After Ashesi, Huberta Osei ’13 initially explored Business Analytics in Investment Banking, before deciding to pursue a career in tech. However, when she started in tech as a software engineer, she could not help feeling like an outlier. As one of two women on a mostly male product team, she wished she could have had more mentors she could either relate with or look up to.

“I never thought being a woman in the tech industry in Ghana was a big deal, until I started going through the pipeline myself,” she shared. “Dealing with self-doubt, and having someone who could relate to some of my peculiar daily struggles made the initial stages tough.”

And so when she came across an opportunity to join a programme focused on increasing opportunities for women in tech, she took it. The eSKills4girls programme, led by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), is a project aimed at tackling the digital gender divide. As a Technical Advisor for the programme, Huberta helps design initiatives aimed at making tech skills meaningful and promoting employment avenues in tech for young women.

“The workshops and programs we organise introduce technology to girls in a way they can be excited about,” she shares. We encourage girls to see tech as a problem solving tool, and then expose them to the different career paths that they could aim for. I believe this is where it starts from; bringing girls up to understand that there are no particular set of skills they are limited to being good at. For me, being able to give that guidance and encouragement is an important step.”

Though Huberta may not be actively debugging lines of code or simulating applications, working in this development role is equally as meaningful to her. In the long term, she hopes more people will be dedicated to helping not only girls, but children broadly to embrace technology.