For many people, the career path they envisaged whilst still in high school or even university, no way resembles the journey they actually experienced. Such is the case with Peter Harrison, Chairman and President of the Palisadoes Foundation, who shares his own journey from Jamaica, to living and working in Silicon Valley at some of the biggest tech companies in the world; and how he is trying to help those coming up to have extraordinary career adventures of their own.

 

This episode is also available in Apple iTunes and on Stitcher!

We all know the saying ‘every great journey starts with a single step’, and that all of our past experiences have positioned us for the experiences we are currently having, and those that are to come. However, often, we are unable to connect the dots of our journey in real time, but tend to be able to do so in retrospect, once the dust has settled.

For those who have worked in the tech space, the last 20 to 30 years have been quite exciting, as we witnessed – and also have had to adjust to – the rapid advancements in computing and the Internet; and for many of us, the path on which we started bears no resemblance where we are, or the path we are currently following.

Peter Harrison

In this podcast episode, we chat with Peter Harrison, Chairman and President of the Palisadoes Foundation, a non-profit geared towards assisting in the continued development new and existing technologies in Jamaica.  His journey from Jamaica to Silicon Valley, and some of the biggest tech companies in the world, such as eBay, Netflix and Google, was riddled with usual twists and turns, and seemingly innocuous experiences at the time that changed the course of his life years later.

With his own professional journey first setting the stage, in the rest of our conversation with Peter, we discuss:

  1. The importance of choice, especially in business or your professional life
  2. The Palisadoes Foundation: what it is, how it came about, and the need it is trying to fill?
  3. What is Palisadoes Foundation’s Calico programme?  And what does it aim to achieve?
  4. Peter’s observations and experience of the Jamaica’s ICT/tech space, and specifically with respect to the software development
  5. Why Jamaica should be looking at software development more as a export industry
  6. Why Peter says that Jamaican software development students are not curious enough, and
  7. The three key things Peter hopes you take away from insights he shared.

 

Select links

Below are links to some of the organisations and resources that were mentioned, or might be useful:

 

 

Image credits:  Patrick Breitenbach (flickr);  P Harrison

Music credit:  Ray Holman