Paulette Watson, Founder and Managing Director of Academy Achievers tells Johanna Hamilton AMBCS about how she’s taking BAME IT students on a STEM learning journey from cradle to college.
The founder of Academy Achievers has achieved a huge amount in her career. From having a baby at university, to finishing her degree, then an MSc and MBA, working in the city, being headhunted internationally, and setting up a community initiative in a local church hall that would then turn into an initiative to get a million more black women in tech by 2030.
Paulette sites her daughter as her inspiration and the reason why she chose this path. ‘When my daughter Symone was a baby, I got a job in the private sector working in international banking. I was coming home late every night. I was commuting out of Blackfriars and the Strand. And as a single mother it was difficult.
'As my child got older, I started to realize she could read, but not understand fully what the text was about – her comprehension wasn’t there. So I did some voluntary work at her school and I realized that the whole class was failing, then I checked the league table and I saw that the school had been failing over a number of years.’
Continue reading: https://www.bcs.org/articles-opinion-and-research/how-to-get-more-black-women-into-tech/
The founder of Academy Achievers has achieved a huge amount in her career. From having a baby at university, to finishing her degree, then an MSc and MBA, working in the city, being headhunted internationally, and setting up a community initiative in a local church hall that would then turn into an initiative to get a million more black women in tech by 2030.
Paulette sites her daughter as her inspiration and the reason why she chose this path. ‘When my daughter Symone was a baby, I got a job in the private sector working in international banking. I was coming home late every night. I was commuting out of Blackfriars and the Strand. And as a single mother it was difficult.
'As my child got older, I started to realize she could read, but not understand fully what the text was about – her comprehension wasn’t there. So I did some voluntary work at her school and I realized that the whole class was failing, then I checked the league table and I saw that the school had been failing over a number of years.’
Continue reading: https://www.bcs.org/articles-opinion-and-research/how-to-get-more-black-women-into-tech/