Paula Jago, COO at Ucreate, has a career in digital spanning 15 years, including leadership roles at Tobias & Tobias, M&C Saatchi and iCrossing among others.
Who is your digital hero?
Lisa Goodchild – Founder, Digilearning Foundation (+++…).
What has she done to win hero status in your eyes?
I was introduced to Lisa by the inimitable Mary Keane Dawson back in 2012, and from that moment she has, in my eyes, been the epitome of a Digital Super-Hero.
Lisa is driven by a fierce passion for creating accessibility and opening pathways of inclusivity for under-represented and/or underprivileged communities – amongst other notable achievements conceiving and building the Digilearning Platform that delivers digital skills training, collateral and equipment to underprivileged children and young people in the UK and the Caribbean, coining the term ‘Edutainment’ along the way.
Most recently, the YRD initiative, in collaboration with the Rio Ferdinand Foundation and YUAF, aims to provide Digital, Leadership and Mental Well-being courses for free. Beyond these achievements, Lisa is also the Co-founder of Digital Leading Ladies (DLL), Founder CEO of Digiwoo, and Trustee of the Marketing Academy – plus I’m sure I am missing other accolades as she is constantly creating, adapting and evolving.
How has her heroism helped drive digital?
The purpose of Digilearning is to arm young people with the digital skills, knowledge, confidence and competencies to thrive in the modern world – she makes things happen and is tireless in her mission.
She does not just ‘aspire’ and make token efforts to give back but actually gets out there and brings people together to do good and deliver in a meaningful way. Along with her co-founder, Sarah Wilson, she is actively enabling the digital inclusion of a swath of our future generation that may otherwise not have had access to the quality of digital learning and mentoring that other sections of the community may take for granted.
What the biggest challenges in digital we need another hero to solve?
We need more Inclusion Heroes to continue to drive accessibility to digital learning and capabilities beyond what our education systems provide – and not just to the kids, but also to their parents so that they too have the confidence to leverage the power of our digital world.
Digital technology offers an infinite opportunity to create new ideas, solve problems and build futures – but there are societal, economic and political barriers to be overcome in order to enable this opportunity for all.
What is your most heroic personal achievement so far in digital?
I’m more of a Kitty O’Neill than a Wonder Woman – I’d like to think I have had some small part to play in mentoring, developing, supporting and organising chaos for a succession of our current and future Digital Heroes both whilst working directly with them, and via my ‘Professional Intelligence’ ebook series and Facebook community.
However, saying that, I do have a noteworthy point of pride strictly related to digital – I conceived, scoped, and delivered the very first Digital Asset Management Platform (back sometime in the 1800’s ;).
