A UNITED STATES OFFICIAL has challenged women in Rwanda to embrace ICT and challenge the dominance of men in the sector.Ann Mei Chang, the senior advisor for Women and Technology in the US Department of State, was speaking, last week, at a Networking Night organised by Girls in ICT Rwanda, a networking group for women, in Kigali.“The importance of your career is to stay true to yourself, otherwise you will lose your identity as you try and merge with your colleagues. Information Technology is a male-dominated field, but not out of bounds to women,” Chang said.The event was held as a networking opportunity for female ICT entrepreneurs and professionals in Rwanda, representatives of Rwandan ICT public institutions involved with ICT, including the Ministry of Youth and ICT, and Rwanda Development Board as well as other related initiatives such as Nike Girl Hub, Imbuto Foundation and DOT Rwanda.Akaliza Keza Gara, the leader of Girls in ICT Rwanda, said the idea to form group was borne of the International Telecommunications Union’s Girls in ICT Day, which was celebrated for the first time in Rwanda last year.“Our aim is to see girls in Rwanda embrace information technology because that is the direction Rwanda is taking,” she said.Leap in careerChang, besides her advisory job at the US Department of State, has more than 20 years of engineering and leadership experience in Silicon Valley.Most recently, she served as a Senior Engineering Director at Google for eight years, where she led worldwide engineering for Google’s mobile applications and services, including mobile search, ads, maps, GMail and YouTube across all major platforms.At Google, she led the product development team for Emerging Markets, which aims to bring relevant mobile and Internet services to the two-thirds of global population yet to get online.
