Fem Bosses: Meet Tayana Etienne, Proud Haitian and Co-Founder Of SOLUTIONS S.A.
Tayana Etienne is not only an entrepreneur, she is the Director of the Masters Program in Database Integration System at the State University of Haiti.
Born and raised in Haiti, Tayana Etienne had demonstrated impressive leadership and active participation in activities to better her community. She was an active member of M.E.J (Youth Eucharistic Movement) which gave her a platform to be actively engaged in reforestation projects and helping adult women learn in neighborhoods that surrounded her school as well as other regions in the capital.
When she joined the State University of Haiti, she studied and received a degree in Electronic Engineering. At that time, only 5% of the students in the engineering field were women. She successfully completed her degree, at which point she was employed as a programmer in a software development company for 3 years. She later received a scholarship to undertake a Masters Program in Computer Science at the Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis (UNSA), where she specialized in Databases and Systems Integration. She then obtained an internship with Laboratory of Networking and Mobile Computing (LARIM) at the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal in Canada.
Etienne returned to Haiti, where she successful landed a full-time job as a professor at the State University in the Science Department. Currently Etienne is the Director of the MBDS Masters Program that is being offered in collaboration with the University that she attended in Nice. At the State University she lectures on Computer Science while conducting applied research projects centering on ICT application in mobile technologies, rural areas, health, communicating objects, wireless infrastructure, RFID for education and tourism.
In the year 2001, she co-founded the SOLUTIONS S.A – An IT Company for consulting that is credited for numerous innovative software developments in Haiti. Making it one of the best software development firms in the country: in 2005 SOLUTIONS S.A was nominated for the Star Quality Award held by “Business Initiative Direction” in Geneva. Again in the year 2009, her company was also nominated for the Country Pioneers of Prosperity Award that was showcasing firms in Haiti and the Caribbean.
On a personal level, Tayana received the International Change Agent Award hosted by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology in recognition of her numerous positive impacts in her environment and being such a good role model for the women and the youths. Tayana Etienne is one remarkable professor and business woman who is making big positive marks in her environment using ICT. She definitely shows girls and women at large that STEM based career can be a career for the women just as much as it is for the men.
