Kadia Francis serves her community with pride and passion as a digital literacy and skills development specialist. Her company, Digital Disruption Agency, focuses on creating courses and programmes on digital literacy and skills development for companies, educational institutions and government agencies. Francis also invested in the online community with Digital Jamaica, promoting digital literacy and highlighting Jamaicans in digital and tech spaces.

The multifaceted Francis is also the creator and host of the Digital Jamaica podcast, which highlights the latest tech trends and their impact on Jamaican society, engaging Jamaican thought-leaders and other Caribbean experts.

While studying for her undergraduate degree in law at the University of Technology, Jamaica, Francis recognised the value of using Google as an alternative digital resource. Nurturing her entrepreneurial spirit, Francis started to tutor her peers, believing that information empowers people and allows society to make informed decisions. As Francis built her influence through her Digital Jamaica community, she realised a digital literacy gap existed. As a digital literacy champion, she spoke about the issues and trends while engaging in workshops and lectures to train approximately 5,000 individuals across Jamaica and the Caribbean.

Francis notes that a digital future will require more significant investments in digital literacy, a situation more evident due to the coronavirus pandemic. She believes that widescale policies should encourage digital literacy. Francis asserted that Jamaica should learn from other countries by leveraging digital opportunities and using their missteps as an opportunity to “do it right”. Francis is confident that Jamaicans’ innate creativity, rich cultural background, and geographic location can be the economically viable avenue to earning and global recognition.

Francis credits her success to identifying gaps in the digital space and leverages her expertise, platform, community, and partnerships to create opportunities and experiences through nuanced perspectives and knowledge sharing to adopt digital literacy in Jamaica and the Caribbean. For example, Digital Disruption agency partnered with Kingston Creative on their CreaTech programme to create HEART-certified digital marketing courses aimed at helping creatives transition to the online space. In addition, Francis curated events such as Digital Jamaica Youth Summit and pop-up talks, speaking engagements and developed several other digital courses.

Upcoming is the launch of the third season of her Digital Jamaica podcast, which features both local and international experts to demystify web 3, blockchain, crypto and the metaverse, its implications, and application of these technologies. Francis will also launch general digital marketing courses, social media workshops for marketers, and online communication workshops for small and medium businesses. She is also planning a conference for creators to show how to optimise their platforms and earn money online.

Proud of her impact and influence, Francis wants to continue imparting knowledge to her community and students to help bridge the digital literacy gap.