She was the only female on a team that brought the internet to her native Colombia in 1995, so, naturally, they called her “The Internet Girl.”
Maria Trujillo, Ph.D., would eventually leave Colombia, she says in this video for the online learning platform Course Hero. She packed a Colombian flag, her traditional jewelry, her hat and dancing gear, and other objects that would remind her of who she was.
“When I left Colombia, I had all the intentions of going back,” says Trujillo, now faculty director of Georgetown University’s Master's in Technology Management program. “And, I didn’t go back.”
While Trujillo says she has regrets about not returning to Colombia, she has used her technological expertise to help the developing nations of the Global South. She has been an international development consultant for more than 25 years and works with diverse groups of students at Georgetown, where she teaches information and communication technologies for development.
Trujillo still holds on to the culture and traditions of her birthplace, and in this video she teaches her 12-year- old daughter to do the Cumbia, the national dance of Colombia.
“I was raised thinking education is the way that you moved ahead,” says Trujillo, who began teaching when she was 18. “It’s the only way that you can have social mobility. And, here and now, I think, education is the only way that you can understand the world.”
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