Two UWI alum­nae are among a group of all-fe­male win­ners of a Caribbean tech en­tre­pre­neur­ship com­pe­ti­tion. Dis­pelling no­tions of male dom­i­na­tion in the field, five fe­male mo­bile app de­vel­op­ers took all the top prizes at the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed PitchIT Caribbean Chal­lenge in T&T.

The win­ners in­clude: Danielle Tait of The In­ter­view JM from Ja­maica, Kel­ly-Ann Bethel of SKED and Ayana St Louis of D Car­ni­val Scene, who are both from T&T, Ner­is­sa Green­way rep­re­sent­ing In­de­Tours from Montser­rat and Monique Pow­ell of Quick­Plate from Ja­maica. Pow­ell is an alum­na of The UWI Mona cam­pus and Bethel, an alum­na of both The UWI St Au­gus­tine and Cave Hill cam­pus­es.

The win­ning en­tries were se­lect­ed af­ter tworig­or­ous­days of pitch­ing to two pan­els of judges and an au­di­ence of re­gion­al and glob­al in­vestors. Each re­ceived US$5000 in seed fund­ing to de­vel­op their busi­ness­es. They have al­so been award­ed spots in PitchIT Caribbean busi­ness ac­cel­er­a­tors across the re­gion.

PitchIT Caribbean is a pro­gramme aimed at en­hanc­ing the mo­bile app de­vel­op­ment ecosys­tem across Cari­com. It is de­signed to ac­cel­er­ate mo­bile app en­tre­pre­neurs through the start-up life cy­cle, which runs from ideation to pitch, from pitch to mar­ket and from mar­ket to ma­tu­ri­ty.

The pro­gramme is the cen­tral op­er­a­tion of the Caribbean Mo­bile In­no­va­tion Project (CMIP), which is part of the En­tre­pre­neur­ship Pro­gramme for In­no­va­tion in the Caribbean (EPIC), an ini­tia­tive fund­ed by the Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da and ex­e­cut­ed by in­foDev/World Bank Group, through a three-par­ty Caribbean con­sor­tium, led by UWI Con­sult­ing Inc, work­ing along with The UWI's Mona School of Busi­ness and Man­age­ment, and Mona Busi­ness Sup­port Ser­vices.

In an­nounc­ing the win­ners, chief judge Rod­ney Browne from St Kitts and Nevis' eCaribbean Ltd, said the five were the most im­pres­sive of the ten fi­nal­ists. Con­cur­ring with Brown, Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T Car­la Hogen Rufelds said she was "im­pressed by the suc­cess of the project, which on­ly serves to en­rich the long­stand­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween Cana­da and the Caribbean re­gion."

She was al­so pleased by the ca­ma­raderie dis­played be­tween the con­tes­tants and how well they sup­port­ed each oth­er through­out the chal­lenge.

A to­tal of 25 tech en­tre­pre­neurs from ten coun­tries across the Caribbean–up from last year's sev­en–par­tic­i­pat­ed in the com­pe­ti­tion, the aim of which is to iden­ti­fy and en­hance the re­gion's top mo­bile app de­vel­op­ment tal­ent.