 Welcome to the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference 2018 here in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates where I've got the great pleasure of being joined in the studio today. I'm Ms Doreen Bogdan Martin who is a director-elect for the Telecommunication Development Bureau BDT for ITU. Doreen, welcome to the studio. Thank you, happy to be here. Now I'd like to start off by talking about the fact that you've just made history by being the first woman elected official at ITU in 153 years and this conference is also marking the first time that four women have been elected to the position of Plenipotentiary Committee Chair. I wanted to ask you what does that mean for you and do you think that that could have an impact in shaping our digital future? Well I'm thrilled absolutely over the moon I think we are making history we've broken the glass ceiling, opened the door and I think that we will see many more women participating in the ITU activities in the future. I do think it has an impact on digital inclusion in general we can't have the benefits of ICTs unless we do close the digital gender gap and and I think this is one step forward in terms of closing that gap. On a personal note how challenging was it for you to reach this position? Very challenging. It required a lot of determination. I think in many ways it was like running a marathon with lots of ups and downs even some curves and slippery slopes but I managed to keep going. I stayed in my lane followed the course and made it to the finish line. Let's talk about the number of initiatives that you've been at the forefront of to encourage and support more women to choose careers in technology perhaps you could tell us a little bit about those. Sure maybe I'll start with the first one which is Girls on ICT Day which was adopted actually at a Plenty Potentiary Conference in 2010. It celebrated on the fourth Thursday of the fourth month and it's all about bringing girls into either government or the private sector and exposing them to the opportunities that a career in the tech sector could actually provide and there's more than I think 150 countries to date that have actually done celebrations. The other thing that I've done is an award process where we highlight leaders and champions of bridging the digital gender gap that has been transformed into Equals which is the global partnership to bridge the digital gender gap. We have some 60 government private sector and civil society partners and we're focusing on access skills leadership with a cross-cutting research track and I believe our efforts are starting to make a difference. Now coming back to this Plenty Potentiary Conference about four in ten delegates at this conference are women. What do you think could be done to increase the participation of women delegates at future ITU conferences? I think we're making progress four out of ten is almost there. I think we could do a little bit more on our side on the ITU side and encouraging member states to include women on their delegations and maybe more importantly encouraging them to take the microphone. I've been involved in a program that was led by the Federal Communications Commission called We Lead which was a sort of mentoring support network and matching delegates with let's say seasoned delegates with less experienced delegates and I think that kind of mentorship is really helpful. Great and is there anything else that you'd like to add that you don't think we've covered here that might be interesting to our viewers elsewhere? I would say that I'm also encouraged to see the number of African female ministers I think from Francophone and Anglophone countries I think that's an encouraging sign. They're movers and shakers and we see they're really getting the job done so I see that as a a good sign and and role models for for all women and girls. Tourine Bogdan thank you very much indeed. Thank you very much.