Women Who Code Delhi Mentorship Program 4.0: Week 1
“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.”
― Plutarch
Hello my fellow techies and नमस्ते!
About me:
Right from childhood, developers and engineers have been my superheroes. Hence, I am grateful to pursue it as a career.
Notoriously male-dominated fields, science, technology, engineering, and math are often career paths women don’t follow, not because they don’t want to, but because they’re often persuaded not to.
It’s a chasm — women represent only 21% of engineering majors and just 19% of computer and information science majors. I do take immense pride and tons of courage sharing that yes, I’m also a part of the 19% female computer scientists!
Though we don’t have a majority, there’s no lack of inspiration in seeing women working in STEM careers and even leading some of the great tech giants.
To me, Engineering and science have always been a way to solve problems and improve lives. And this led me to find my call and pursue a career in STEM, namely Computer Engineering.
About Women Who Code:
Women Who Code is an international non-profit organization; changing the face of tech, creating a more inclusive and diverse industry, and helping women to connect with professional opportunities that propel them into positions of power.
Women Who Code Delhi was launched in June,2014. Since then, it has grown to 1000+ members and has organized 44+ events including technical study groups, hack nights, career development, and speaking events all over Delhi-NCR. Primarily, working towards reducing the prevalent gender gap in IT.
WWCD Mentorship Program:
The Mentorship Program 4.0 allows women interested in technology to interact with and learn from our highly accomplished female mentors in a multitude of sectors, including Data Structures and Algorithms, Web Development, Android Development, Machine Learning, Research, and more.
It is a 5-week program aiming to further their personal and professional growth, expand their network of connections, and gain much-needed support in their line of work.
Application Process and My Selection:
Every year the applications for the next cohort are released on Women Who Code Delhi’s social media handles.
The application process included filling out a form comprising of some basic details about ourselves and answering some essay-based questions. The primary purpose being checking your zeal and objective vision for your selection.
Since every mentor was assigned 3 mentees, hence only 60 people were selected out of over 2000+ applications. I am so grateful to be among them!
In case you were not selected or missed out over the opportunity, no worries this and upcoming blogs will surely help you understand my learnings throughout the program.
Week 1- A dream come true! :
The Mentee’s onboarding was an amazing experience! We interacted with Manika Jain who was the host for the session, a strong believer of women in tech. She also shared that she too was a mentee last year and her insightful experiences played a significant role in her technical journey and interviews.
Fast forward to a week, we were assigned to our respective mentors. And here I met my mentor Shradha Sehgal and two amazing co-mentees, Ananya and Pooja.
Shradha is a final year Computer Science undergraduate at IIIT Hyderabad. She has previously been a research intern at Carnegie Mellon University and a STEP intern at Google India. She likes to spend time pursuing interdisciplinary research in Computational Social Science at the PreCog lab in her college. Shradha enjoys programming, problem-solving, and using technology for a social impact.
I was eagerly looking forward to meeting the three of them, and we finally had our first meeting. We started off with our introductions and goals as an ice breaker. Followed by a discussion on the importance of searching opportunities like scholarships, hackathons, internships, bootcamps as per our interests and listing them well. As it is crucial for job search!
Later we were assigned a task to create our own opportunity tracker and in order to inculcate the values of helping our peers, our mentor asked us to share it with each other and later with our juniors.
It is great practice and I would recommend everyone to try this!
That’s all folks! Right from discovering about the program to getting selected as one of the mentees was a roller coaster ride of emotions and enthusiasm. My mentor and co-mentees are all really supportive and empowering. Can’t wait to kickstart week 2 of my journey with the program!
Last but not least I hope this blog helped you. In case you’d like to connect here’s my twitter and LinkedIn profile.
I wish you the best of everything. Let’s use STEM for social good and to empower each other. Here’s to all women in tech ❤
Happy Learning! 🚀
