Patrica Lip

As part of our Role Model Campaign, centred around International Women’s Day 2023, we have interviewed Role Models from different companies to get to know their stories. For this article we talked to Patricia Lip, commercial manager IT at Yacht. Patricia is a hard-working woman who already has an impressive career path behind her. When she’s not working, she likes to take her bike out of the garage and get outside for a good workout. At work Patricia likes to open windows of opportunities to help others reach their full potential. Today, we get to know Yacht’s Role Model a bit better.  

How did you get here?  

Before Patricia joined Yacht, she had already worked in IT for a while. Through hard work and a lot of networking, she landed herself several management functions. Coaching was something she had always been interested in, so she found a way to combine her IT background and leadership skills with job placement. Right now, Patricia’s main function is in HR: she coaches other employees to realise growth. Her advice: make sure you are confident about yourself. “Tech can be a man’s world”, but this needs to change. That’s why Patricia, together with 3 other employees from Yacht Groups, has joined the Equals Role Model Campaign 2023.  

Motivation

What motivates Patricia the most in her job is the human side of things. In her role, Patricia spends about 70 percent of her time in HR. She started at Yacht guiding a rather unstable team of 60  people towards more stability. She mainly does this through having “great conversations” and paying attention to the individual person and their personal role in the team. These are conversations about personal growth: what is your ambition and what do you need to do to realise it? Whether it be in her office or at the coffee machine, there is always the opportunity for such a great conversation, as long as it helps her team towards their personal and professional goals.  

Working out to work things out 

Setting her own goals is just as important for Patricia as helping others set theirs. Not only at work, but also in her personal life. She frequently gets on her bicycle, and she has even completed the ‘Sella Ronda’ mountain stage in September 2022. “Making miles is my outlet”, she says. “This gives me space to put things into perspective and come up with new ideas”. When coming home, she then likes to discuss all these new insights with her partner (Martien), whom she lives together with.  

Time management 

Finding a balance between work and her personal life is something Patricia is very conscious about. In both aspects of life, she tries to identify her own “fields of energy”: she finds what gives her energy and makes conscious choices in order to maintain those things. Sometimes the line between work and private life gets a bit blurry. This is however not a problem for Patricia, as it also provides her with flexibility that she highly appreciates in her job. She does not mind working on something in the evening if that means that she has more free time during the day, because taking breaks is also crucial. “If I go for something, I do it for 200%. Not only with work, but also in taking time off”. Having learned this through her own experience, Patricia also coaches others to find this balance. 

Mix it up 

In this year’s Role Model Campaign Patricia will shine on of the “Peperbussen” in Amsterdam. When being asked about her own Role Model, she answers that she appreciates different characteristics of many women in her life. Lieke, Yacht’s CEO and also one of the Role Models for this campaign, is one of those women. “Lieke is involved, knows the people in her organisation, and always takes time to have conversations with people. This is something I find important as well”. By putting together all these different characteristics of the women around her, Patricia creates her own picture of a Role Model. She does this consciously: if a characteristic does not suit her, she will not try to pursue it. Her goal is to find a balance of characteristics in who she is and who she wants to be, but always staying true to herself. 

Helping others 

When talking about her dreams, Patricia refers back to something she has done in the past. A few years ago, she travelled to Gambia to do voluntary work, building schools and providing aid in children’s development. Traveling back to Gambia and helping even more people is something she dreams of doing again. Not only does she want to help children, but also the women who play an important role in their children’s development. Patricia wants these women to become aware of the fact that they matter, and that they also are Role Models.  

Just do it 

Her advice to women: “Don’t doubt yourself and just start doing it. Take up a role, a career, do not wonder whether you can or cannot do it. Us women have the tendency to only do something when we are 200% certain that we will succeed. This leads to us letting a lot of opportunities slip.” Not succeeding is not a bad thing, says Patricia. “But be open to the experience, do it, and learn from it. Only then you will progress in life.” 

Find out more about the participation of Patricia Lip in the Role Model Campaign here.

Want to read more stories? Visit this page for an overview of all our Role Models from the Role Model Campaign 2023.