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Hacker Hostel increases collaboration through technology and transforms the Caribbean community into a leading hub for intercultural innovation and entrepreneurship. We believe that solving problems with the local community will lead to better and more inclusive code and technical solutions.
We aim to create a diverse tech community that's representative of the community in which we work . We strive to include women and other underrepresented groups in tech to participate in the program.
We have a strict code of conduct and anti-harassment policy dedicated to providing a harassment-free residency program for everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion. We do not tolerate harassment of fellows or staff members in any form.
Hacker Hostel teaches the most in-demand skills in the market today, such as Scrum Methodology, Agile and Rapid Prototyping, and Minimum Lovable Products. We also focus on improving and developing skills and stacks that our fellows are already familiar with.
An Entrepreneur for over 6 years, With experience in Marketing, Business Development, Front End Web Development/ Design and Process Design. Akua Walters has worked as a Business Development Consultant with many great startups including GangaGram, Start-Up Robot, Develop Digitally & SmartTaxi. Akua Attended the university of the West Indies and Pursued an undergraduate degree in History and a minor in Political Science. His strength lies in his ability to communicate value to StartUp Ecosystem stakeholders and attract much needed attention to issues and entrepreneurs in the startup ecosystem and promoting their growth
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Zachary Harding is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Hyperion Equity LLC, a private investment firm. Over the years, Harding has developed a solid reputation in key positions including C.E.O, director of marketing and head of conversion strategy at companies such as Appliance Traders Ltd., Wisynco Group, Red Stripe and Grace Kennedy. Mr. Harding also founded and managed Agency20Seven - an advertising, marketing and new media company, which served major clients including Ocean Spray, National Commercial Banks, Appleton Rum, Cran-Wata, Coca-Cola, Heineken, LIME, Jamaica Producers and Tropical Battery.
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Mariella Paulino was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New York City. Before becoming a staff member of the Hacker Hostel team, Mariella was working as a freelance developer and program founder of Latinxs in Tech where she works to teach technical literacy to Latinxs and Black communities in the city. As a hard of hearing person, she is passionate about self-advocacy efforts that pave the way to better policy for those with hearing loss and the development of tools that help people with hearing loss move around in a hearing world. Talk to her about anything involving high impact sports or Meixcan tacos.
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Bria Woods is from San Antonio, Texas via Washington, D.C. She is currently living in London, England earning her Master’s degree in Multimedia Broadcast Journalism at the University of Westminster. With a combined 10 years of photography and video production experience, Bria is joining the Hacker Hostel team as the program’s Visual Storyteller. She will be filming and documenting the program participants and activities to tell the story of Hacker Hostel. This is Bria’s first time in Jamaica and in the Caribbean, and she has discovered the magic of banana chips!
{read bio}{close bio}An Entrepreneur for over 6 years, With experience in Marketing, Business Development, Front End Web Development/ Design and Process Design. Akua has worked as a Business Development Consultant with many great startups including GangaGram, Start-Up Robot, Develop Digitally & SmartTaxi. Akua Attended the university of the West Indies and Pursued an undergraduate degree in History and a minor in Political Science. His strength lies in his ability to communicate value to StartUp Ecosystem stakeholders and attract much needed attention to issues and entrepreneurs in the startup ecosystem and promoting their growth
{read more}Mariella Paulino was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New York City. Before becoming a staff member of the Hacker Hostel team, Mariella was working as a freelance developer and program founder of Latinxs in Tech where she works to teach technical literacy to Latinxs and Black communities in the city. As a hard of hearing person, she is passionate about self-advocacy efforts that pave the way to better policy for those with hearing loss and the development of tools that help people with hearing loss move around in a hearing world. Talk to her about anything involving high impact sports or Meixcan tacos.
{read more}Zachary Harding is the founder and C.E.O of Hyperion Equity LLC, a private investment firm. Over the years, Harding has developed a solid reputation in key positions including C.E.O, director of marketing and head of conversion strategy at companies such as Appliance Traders Ltd., Wisynco Group, Red Stripe and Grace KennedyMr. Harding also founded and managed Agency20Seven - an advertising, marketing and new media company, which served major clients including Ocean Spray, National Commercial Banks, Appleton Rum, Cran-Wata, Coca-Cola, Heineken, LIME, Jamaica Producers and Tropical Battery.
{read more}Bria Woods is from San Antonio, Texas via Washington, D.C. She is currently living in London, England earning her Master’s degree in Multimedia Broadcast Journalism at the University of Westminster. With a combined 10 years of photography and video production experience, Bria is joining the Hacker Hostel team as the program’s Visual Storyteller. She will be filming and documenting the program participants and activities to tell the story of Hacker Hostel. This is Bria’s first time in Jamaica and in the Caribbean, and she has discovered the magic of banana chips!
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Akane Simpson was born and raised in Portmore, Jamaica. After high school Akane moved abroad to Louisiana where he is a rising Computer Science senior at Grambling State University. Over the last couple of years he alternated his interest in computers with robotics, electronics, and circuits and had the honor of participating in NASA’s Swarmathon, a 3-month competition, where students from across the world are challenged to develop university. He is interested in pursuing a career in software engineering and ultimately wants to own a tech development firm. He loves to talk about web and product development tools, dogs of all sizes, and scifi culture.cooperative robotics that revolutionize space exploration. Although his team did not win any awards they are grateful that they were given the opportunity to represent his
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Charlene Mburu is a 4th year Electrical Engineering student at the University of Vermont, with one dream. To become a digital nomad. As a passionate academic with a deep rooted curiosity for all things tech, Charlene is always looking for new opportunities to travel while simultaneously learning new skills beyond her engineering degree and thus recently tapped into the field of web development. The ultimate goal is to return to East Africa and be part of the innovative group coming up with vast solutions to help improve the livelihoods of communities in Kenya and other developing countries. Charlene has managed to secure a number of internships in the startup arena, working for several startups around the world including in Beijing, CN and in Arusha, TZ. “Working for startups is incredible; whatever you do, no matter how trivial, has an impact” She enjoys fitness, self improvement, meditation and wholesome well being for herself and those around her. “I have no limits except my own” - CM
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Peter is originally from Kingston Jamaica and has traveled all over the world to places like Germany, Italy, and The United States of America. A digital nomad at heart, Peter found his calling in web design and development in his second year of university when he was given the tools needed to build pages for the world he enjoyed viewing. Peter has been freelancing for the last 7 years and project managing for the last 4. He is passionate about UX and has a soft-spot for community building for the creative entrepreneurs in the Caribbean, underprivileged youth and by large people of color. He joined Hacker Hostel because he wanted the opportunity to solve enterprise issues within Jamaica and hoped to become a part of a larger community of developers, local and overseas. Within five years he plans to make Kenya his home. He dreams of working with organizations like Ushaidi, iHub and starting his own business to contribute to the development of tech solution for issues that affect the developing world.
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Zale was born and raised in Jamaica. He is a rising junior at Middlebury College in Vermont and an aspiring entrepreneur with a passion for innovation through the application of machine learning. He has joined the Hacker Hostel Fellowship in hopes of gaining the knowledge and professional network necessary to create tech-enabled solutions to help boost the standard of living in Jamaica and around the world. He is a freelance software engineer with a preference for back-end web development and Android mobile development.
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Crae Ewan is a full stack developer born and raised in New York City. He has always had a passion for creative expression and problem solving which led him to explore a career in tech at General Assembly, a coding bootcamp program in New York City. It was love at first “hello world” for example. Since graduating from the program, Crae has embarked on a mission to become what he has coined, a “conscious coder”—a developer that intertwines social activism with technical solutions. He is passionate about diversity in tech efforts, poverty, and the school to prison pipeline complex that imprisons millions of men and women of color in the United States. As the child of Jamaican immigrants living in the United States, Crae saw the Hacker Hostel program as an opportunity to help grow the emerging tech culture in a space that feels like home.
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Julian Cowell comes to Kingston by way of Sheffield in Jamaican, and previously, the Bronx. He studied mathematics at Bard College and is a bit of a mathematical evangelist believing that innumeracy is a scourge! His passion for computer science, however, has dominated his career and given his mathematical background, provided a solid foundation for him to work on. Julian loves programming, math, and the great outdoors in equal measure and can be found exploring the Jamaican countryside on the weekends. He believes that finding solutions for clients is far more satisfying than merely applying the latest technology to a problem, a driving methodology within the Hacker Hostel program.
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Jourdan Dunkley was born and raised in the town of Old Harbour, Jamaica. Though his interests span broad area of topics from science and mathematics to music and art, he has fallen in love with problem-solving through software development. His ever-growing technologies of choice currently consist of mobile and web development, with machine learning just on the horizon. As a rising professional, he is open to all opportunities that come his way and sees them as chances to learn and grow his skills.
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