Paulette Watson

One of the Tech Women Celebration 50 - women changing the ratio of the tech workforce

Paulette Watson advocates for no one to be left behind in the digital revolution and is driving change in the science and tech space in the United Kingdom and Ghana. Her mission is to empower girls and women to start Web3 and STEM-related jobs. She leads Academy Achievers, STEM Academy Achievers Ghana and the #BeMe digital inclusion program, aiming to address the disparities around gender and inequality in the tech space by bringing one million women into the space by 2030. In her words: "Being adaptable, having a psychological mindset, being resilient and committed has afforded me the ability to be where I am now."

Paulette is featured as one of 100 IT Professional Leaders in the UK, Global Winner Changing women's life, and a G100 Engineering Global Advisor Council member for Digital and Technology & WEB3. She will be showcasing the #BeMedigitalinclusion program in the Mission project to raise one million women and girls' aspirations in STEM | WEB3-related careers across the globe. She is also on the Global Tech Advocates Advisory Board.

What led her to tech?

"As a child I was very musical. I played the piano, drums and steel pan. I was always performing at school - music helped me with maths. When you think about it - music is all about time signatures, beats per minute and formulaic progression. As I got older, I started to recognise a correlation between the role of computational thinking in maths! I knew that mathematics focuses on quantities, whilst computer thinking focuses on processes. Once I cracked that, I could break a complex problem and process it into smaller steps, enabling me to describe and explain the problem - then there was the solution. This was a game changer. That's how I got into tech!"