Zahra Gor­don

A few weeks ago, Sta­cy-Marie Ish­mael was named one of the 30 Most Im­por­tant Women Un­der 30 in Tech by Busi­ness In­sid­er mag­a­zine. Al­though Ish­mael has spent al­most her whole life­time de­vel­op­ing an in­ter­est in tech­nol­o­gy and work­ing at the fore­front of In­ter­net-based jour­nal­ism, be­ing in­clud­ed on the list still came as a sur­prise to the 28-year-old.

"I didn't see it com­ing and it's fun­ny be­cause I'm guilty of ex­act­ly the same things that I tell my friends about all the time, which is not un­der­es­ti­mat­ing what you're do­ing," she said dur­ing a Skype in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian.

"I feel like too of­ten women in par­tic­u­lar don't put them­selves for­ward for things. It would nev­er have oc­curred to me to nom­i­nate my­self be­cause I did not think of my­self as a tech­nol­o­gist in this sense, but the fact is that every day I come to work and I work for a tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny so even as much as I try to be aware, clear­ly I still have a lot of work to do."

When Ish­mael speaks of aware­ness, she's part­ly re­fer­ring to a lack of vis­i­bil­i­ty of women in STEM (Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, En­gi­neer­ing and Math­e­mat­ics). In her teens, Ish­mael was lucky enough to have a com­put­er at home and be open ear­ly to In­ter­net chat rooms where she met many oth­er techies who she re­mains friends with. Most of her In­ter­net bud­dies were male and Ish­mael, along with her broth­er spent a lot of time tak­ing apart com­put­ers and oth­er elec­tron­ics and work­ing on pro­gram­ming, cod­ing and the build­ing of Web sites.

It was an ear­ly love but since Ish­mael went to an all-girls school, that love for tech­nol­o­gy was nur­tured most­ly at home.

"I went to an ex­cel­lent high school (Na­pari­ma Girls) and we had amaz­ing teach­ers and a fan­cy com­put­er lab with In­ter­net ac­cess which was great. But I didn't do com­put­er sci­ence be­cause IT (in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy) wasn't on the reg­u­lar cur­ricu­lum and I couldn't do IT un­less I was will­ing to stay af­ter school on a Fri­day–which I did. We al­so didn't have tech­ni­cal draw­ing on cur­ricu­lum," she said.

High-school and oth­er ex­pe­ri­ences have ce­ment­ed Ish­mael's re­solve to make a dif­fer­ence in her field. "Get­ting girls to think about what ca­reers are open to them starts re­al­ly, re­al­ly young. Wor­ry­ing about the lack of women do­ing com­put­er sci­ence in col­lege is too late. We have to think about why women and girls don't get in­to tech­nol­o­gy much, much ear­li­er on."

Ish­mael is cur­rent­ly prod­uct man­ag­er at Per­co­late, "a thought­ful tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny." Her ca­reer in tech fol­lowed a some­what un­usu­al path, how­ev­er, as Ish­mael was a hu­man­i­ties stu­dent at the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics. Af­ter un­der­grad, she joined a grad­u­ate train­ing pro­gramme at the Fi­nan­cial Times, where she helped start up their fi­nan­cial blog FT Al­phav­ille and was al­so the found­ing ed­i­tor of FT Tilt–an on­line-on­ly pub­li­ca­tion cov­er­ing emerg­ing mar­kets.

She is al­so founder and blog­ger at Gala­vant Me­dia and is a part-time lec­tur­er at the Tow-Knight Cen­ter for En­tre­pre­neur­ial Jour­nal­ism. Ish­mael us­es her man­age­r­i­al po­si­tion to make a dif­fer­ence by en­sur­ing that the ap­pli­ca­tion pool for job ap­pli­cants is very broad–she en­sures that job ad­ver­tise­ments are writ­ten in a way that will en­cour­age women to ap­ply.

Ish­mael is al­so a men­tor. "Out­side of my day job, I try to des­tig­ma­tise and de­mys­ti­fy tech­nol­o­gy as a thing on­ly made for elites or a thing that is re­al­ly ex­pen­sive or a thing that is re­al­ly scary or a thing that's on­ly for nerds or a thing that's on­ly for nerdy men," she said.

"One of the things I've al­ways been in­ter­est­ed in and com­mit­ted to is the idea of ex­pand­ing the way peo­ple per­ceive oth­er peo­ple and that plays out in a lot of the things I do out­side of work. I do a lot of men­tor­ing. I do things that sur­round di­ver­si­ty ini­tia­tives and rais­ing aware­ness of the need to have more women and oth­er mi­nori­ties in tech­nol­o­gy."

Ish­mael is al­so com­mit­ted to broad­en­ing ac­cess to tech­nol­o­gy. "If what we're say­ing is, in 2013 what it means to work is hav­ing ac­cess to broad­band, then what about all the peo­ple who don't have broad­band? What about all the peo­ple who can't af­ford broad­band?

"There are a lot of re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing dis­cus­sions I have with peo­ple say­ing well, every­body has a smart­phone but no, not every­body does. Not every­one is con­nect­ed to their e-mails. Not every­body has that kind of ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion on a con­stant ba­sis. So the ques­tion is, how do we think about pub­lic spaces to give ac­cess to tools that a lot of the time we take for grant­ed to en­sure that we're not leav­ing peo­ple out of those op­por­tu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly women?"

Women in Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy in T&T

Last Oc­to­ber, when the world cel­e­brat­ed Ada Lovelace Day in ho­n­our of the 19th cen­tu­ry math­e­mati­cian, T&T Guardian spoke to chem­i­cal en­gi­neer Jacque­line Mor­ris about the role of women in STEM lo­cal­ly.

Mor­ris, who teach­es tech­nol­o­gy and is in­volved in de­vel­op­ing ICT gov­er­nance pol­i­cy, said young girls need­ed to see STEM as a plau­si­ble ca­reer path. She ac­knowl­edged, how­ev­er, that her own ca­reer path has not been easy.

"There were very few women in en­gi­neer­ing when I was at UWI in the 1980s. It has been chal­leng­ing, but noth­ing worth­while isn't. Gain­ing re­spect for qual­i­ty work helps. Sta­mi­na and per­sis­tence al­so help," she said.

From her ob­ser­va­tion, Mor­ris sees many women in STEM halt­ing their ca­reers be­cause of fam­i­ly life. "One thing I've no­ticed is that women in STEM tend to mid­dle out their ca­reers, not get­ting to top po­si­tions in en­gi­neer­ing in num­bers that are pro­por­tion­al to their par­tic­i­pa­tion at the low­er lev­els," she said. "I'm not sure if that is a glass ceil­ing with in­sti­tu­tion­al bar­ri­ers to ad­vance­ment or if it is a choice based on child-rear­ing needs."

Me­dia pro­duc­er and blog­ger Geor­gia Pop­plewell al­so be­lieves that women are un­der­rep­re­sent­ed in STEM lo­cal­ly.

Pop­plewell, who al­so spoke to the T&T Guardian on Ada Lovelace Day, said there have been many ex­cep­tions to the rule of women in STEM and are many stereo­types which women have to over­come. "I do think, how­ev­er, that there is a lin­ger­ing per­cep­tion in T&T that these fields, es­pe­cial­ly tech­nol­o­gy and en­gi­neer­ing, are more suit­ed to men than women, and as a self-taught fe­male geek I look for­ward to the day when we erad­i­cate that no­tion."