Chris­tine Dalkan

Trinida­di­an-at-large (as she calls her­self) Sta­cy-Marie Ish­mael re­cent­ly made Busi­ness In­sid­er's 30 Most Im­por­tant Women Un­der 30 in Tech list.

As the say­ing goes, 'there's al­ways a Tri­ni in every­thing'. Don't know who said it, but if no one copy­right­ed it, can I call dibs on that? Ish­mael is out there in New York City, mak­ing waves in the world of tech­nol­o­gy. She is prod­uct man­ag­er at Per­co­late, a long and ex­cit­ing way from her days as grad­u­ate trainee at the Fi­nan­cial Times in 2006 � not say­ing that those days weren't ex­cit­ing al­so.At Fi­nan­cial Times, she was the found­ing ed­i­tor of FT Tilt, an on­line pub­li­ca­tion that analysed Emerg­ing Mar­kets. How­ev­er, this was short-lived; FT de­cid­ed to close down FT Tilt. For loy­al read­ers, it end­ed with Sta­cy Marie Ish­mael's "With thanks from the FT Tilt Team: The End" mes­sage on Tilt's now archived web­site.

Ish­mael de­cid­ed to quit her job. This was the end of her past life as a fi­nance jour­nal­ist and the start of new things. When one door clos­es, an­oth­er opens; Ish­mael start­ed job hunt­ing � talk­ing with oth­er me­dia com­pa­nies and even con­tem­plat­ing re­turn­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go. But she didn't, in­stead she ac­cept­ed an of­fer by a friend to come work at Per­co­late. The com­pa­ny is all about a fu­sion of tech­nol­o­gy and me­dia � her two loves, so she stayed.She is al­so the founder and blog­ger at Gala­vant Me­dia. Then there's Lim­ing House, Vibes It Up and Awe­some Women, a newslet­ter for pro­fes­sion­al women. She is al­so a vis­it­ing lec­tur­er at the CUNY Grad­u­ate School of Jour­nal­ism. How she does it all, we don't know. All we know is, she an­swers her emails al­most as soon as you press 'send'. Prob­a­bly she built a time ma­chine or some­thing � af­ter all she's a techie. Chris­tine Dalkan chat­ted with Ish­mael a bit to find out more about her and less about what she does � since that's al­ready all over the In­ter­net.

Wom­an­Wise: Where were you born?

Sta­cy-Marie Ish­mael: In San Fer­nan­do, born and raised.

WW: Did you live in Trinidad for some time and then mi­grate?

SMI: I lived in Trinidad un­til I grad­u­at­ed from Na­pari­ma Girls' High School, and then I moved to Eu­rope.

WW: Where do you cur­rent­ly re­side?

SMI: NYC

WW: Where did you at­tend school?

SMI: Maria Montes­sori, Wa­ter­man's Prepara­to­ry, Na­pari­ma Girls', L'Uni­ver­sit� de Franche-Comt�, Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics and Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence.

WW: What year did you grad­u­ate?

SMI: Naps - 2002, LSE - 2006

WW: What led to you be­ing in the IT field? Is it some­thing you al­ways had pas­sion for or did you dream of be­ing some­thing to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent?

SMI: I was very for­tu­nate to have been ex­posed to com­put­ers when I was still very young. And that my par­ents were quite pa­tient when I 'tem­porar­i­ly' took them apart or tried some­thing that meant the com­put­er wouldn't boot up un­til I fig­ured out how to fix it. I loved com­put­ers and gad­gets and the In­ter­net and 'so­cial me­dia' be­fore it was so called. There were two chat rooms I spent hours and hours in - #trinidad and #ole_mas. I still re­mem­ber my ICQ num­ber.But in an al­ter­nate uni­verse I have a pHD in Lit­er­a­ture, am an ex­pert in Shake­speare and his con­tem­po­raries and a pro­fes­sor at Cam­bridge. A girl can still dream.

WW: What's a typ­i­cal day for you like?

SMI: Wake up by 6am, check my email, check Twit­ter, spin class or yo­ga, check my email, check Twit­ter, spend most of the day solv­ing prob­lems and work­ing with amaz­ing de­vel­op­ers and de­sign­ers, check Twit­ter, look guilti­ly at the pile of books I haven't read, scan a few ar­ti­cles in my In­stapa­per queue, check Twit­ter, check email, sleep. Re­peat.

WW: Do­ing a Google search on you turns up so many things, it seems you're a fi­nance jour­nal­ist, you blog, you are Prod­uct Man­ag­er - you are so many things. How do you do it all?

SMI: Fi­nance jour­nal­ist in a past life, yes. I'm al­so a vis­it­ing lec­tur­er at the CUNY Grad­u­ate School of Jour­nal­ism. I am a big be­liev­er in al­ways op­er­at­ing out­side your com­fort zone, chal­leng­ing your­self to learn new things and try dif­fer­ent ex­pe­ri­ences. I have a wide range of hob­bies and in­ter­ests and these roles re­flect that.

WW: You seem in­tent on con­quer­ing every­thing you set out to, do you see your­self grip­ping the reins of any new en­deav­ours in the fu­ture? If yes, like what?

SMI: Con­quer­ing is such an ag­gres­sive word, and for me, a mis­lead­ing one. I en­joy chal­lenges. I rel­ish hav­ing to go from not know­ing any­thing at all about a top­ic or theme to de­vel­op­ing some de­gree of ex­per­tise. I hope some­one does this be­fore I do, be­cause I think Trinidad would huge­ly ben­e­fit: open a co work­ing / stu­dio space for artists, writ­ers, de­sign­ers and oth­er cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als on the is­land.

WW: Can you please tell us what is - Awe­some Women, the Lim­ing House and Gala­vant Times?

SMI: #awe­some­women is a newslet­ter I wrote and ed­it and a se­ries of events for pro­fes­sion­al women of all ages around the world. You can sign up here: ttms.us/awe­some­women

You found the Lim­ing House! Good work.The Gala­vant Times is an oc­ca­sion­al newslet­ter I use as a launch­ing pad for es­says and blog posts and ideas I'm test­ing out.

WW: I loved your post on Gala­vant Me­dia 'Your Users Know When You're On­ly Pre­tend­ing to be Per­son­al' (and I mean I loved it *grin) What are some of your oth­er pet peeves?

SMI: Ha­hah­haa. Peo­ple who post noth­ing but wrong at­trib­uted in­spi­ra­tional quotes to so­cial net­works. No, Bob Mar­ley did not say "be the change you wish to see in the world". I promise you. And re­al­ly, peo­ple who take them­selves too se­ri­ous­ly. Re­lax. It's just life, and it's short and un­pre­dictable and some­times fraught. Why waste it on scenes?