The International Telecommunication Union Girls in ICT initiative is a global effort to encourage girls and young women to consider studies and careers in information and communication technologies. The day is observed on the fourth Thursday of April since 2011.
There are a number of women/girls who long before 2011 were inspired and encouraged to take up careers in the male dominated ICT field.
Meet one of those girls, Malini Gouridat who is the IT Risk and Compliance Analyst at GTT for two and a half years and says she is proud to be a part of such a diverse and competent team.
Malini Gouridat
Malini said while she is now head over heels into IT, it was not her first choice of career and her involvement happened quite accidentally. She pointed out that, “my original field of study was finance at the University of Guyana, I functioned as manager for four years at a Security and IT company and just couldn’t watch the technicians go out and have all the fun while I was stuck behind a desk calculating numbers.”
“I realized that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life doing something I didn’t love. I wanted to be different and to prove to my parents that I can succeed in IT. It was a career switch for me but I worked harder and studied continuously in order to be able to communicate the same language with the technicians and clients.”
Malini’s determination paid off. She is now a qualified IT professional in the field of network security. She said that “COMPTIA was my first venture into IT, then I pursued networking with CISCO.” She is currently studying for her CASP with COMPTIA
When asked what she would say to encourage girls into the ICT filed took the opportunity to say “to all the girls and women out there, it is not too late to pursue IT. There is a wealth of information on the internet, study at your own pace, be determined and work hard. Whether you love networking, programming, cyber security or computer engineering, you go for it. If I can do it, so can you.”
