She, however, found herself struggling to learn the language and enrolled to study an English course at the St George TAFE in Sydney. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, I was moved between different houses with relatives and friends, mainly Kenyan friends,” she said.Įncountering incredible odds at every junction, Gordon was finally on the right path when she met an Australian backpacker who got her to Australia, where they soon got married. “I was in limbo, I had made a lot of good friends, the Somali relatives really didn’t want me there because they didn’t have enough money or means to take care of the young woman who didn’t have anywhere to go back to. Gordon spent less than a year in Kenya during that period and described it as the most challenging time in her life. At 18 years, she ended up in neighbouring Kenya with some distant relatives she had never met or heard of before. Her family soon became scattered worldwide as refugees. He had the foresight to shift his family out of Somali before the Civil War broke out in 1991, or they would have faced imminent death at the hands of armed rebel forces looking to overthrow the Barre regime.ĭespite escaping imminent war, Gordon’s resilience was tested every step of the way. Gordon acknowledges that she owes her life to her father, who is a master of thinking on his feet. I was expected at a very young age to help my mother,” she said in an interview with CIO. “My mother had 16 children, two died young and I was the second oldest. Growing up, her family was poor, but she remembers a childhood full of kindness and happiness fondly.
Jamila Gordon was born in a remote village in Somalia.
She currently sits on the board of Questacon, Australia’s National Science and Technology Centre. Gordon received Microsoft’s global Award in the 2018 International Women’s Entrepreneurship Challenge (IWEC) she was the first Australian to receive this honour. One of Australia’s leading tech leaders, Jamila Gordon, is the CEO and Founder of Lumachain.
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