Bermudian entrepreneur Kyla Bolden makes no bones about the fact that jobs will be lost to artificial intelligence.

In her own tech education business, Wiz Learning, she has already cancelled several roles in favour of AI.

“There just is not as much need for engineers,” she said. “Even when it comes to operational positions, like managing client relations, there are AI tools that can automate a lot of the client relationship.”

She said that globally it is not just entry-level jobs that are being replaced, but also middle management jobs.

However, the 29-year-old firmly believes that knowledge is power. Wiz Learning gives people access to future-focused skills so that they can thrive in an increasingly tech-driven economy, offering educational programmes in AI literacy, cyber safety and other computer science topics.

Ms Bolden grew up in Bermuda and moved to Toronto, Canada, in her teens.

The business came about in Ms Bolden’s junior year at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, where she was doing African and English studies.

“I thought I would become a consultant and then go back to school and get my law degree,” she said. “I had a good internship lined up.”

The firm cancelled her internship at the last minute.

“I didn’t want to waste the summer,” Ms Bolden said. To fill the break with something productive, she turned to a long-held passion for coding.

“I taught myself to code when I was 10,” she said.

Back then she had been disappointed that her school did not offer coding classes. Her parents had hired tutors to help her advance.

Remembering that, she organised a coding camp at her church in Toronto that summer.

“I had nine students,” she said.

In the nine years since launching, Wiz Learning has grown to reach more than 9,000 students in 30 countries, including Bermuda.

“We deliver through a learning platform that we built,” she said.

In the beginning she designed her own curriculum, but now has experts to do that for her.

Clients include the Boys and Girls Club, 60 schools in Toronto, and 40 in Dallas, Texas.

“We have also done summer camps in Bermuda,” she said. “We are working on a pilot programme on the island. Information about that will be coming out soon.”

Ms Bolden thought implementing tech-forward programming in schools in Bermuda was actually easier than in other countries.

“Bermuda is small,” she said. “It could take two or three years. In larger jurisdictions it would take much longer to turn the ship around.”

Last year, she won an award from the Cartier Women’s Initiative, an organisation dedicated to female empowerment through entrepreneurship.

“I had to go to Shenzhen, China, to collect it,” Ms Bolden said.

During the time she has been in the tech industry, she has seen more women coming into the field, but feels there are still not enough.

“The industry remains dominated by men,” she said.

Through her work in education, she sees many girls under age 10 expressing enthusiasm for technology, but they tend to drop away as they get older.

“Women are pushed more into the humanities, and men are pushed more into Stem subjects, by their teachers,” she said. “We are working towards making sure that more women go into technology.”

In her career, people have often remarked on her youth. She said tech pioneers such as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg came into the industry young, but people seemed to take their age for granted. She thought society questioned young women in technology more so than men.

“Being a Bermudian has really been an advantage for me,” she said. “I was lucky to see so many successful people that look just like me growing up.”