RAWALPINDI: Sakina Abbas, a young information technology specialist who has bagged the prize of being Pakistan’s first female Google Developer Expert for Flutter, says her future goal now is to assist other women seeking professional opportunities in the field of IT.
Google Developers Experts (GDEs) are IT specialists recognized by Google for mastering products such as Flutter and Android, as well as using their skillset to enrich their communities and working with upcoming developers.
Abbas’s success has since been celebrated by the United States embassy in Pakistan and become an enduring story in Pakistan’s news cycle. The young programmer has joined a number of first female GDEs from Pakistan, including Aqsa Kausar, an expert in Machine Learning, Mariam Aslam, who specializes in Firebase, and Taley’a Mirza who is an expert in Web Technologies.
Women in the tech ecosystem are making their mark in Pakistan , and one of them is Sakina Abbas, who was named Pakistan’s first female @GoogleDevExpert for Flutter. Congratulations @sakin8tor! pic.twitter.com/dYgJCi9kdT
— U.S. Embassy Islamabad (@usembislamabad) May 5, 2021
“It’s an honor,” Abbas, who has a Bachelor’s of Science in Computer Science from FAST NUCES, Karachi, told Arab News over the phone from the port city.
Abbas, who broke the news of her achievement on social media, has worked to support her community by engaging as an active speaker at events related to Flutter in Karachi.
“I noticed at these events that women were comfortable reaching out and talking to me about technical debates, and sharing who they were and their backgrounds,” Abbas said. “I spoke to many of them about their possible career roadmaps in the field and realized that they would not have been quite comfortable with all those conversations with men in the field.”
She said such events drew greater interest in IT among university students, especially young women who she said felt inspired by her.
“Initially, I could not find as many women at these events since they probably did not find the IT field relatable,” Abbas said. “That’s changing now. The number of women active in Flutter Karachi has grown. I have so many people reaching out on social media and I hope to do something with that in the future to provide communication about this and motivate more women to join the field.”
In this undated photo, Sakina Abbas and a team from Flutter Karachi engage in a question-answer section at an event in Karachi, Pakistan. (Photo courtesy: Sakina Abbas)
Abbas began her career in IT by co-founding software, web and mobile app development agency ReacTree in 2018. Initially, she focused on Android app development, which is what she had studied in university, though she later found her way to Flutter after becoming a devoted student of Google’s user interface toolkit for creating mobile, web and desktop applications from a single codebase.
“We’re thrilled to have Sakina Abbas join our group of developers from Pakistan as the first female Google Developer Expert in Flutter,” Farhan Qureshi, Google’s country director for South Asian frontier markets, told Arab News via email on Wednesday. “We’re excited to see the developer ecosystem in the country growing and looking forward to having more women developers like Sakina in other areas of expertise as well.”
Qureshi described Abbas’s expertise as both “valued and inspiring.”
