From Gatekeeping to Gateway: Ese Elakama on Building a Tech Ecosystem That Works for Everyone

Ese Elakama is not interested in theory. As the Founder/CEO of DiiT Training UK Consulting Ltd and PML Digital UK, she has spent nearly a decade dismantling the invisible walls that keep capable people out of technology.

Through practical education, employer partnerships, and a scholarship fund that has now distributed over £130,000 to women and mothers who cannot afford to upskill for the digital age, Elakama is reshaping what access to technology actually looks like.

She is also the founder of CyberTek Labs; the first Black woman to own an outdoor advertising company in the UK, a two time Black Tech Awards nominee, and the driving force behind the Tech Practical Internship, which connects learners directly with employers to close the experience gap.

Ahead of the DigiX Summit Tech Ascension, an exclusive black tie event marking a landmark new chapter for DiiT Training UK Consulting and PML UK, we sat down with Elakama to talk about power, preparation, and the future of digital talent. Excerpt:

TE: You have been doing this work since 2016. When you founded DiiT, what were the structural barriers you were most determined to challenge, and have those barriers changed?

Ese Elakama: The biggest barrier was never just access to education. It was access to belief. The idea that people from non traditional backgrounds, mothers returning to work, individuals without formal degrees, people of colour, could not just enter technology but genuinely thrive in it. That gatekeeping was invisible, which made it all the more damaging.

What DiiT set out to do was remove it: build both the technical skills and the practical experience that translate into real employment.

The tools have changed over the years, but that core mission has not. If anything, the urgency has grown. The economy is not waiting for the systems to catch up, and neither are we.

TE: More than 100,000 people have transitioned into tech through DiiT. Beyond the numbers, what transformation have you actually witnessed in the people who come through?

Ese Elakama: The most profound shift is not technical. It is personal. People arrive uncertain whether they belong, and they leave with a completely different relationship to their own capability. The language changes. ‘I can’t’ becomes ‘I did.’ They stop seeing technology as something that exists for other people and start identifying as contributors to it. That move from consumer to creator is where sustainable inclusion actually lives. It cannot be manufactured through a diversity statement. It has to be built through genuine experience and genuine opportunity.

TE: The Tech Practical Internship was designed to close the experience gap. What has building that programme revealed about how the industry actually defines talent?

Ese Elakama: It has shown me that the industry frequently confuses readiness with familiarity. Employers tend to reward people who already speak the language of tech work, who already look the part on paper, rather than those with the aptitude and drive to deliver.

What the TPI does is reframe that conversation. It gives learners real project experience, real deadlines, real commercial context. And what that proves, consistently, is that the markers of genuine talent are problem solving, adaptability, and intellectual curiosity. None of those require a prestigious background. They require the right environment to emerge.

TE: You have personally funded scholarships for mothers and women in tech who cannot afford to train. This year, you distributed £30,000. What drove that commitment?

Ese Elakama: I am a mother of two. I understand very well how quickly a woman’s ambitions can be sidelined once motherhood begins, not because the ambition disappears, but because the systems around her do not accommodate it.

What I have also seen is that the skills motherhood builds are exactly what the best technology leaders need: time management under pressure, resourcefulness, relentless focus on outcomes.

Supporting other mothers into technology is not charity. It is strategy. Since we began, we have distributed over £130,000 in scholarships to women who had the ability and the drive but not the financial runway. That number matters. And it will keep growing.

TE: CyberTek Labs prepares people for a digital future that does not yet fully exist. How do you balance teaching what is current with preparing people for what is still emerging?

Ese Elakama: We teach adaptability as much as we teach technology. The tools will change. The frameworks will evolve. But critical thinking, ethical awareness, and genuine digital curiosity are not time limited skills.

Our curriculum combines today’s technical competencies, cybersecurity, data, AI, cloud, with the mindset to learn continuously.

That is the combination that makes someone not just employable now, but resilient across whatever the next decade brings.

TE: As the first Black woman to own an outdoor advertising company in the UK, you have also operated in a very different industry. What did that experience teach you about visibility and economic power?

Ese Elakama: Visibility is a form of power, and public space is contested. When I entered advertising in 2010, I saw clearly how access to narrative, to the stories told in public, at scale, shapes who gets seen and who gets overlooked.

Owning that space was not just a business decision. It was about rewriting representation. Inclusion is not simply about being present in a room.

It is about owning platforms that shape perception and create economic opportunity.

That principle runs through everything I do, whether it is outdoor media, tech education, or the events we are building at DiiT.

TE: The DigiX Summit Tech Ascension is coming up as a landmark moment for DiiT and PML UK. What does that event represent for you?

Ese Elakama: It represents a new chapter. DiiT and PML UK have both been on significant trajectories, and DigiX Summit Tech Ascension is the moment to bring those worlds together in one room, bringing together technology, industry, and a community that has been built over years of real work. It is a black tie event, and that is deliberate.

The people who come through DiiT deserve to be celebrated with the same gravitas as any other professional community.

The summit is also an opportunity to look forward: to the future of digital talent, to the conversations that need to happen between educators, employers, and policymakers, and to the next generation of leaders who are already in the pipeline.

TE: When you look back at everything built so far, the training, the scholarships, the labs, the events, what conversation do you want the next generation to be having because of this work?

Ese Elakama: I want them to say we built bridges, not walls. That we moved inclusion from a talking point to an actual practice. That technology leadership became more human, more equitable, more representative, not because it was mandated, but because the right people decided to challenge what was always assumed. The digital world we are building should work for everyone. Not just those who happened to be in the room first. That is the legacy I am working towards, and I am nowhere near done.

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