On the eve of the International Day of Girls in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), we speak up about Kyrgyz women who successfully work and study in this field. In this article, we will introduce Jyldyz, who is believes that professionalism plays a major role in IT.

Jyldyz Sultanbekova is a project manager at IT company Namba Soft, part of the Namba Group. She is working on the fintech product Namba One, a mobile application that offers a variety of financial and lifestyle services.

"It's as easy as riding a burning bike and burning with it."

Jyldyz speaks of her work with humor: "There is a joke that being a project manager is as easy as riding a bicycle that burns and burning with it, and everything is on fire, and you are in hell."

According to Jyldyz, “A project manager is an IT specialist who is responsible for the successful implementation of a project, within budget and on time. To do this, the manager must constantly communicate with the client, collect requirements, plan and set tasks for the team, which consists of developers, designers, and testers."

Jyldyz, after graduating from the high school in Bishkek, entered the law faculty of the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University. She was a very active student: she participated in scientific conferences, volunteered for Street Law's global legal and civic education program during which she taught the basics of law and human rights to schoolchildren.

Jyldyz started her career with site administration

In her second year of university study, Jyldyz tried website administrating.

Later she began to combine this work with the position of project assistant in a public foundation, continuing to study at the law school. However, she realized that she did not want to work in the field of law, even though she enjoyed studying it. She had several reasons for this: the need to frequently interact with government and law enforcement agencies, unattractive salary and routine work.

When Jyldyz saw the vacancy for a Project Manager in IT company Zensoft, she decided to send her resume. By that time she already had experience in project activities and after three interviews she received an offer.

At first, she performed various jobs in project management and HR. But Jyldyz became a full-fledged project manager after 2 months of working in the company, when the company received a request to evaluate a new project, it was decided that Jyldyz would lead the project.

Jyldyz implemented the first IT project with foreign clients

The first project that Jyldyz and her team worked on was developing a fitness app for women on the IOS platform for a client based in Oklahoma, USA. Having successfully completed her first project and providing continued technical support for it, Jyldyz embarked on a new project - a startup from San Francisco to develop a system that processes data for monitoring technical conditions of aircrafts. In addition to working on main projects, she participated in the internal projects of her company – leading a project to create a handbook for employees and also mentored interns.

Currently, Jyldyz combines her main work at Namba One with teaching “Project Management in IT” course at the Codify IT Academy. She helps those who wish to master the basics of this profession in 3 months and helps with employment.

"There is no gender discrimination here"

Jyldyz likes to work in the IT field because there is no gender discrimination:

 “IT is probably one of the few areas in Kyrgyzstan where your gender, age, appearance and family ties do not matter. The most important thing here is your competence, knowledge and skills. If you are a tough specialist, then you will be gladly invited to work and will be paid a competitive salary. At the same time, you will constantly develop, because the market is growing and you, as a specialist, must remain competitive. Unfortunately, there is a stereotype that IT is not suitable for girls, therefore, even at the stage of choosing a future profession, girls give preference to other areas, while missing out on the opportunity to join an interesting and promising field” Jyldyz added.