ADB SAFEGATE x Women in Tech Sweden: A First Meetup in Malmö

As Sweden’s third largest city Malmö has long been on Women in Tech Sweden’s radar. The excitement in the room made it clear why. Attendees arrived with a genuine sense of anticipation, many of them expressing how much they had longed to connect with fellow women in tech right there in their own city.

The evening opened with a welcome from Elin Eriksson, co-founder of Women in Tech Sweden and Pia Hantoft, Global Product Manager at ADB SAFEGATE. Stephanie Darvill also represented Women in Tech Sweden on the night. Stephanie lives in Malmö and has moderated the Women in Tech Sweden conference for three years running, and it was a special moment for attendees to meet her in her own city. Presentations followed from ADB SAFEGATE’s Emmy Held, Pia Hantoft and Zainab Alfredji, who took the audience behind the scenes of an industry that touches millions of lives every day, yet rarely gets seen up close.

As Caroline Joubert Selén, one of the attendees, expressed herself on LinkedIn:

“It was genuinely fascinating to go behind the curtain of aviation tech and hear directly from the brilliant women driving innovation across their teams: sharing how their connected airfield and gate solutions are making airports smarter, safer, and more sustainable. Thank you Pia Hantoft & Zainab Alfredji for the cool presentations!”

Air traffic is growing fast, putting enormous pressure on airports that are, in most cases, hard to expand. EUROCONTROL’s Challenges of Growth work projected that insufficient European airport capacity could leave 1.1 million flights unable to fly by 2050. Aircraft docking, though it takes only minutes, carries outsized operational weight, and around 80 percent of incidents and accidents on the ramp happen right there.

In their presentation, Pia Hantoft and Zainab Alfredji compared a full aircraft turnaround to a Formula One pit stop: over 300 tasks completed, more than 75 people involved, and at least 10 vehicles moving at once, all coordinated in minutes. It is a vivid way to picture why precision and safety technology on the ground matter as much as anything happening in the air.

This is also an industry increasingly focused on its climate impact, and the audience heard how the same technology built for safety and efficiency doubles as a lever for sustainability. ADB SAFEGATE works with safety technology on the apron, the area of an airport where aircraft park and maneuver on their way to the gate, and solutions like LiDAR-based digital vision systems are helping reduce unnecessary delays and fuel burn while catching hazards as small as three centimetres on the tarmac. Done right, the presenters made clear, smarter airport technology is not just about handling more traffic, it is about handling it with a lighter footprint.

True to form, the ADB SAFEGATE team did not just talk about their work, they showed it. The parking area outside their Malmö office mirrors a real airport environment, complete with a helicopter pad, a runway, and the very camera and laser equipment the company tests on-site as part of their everyday development work.

Guests were invited into the demo area to see the lights and technology in action for themselves, technology that most people only ever glimpse from a distance, and rarely think about at all. It made for a rare evening that combined formal insight with genuinely hands-on access, bringing to life an industry that operates largely out of the public eye.

Something that Women in Tech Sweden always encourages its community to seek out is good connections, and those were made all evening long. It was also a night that brought the organisation’s three pillars, inspiration, role models and networks, vividly to life. Attendees found inspiration in an industry many had never looked closely at before, met role models leading the way within it, and built genuine new connections across the community.

The feeling was mutual on ADB SAFEGATE’s side of the room. Zainab Alfredji reflected on what the evening meant for her team:

“When different perspectives meet and collaborate, we build a more modern and inclusive aviation industry. That is exactly what this evening was about for us.”

Emmy Held, HR Operations Specialist at ADB SAFEGATE, pointed to what stayed with her afterward:

“The questions kept coming long after the formal programme ended. That kind of curiosity is exactly what will shape the industry’s next generation.”

Women in Tech Sweden extends a warm thank you to everyone at ADB SAFEGATE for their generosity and hospitality, and to everyone who joined for making this first Malmö meetup one to remember.