Out of Office Hours — Ladies Storm Hackathons Edition!
Welcome LSHers and all you lovely people out there!
I am so excited to announce Out of Office Hours for Ladies Storm Hackathons (LSH)!! We’ve been planning it since December and now it’s finally here...woot woot!
What is it? The goal is to connect students/career explorers/anyone interested with people in different industries through 30 minute conversations. It is inspired by the original Holiday Office Hours post made by Dustin Senos that you can see right here. You can also checkout https://www.outofofficehours.com
How can I take part? Take a look at the mentors below and if you are interested in chatting with them you can book a time by clicking on their calendly link. Please note that some of the interactions are in person so make sure you can get to that location! I also suggest reading this post on how to make the most out of your Out of Office Hours.
Can I be a mentor? Yes, please! If you would like to be added as a mentor please email me with your bio and a calendly link at jennice.colaco@gmail.com. Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.
Credits:
Please show some love to fellow LSHers — Alaina Kafkes, Aashni Shah, Noorain Hussain and Yi Wu for making this possible.
A special shoutout goes to Tech Ladies and Allison Esposito! Many of our mentors are from Tech Ladies which is “a community that connects women to the best opportunities in tech”. You can check it out here.
A heartfelt thank you goes out to all the mentors who have graciously taken out time from their busy schedules to do this. So many mentors messaged me saying that they had a lot of stuff going on but would still put in a few hours. You are all awesome! ❤
Enjoy the conversations! Any feedback is welcomed and appreciated :)
MENTORS:
Ji Young Choi is the Founder of Dinary, a mobile app that allows you to review and remember menu items at restaurants. Before Dinary, Ji was the COO of Teckst, helped build and scale General Assembly’s Enterprise business, and served as a senior strategy consultant to Fortune 500 companies and government organizations, from Starbucks to NASA. Talk to Ji about anything from interviewing, résumé editing, landing your dream job, and working at large companies vs startups, to problem solving, creating scalable processes, building B2B relationships, and anything in between.
Book time with Ji: https://calendly.com/jichoi
Kiyomi Doreen “ I have worked as a career executive assistant for four Chairmen and Chief Executive Officers at Sony Pictures Entertainment, MGM Studios, Fox Family, and with an iconic television writer/producer. I was a project manager at Sony Playstation supporting the Head of the Studio for Video Game Development for four years. I specialize in managing high-profile execs/teams especially during times of rapid growth, transitions, promotions, & relocations. My area of expertise also lies in managing the office of a very high-level or high-profile executive at Fortune 100 companies and within the tech, creative, and entertainment industries. My background has been within tech, social media, TV, film, video games, visual effects, non-profit/grants administration, event planning, awards marketing, corporate, and publicity where I have worked closely with celebrities, high-profile executives, and all types of personalities. You can ask to do an informational interview with me if you want to know how I got into the entertainment industry, what it’s like being an EA, what it’s like working at a specific company I’ve worked at, or what it’s like living in or moving to LA. ”
Book time with Kiyomi: https://calendly.com/kiyomim/30minslots/02-17-2017
Ana Ulin is an experienced software engineer, technical lead and engineering manager. She started her career building services at Google, and has since learned that she prefers working at small startups. She enjoys building software and cultivating teams. You can talk to her about leveling up as an individual contributor, transitioning into management, the differences between small companies and startups, and about women and inclusion in tech.
Book time with Ana: https://calendly.com/ana-ulin
Alyssa Kwan “ I’m a senior software engineer with 15 years of experience, focused on the backends of distributed, stateful systems and data engineering. I currently lead a team of data engineers for Clara Lending. I’ve been mentoring one-on-one and teaching small groups for the past 4 years. This includes more entry-level software engineering topics such as process and service design, proper control flow, and basic object orientation and typing techniques. This also includes more advanced software engineering topics such as distributed process execution, concurrency and thread safety, and high availability and robustness. I also welcome mentoring around personal and career development. ”
Book time with Alyssa: https://calendly.com/alyssackwan/out-of-office-hours/
Veni Kunche Sr. Software Developer at the US Geological Survey; Founder of Code with Veni, Code Better Together and Ionic Kits
“ I’ve been in tech for over 10 years. I love learning new frameworks and programming languages. I consider myself a Jill of all trades. I’ve done database migrations, server setup, backend development, frontend development and hybrid-mobile application development. My philosophy is that you don’t have to learn every aspect of a programming language or framework to make use of it. I learn what’s needed to get the job done. I am currently working with the Wisconsin Internet Mapping group at the US Geological Survey as a Sr. Software Developer. I am also working on my own startup ideas.Talk to me about career development, web development, entrepreneurship and on how to get started in tech. ”
Book time with Veni: http://blog.codewithveni.com/tech-office-hours/
April Wensel is the founder of Compassionate Coding, a social enterprise focused on helping companies cultivate sustainable, human-centered agile development practices and grow the emotional intelligence of their teams. She has spent the past decade in software engineering and technical leadership roles at various startups and research institutions. She also mentors with programs like Black Girls Code and Hackbright Academy in order to support diversity in the software industry. When not coding, she enjoys writing, running marathons, and cooking vegan food. She’s happy to talk to anyone about anything!
Book time with April: calendly.com/april_compassionatecoding
Jumoke Dada is a technologist, strategist, and philanthropist who is set to launch the Tech Women Network the first quarter of 2017. Jumoke is principal of Signature RED and a tech consultant with 14+ years of corporate I.T. experience including holding positions such as an application developer, business and systems analyst, and project manager. Jumoke is not your average techie as she has a knack for marketing, planning, networking, and making learning fun. In 2010, she had a vision to help women through the process of reinvention which led to the creation of the Legally AMBITIOUS brand which included fun yet educational workshops like Networking 101, Golf 101, Cars 101, Build iOS Mobile Apps 101, Ruby on Rails 101 to name a few. She is also passionate about giving back therefore during the summer she provides care packages and advice to girls entering their freshmen year of college through Project ALOE. She holds a B.S. of Computer and Information Sciences and Scrum Master Certification. Over the years, she has been featured on several media outlets because of her professional and community work. Visit jumokedada.com or follow her at @jumokedada on Twitter to learn more.
Book time with Jumoke: https://calendly.com/jumokedada/mentorship
Brita Vinje “ I am a CPA and MBA that has transitioned from a financial accounting career path to tech entrepreneurship. I’ve worked at big consultancies like Deloitte, fast-growing start-ups, and most recently launched my own company. I’m happy to chat about anything from finance to questions about why or when to get an MBA, entrepreneurship, career transitions, or anything else I can be of assistance with!”
Book time with Brita: https://calendly.com/britav
Juliet Salinas: DevOps engineer with over a decade of experience, and a unique perspective, having worked as both a straight male and now, lesbian female in the tech industry.
“ I’ve been passionate about tech since I was young. I was never much of a student due to untreated ADHD…so I’m self-taught. I worked my way up from call center tech support to Linux system administrator. At 33 years old, after a few years of depression and apathy, I realized I was transgender, and transitioned to living as a woman. This came with a price — I lost my marriage, most of my friends and family, and eventually my job of 9 years. I was forced to rebuild my life from nothing.
I ended up in a grueling contract role with no benefits, working graveyard shift, and an awful work environment. I was commuting for 2 hours every night, I wasn’t making ends meet, and my fiancee and I were forced to live out of a garage. I knew I had to improve myself in order to survive and take care of those I loved. I decided to study DevOps and work toward AWS certification. I studied at night as much as my limited focus allowed while taking any interview I could get during the day. I was rejected countless times before I landed my first role as a DevOps engineer. I learn best when I’m in over my head, and I’ve learned more in the last year than I had in 5 prior. What I do now is pretty close to a dream job, and I am proud of how far I’ve come. I’m happy to talk to anyone who may come from an unconventional background, or who may question if they are really capable of creating the career and life they want for themselves. ”
Book time with Juliet here: https://calendly.com/julietsalinas
