to become a multimillion-dollar organization due to Shirley’s profound grasp of mathematics, initial success came from a healthy dose of marketing and showmanship, if not outright deception.
Vera Buchthal
The success of Dame Shirley’s company F.I. Group (now called Xansa) is astonishing when seen through the prism of the time period―a female entrepreneur forming a math- and science-based startup in the 1960s from home, not a corporate office setting―but it is staggering against the backdrop of her youth.
Shirley, born Vera Buchthal, is from Germany, and in the savage months leading up to World War II was fortunate enough to escape the Nazi regime in her home country under an international relief program that placed children with foster parents in the United Kingdom.
In England, Shirley attended a little primary school in a convent. A nun recognized the bright student’s gift in math (or “maths,” as she put it) and recommended to Shirley’s foster parents that she transfer to a proper school for a more formal education. She was able to attend on a scholarship, but Shirley’s mathematical prowess quickly outpaced the female instructors, who did not put an emphasis on arithmetic. “For women in those days,” Shirley said, “biology was probably the only thing that was considered respectable for nice, young girls.”
Another option was available to Shirley, though a bit unorthodox. In pursuit of a better education, she transferred to an all boys’ schools which offered more intellectual stimulation in the way of mathematics. Attending a boys’ school, Shirley recognized, “was a lovely forerunner for the sexism of the workplace that I met later on.”
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