Tech entrepreneur pushing for greater Jamaican focus on STEM careers

The Fourth Industrial Revolution of Computers and Internet led to high levels of consumerism and very little creation and innovation in most countries, Jamaica included. With that in mind, according to tech entrepreneur Lorna Green, Jamaica must consider what is entry into the Fifth Industrial Revolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) means for the country.

The need to understand and use computer technology and now AI is no longer an option, says Green, a computer professional and author, who argued that it is already a fundamental imperative.

“Our journey as a country in this technology era must include transformation of the education model to enable creation and innovation for nation-building. Globally there is a severe deficit of persons of colour in the creation of solutions for all aspects of application development from farming to education and scientific research. We need to radically transform our education and parental involvement in the process,” Green stated as she launched her series of three children’s books on leading-edge STEM careers.

This set featuring the career of the big data engineer, called Beng and Friends, is in celebration of the life of her late son, Abeng Stuart. The books are intended for young people from kindergarten to high-school age and for adults, such as teachers, parents, and caregivers. They were launched last month during a function held at the Law Faculty at The University of the West Indies.

In introducing the books to her audience, Green stated her reason for writing the series, noting, “There is a severe lack of diversity at the engineering and design level of Internet and AI-related applications and solutions. This has led to, in many instances, when much-heralded solutions, such as facial-recognition are announced, the implementation results prove to be detrimental to people of colour, particularly black people. There is now an urgent need to transform and fast track our education infrastructure to increase our participation as creators and innovators. The book introduces and guides readers in what is a big data engineer and how to prepare to become a big data engineer.”

This career, the author feels, is the most fundamental of the leading-edge STEM careers.

Green then went on to note that “we came through the Fourth Industrial Revolution - the era of computing and the Internet - as mostly consumers of the technology and asked if we are going to continue being consumers of technology or are we, as a nation, going to strive to be creators of technology solutions and not just continue having small pockets of excellence?”

Green shared with the audience that her grand-daughter, who is 10 months old, will more than likely graduate high school around 2040 and posed the question of what would be the salient features of education 18 years from today, in view of the rapid advances in development and use of artificial intelligence.

“The question I ask is, what will children be learning then, and what are we doing to prepare our young people for the reality of what is to come?”

Green noted that she deliberately chose a user-friendly approach, involving a dialogue among a group of young people grappling with the mysteries of computer technology and discovering that it was not as seemingly complex and difficult to grasp as might first appear to a newcomer to the field. This storytelling was also chosen to encourage non-STEM adults to become more comfortable with these topics.

“We consume too much technology without attempting to develop in that field. For example, decades ago we had a higher penetration of cellular phones than Japan,” she said. “Some of us want the latest iPhone, but can’t buy groceries. We want the latest electronic driverless car, yet we have so many potholes in Jamaica. While this might seem like a pipe dream, I would like to see us being comfortable with technology, to the point that it is second nature to the lady I buy from in Coronation Market, as is now happening in the farm fields of many African countries.”

To that end, she said she would be directing her energies towards educating young people and adults about technology, its creation and application, contributing her knowledge to the efforts of the Ministry of Education, private sector, and philanthropic endeavours to develop a truly transformed education infrastructure.

Green, an ICT professional for more than 30 years, in 1994 conceived of and began operating Digital Transtec Ltd (DTL) where she serves as CEO and chairman. DTL is the one of the few, if not the only, ICT firm of its kind owned by a woman in the English-speaking Caribbean, and it specialises in the development of software applications for the mobile gaming and aviation industries. Working at the Jamaica Telephone Company in the 1990s, she was on the first team to install cellular phones in Jamaica. She had previously worked with AT&T in the United States, Island Life Insurance, and IBM Jamaica as a senior consultant.