Dina Bitton
Dina Bitton is a computer scientist who worked as a professor at Cornell University and the University of Illinois before leaving academia for industry in the Bay Area. She co-founded startups, then joined SAP as a vice president around 2007, when Jeremy Hockenstein and Michael Chertok enlisted her to join Digital Divide Data's board, which she eventually chaired. What impressed her most was watching DDD essentially start an IT sector in Cambodia from nothing—Jeremy with a couple of old PCs in the back of a store, teaching basic data-entry skills—to graduates now working throughout government, banking, the private sector, and startups. "They keep up with technology advancement, which is extremely important in high tech," she says.
The years 2007 to 2011 were an inflection point when DDD matured from an organization built on personal networking and mission-driven enthusiasm to one with professional salespeople, a developed value proposition, and projects priced at their true value. Finding business areas where people not as skilled as Silicon Valley workers could be paid reasonable rates for those countries while breaking even or minimizing fundraising needs was crucial. As one of the few women executives in high tech, she focused on DDD's women managers and students. She mentored several women who became managers, noting that Mai Siriphongphanh solved the problem of recruiting from rural areas by converting an office room into a dorm with painted walls, mattresses, and comforters, which helped them reach the neediest trainees. Students loved being there around the clock, especially handicapped women or orphans who might otherwise live in isolation. Two or three years later, they were supporting themselves, sometimes their entire families. A few weeks before this interview, Dina met a Cambodian government delegation in Northern California—one was a DDD graduate, and another's wife still worked at DDD.
