This week’s Awesomely Fantabulous Woman is @DigitalSista aka Shireen Mitchell, if you don't know her, then you must be brand-spanking-new to the social space. She has a passion for inclusionary technology that is accessible to everyone regardless of ethnicity, class or education. Shireen was tech savvy before it became cool.
How did you get started in technology?My first introduction was through Pac-Man, which was originally designed for girls. Ironically, today most video games are geared to boys and men. Pac-Man, how old were you?
I was 10 years old and I played every day until it was dark outside, which was my curfew. The store owners didn’t want me there because they couldn’t make money off of me. I would go to the corner store and beat everyone. You say you beat “everyone,” does that include the boys too?
It was only boys; I was the only girl playing at that level. What did your Mom think about you spending all of your time playing video games at the store?
My Mom didn’t believe I was down there playing video games. She thought I was going there because of some boy, so to keep me home she bought me an Atari game console.Really, a sort of “if you can’t beat them, join them” strategy.
You can say that, she even bought me my first home computer. When did you become interested in technology?
It was 1984, I was 14 years old and technology became a core part of my being. I played games and experimented with different programs. And by high school people began trying to direct my interests away from technology.That doesn’t make sense, why do you think they did that?
I had been in accelerated academic programs since the 7th grade, which meant I was taking mostly math and science classes. For instance, I took law instead of history. I was doing 11th grade math in 9th grade, so it didn’t make much sense but the comments I continued to hear was that I couldn’t get a job doing this. At the time I didn’t know what they meant; I understand these tracking methods now.It wasn’t easy for my Mom. I know I was a little rebel. I was smart; I knew it and I wouldn’t back down from it. I was doing work above my classmates and many of my teachers didn’t know what to do with me. So, I got bored because I felt like I was being ignored; I was insulted. The principal said I had an “attitude problem.”How did you handle it?
By college, I acquiesced some and majored in psychology, while spending my spare time with my techie friends. I would study for school and study tech manuals for fun. It was nuts. My tech click only studied the manuals while I studied both. We were very competitive, the guys would try to hide things from me and keep me from learning, but they couldn’t. I would buy individual components and build my own PCs and servers.The “guys,” they were guys?
Yep, it was four guys and me. Gender didn’t come up. It wasn’t a trigger in my head at the time. When AOL comes on the scene, a couple of them drop out of school and go there to work. They still haven’t finished school and still work at AOL. Another one became a CIO. I decided to finish school. Every now and then, I think about what if I had gone to AOL in its heyday, with the stock options…hmm.How did you get from psychology to digitalsista?
I was doing the back end work for Sister Circle, one of the first communities for Black women and the founder encouraged me to start my own web management firm. I jumped in and began to notice I’m only one of a few women in the field, so I started doing trainings at a local bookstore. Men would attend the sessions and try to challenge me by using tech terms. I wasn’t intimidated at all; I knew what I was talking about and they usually used a term in the wrong context. What happened is the men intimidated the women in the classes, not me. I started holding women only sessions, which would eventually grow into DigitalSistas, a place for girls and women to support and encourage their tech dreams. “Someone will always present a barrier; it’s up to you whether or not you’re going to accept it.”
