My Salaam
Thursday April 4, 2019
By Susan Muthalaly
Zakaria Hersi. Photo courtesy Orten.io
Orten.io is a Swedish networking
and talent development organization focusing on diversity and tech. It
takes tech events to the parts of Sweden populated by minority
communities to build a more diverse startup scene in the country.
It
is open to all, but founder Zakaria Hersi says that they “focus mostly
on women and people with immigrant backgrounds, 18–35 years old.”
Zakaria is a Swede with Somali heritage, and he started Orten.io in 2016
following his experiences and those of his immigrant friends in the
search for work within the Swedish job market.“Orten.io was
created so no other person of colour, migrant, or female has to go
through what I went through,” he told My Salaam.
Sweden, and especially the capital, Stockholm, has a vibrant and
thriving tech startup industry. “But those who control these companies
or the wealth are usually middle-aged men who are from a tightknit
network,” said Zakaria. “I see lack of diversity among management,
founders and at board levels.”
He says there are many factors that have created this situation, and
those who are now successful usually had access to the right networks,
knowledge and opportunities. “Most of the tech founders went to the same
exclusive university and get supported by the successful alumni. … We
as immigrants don’t have this network and can’t tap family or parents
who work in banks or larger companies to help us get internships.”
He
told us of two of his friends, a Palestinian and an Iraqi, each with
two advanced degrees and a Mensa membership, who just could not find
jobs. Instead, they started a business together to commercialise the
ideas of another friend, of Iraqi heritage, on real-time data
compression. It was unsuccessful, but it gave Zakaria a taste for
entrepreneurship.
He moved to East Africa, and after an internship, he started a router
distributorship business. Within a year, his revenues reached SEK 5.1
million ($550,000). He sold the business and returned to Sweden in 2011
with the intention of finding a normal 9-to-5 job after two years of
slogging in his own company.
Orten.io events. Photo courtesy of Orten.io
About 300 applications and four
months later, he had had no success, so he tried a different approach.
He changed his email address from Zakaria Hersi Abdulkadir to Sakarias
Hersi, as Abdulkadir sounds very Muslim, Sakarias is a common Finnish
name (and therefore could be Nordic), and Hersi sounded neutral
enough. When he submitted the same applications with the new name,
positive responses started pouring in. This proved to him that there is a
structural problem within Swedish job market that alienates certain
sections of Swedish society.
With Orten.io, Zakaria hopes to
alleviate the problem of discrimination and lack of opportunities for
minorities. “We first of all create events [where] only women or people
from minority groups can speak. Speakers share their personal journeys
to success.”
In addition, under the Orten Academy, a frontend
development bootcamp, selected candidates who show talent are trained
for three to four months on a part-time basis, equipping them with the
skills to get an internship or a job once they graduate.
“The
biggest issue we are trying to solve is the shortage of 70,000
developers in Sweden in the coming three years,” said Zakaria. “At the
same time, we are also tackling the issue of unemployment among
immigrants, who form 60 per cent of the unemployed. There is huge
potential to provide Sweden with a talented diverse developer
workforce.”
Miski Ahmed. Photo courtesy Orten.io
Miski Ahmed, 25, is one of the people who have benefitted from
Orten.io’s outreach programme. She applied to and got a spot at Orten
Academy in 2017. “The whole process and the education were very
rewarding. I learned a lot, made friends who became like family, got to
learn how to make contacts in the IT industry and somehow break my own
barrier, which was to dare to bet and not limit myself. So it was both
professional and personal development for me at Orten.io and at the
academy.”
The first course at their Academy had over 200
applications, of whom 10 were placed. About 80 percent of their
graduates found placements. This autumn, they will offer 20 seats, and
they plan to offer more each time.
Miski said, “Today I work at a
web agency called Web Tech Media Group, which I love. I admire my fine
colleagues: all thanks to this initiative that Zakaria started.”
(Writing by Susan Muthalaly; Editing by Seban Scaria [email protected])