Women Who Code Webinar: My Career in Coding and How I Transitioned My Career

Yesterday I had the opportunity to give a presentation in a Women Who Code SF Webinar hosted by Hackbright Academy. The Webinar was entitled: “My Career in Coding and How I Transitioned My Career.”

I set three objectives for the talk:

• Objective #1: Walk through my experience making a career change.
• Objective #2: Offer strategies on how you can approach your own career change.
• Objective #3: Offer resources to help you along the way.

In the webinar, I share five strategies and 4 resources as I walk through my journey starting with my background, how I decided to change careers, and ultimately how I landed at Dropbox. …

About 9 months ago I set out to leave my teaching career of six years to pursue a career as a Software Engineer. I attended a 3 month Programming Bootcamp called Hackbright Academy during which I not only learned the fundamentals of programming, but more importantly, the fundamentals of what type of work excites me. I realized that I loved design. I loved data-model design, user experience design, architectural design, system design… The list goes on, I love design. Because of this, I thought the best place for me would be as a Front End Engineer, boy was I wrong.

Justin McLeod Bethune is on a mission to change the way Black men are portrayed in our society. After watching the documentary 13th, Justin was frustrated by the media’s history of promoting negative images of Black men as rapists, jokesters/ ‘dumb’ entertainers and criminals. Motivated by this along with the legacy of his great grandmother, Mary McLeod Bethune, Justin decided to do something about it.

In my previous post, I introduced my month long project called #Educate28 in which I pledge to post one educational tool per day for learning more about Black History. In case you missed them (or don’t use twitter), check out last week’s tools below.

Week 1 Recap is viewable here. Week 2 Recap is viewable here.

Day 15: The story of Eugene Bullard, former U.S. Slave turned French Pilot

Read more about Eugene Bullard’s incredible journey here: https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/eugene-j-bullard

Day 16: A podcast highlighting the story of U.S. Blacks fleeing to France to find freedom

Listen to the episode here: http://www.npr.org/2016/11/24/503236251/a-paris-exhibition-of-black-artists-unearths-unknown-treasures

Day 17: Highlighting Mae Jemison, the first African American female Astronaut

Read more about Mae’s incredible journey here: http://www.biography.com/people/mae-c-jemison-9542378

Day 18: Learn the history of the dap handshake

This study tells the story of the history and the evolution of the dap handshake: http://www.folklife.si.edu/talkstory/2014/five-on-the-black-hand-sideorigins-and-evolutions-of-the-dap/?

In my previous post, I introduced my month long project called #Educate28 in which I pledge to post one educational tool per day for learning more about Black History. In case you missed them (or don’t use twitter), check out last week’s tools below.

Week 1 Recap is viewable here.

Day 8: Henrietta Lack’s Contributions to Cancer Research

Check out this amazing hip-hop video about the life of Henrietta Lacks created by Oakland middle schoolers. Read more about her life on wikipedia or by reading “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot.

Day 9: 10 Black STEM Innovators

SalesForce’s Black Employee Resource Group, BOLDForce, created a great list highlighting 10 Black STEM Innovators. …

In my previous post, I introduced my month long project called #Educate28 in which I pledge to post one educational tool per day for learning more about Black History. In case you missed them (or don’t use twitter), check out last week’s tools below.

Day 1: Documentary 13th

View the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V66F3WU2CKk

Day 2: Mathematically Gifted and Black

Keep up with the daily Black Mathematicians featured here: http://www.mathematicallygiftedandblack.com

Day 3: Two Black Astronauts you should know

Read about Yvonne Cagle here: https://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/cagle.html

Read about Leland Melvin here: https://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/melvin.html

Leland Melvin will be releasing a book about his journey in May called Chasing Space, read more about it here. …

At first glance, you might not know that I come from a mixed home. Even though I have very fair skin, I identify as an African American woman. Whenever Black History Month comes along, it is important for me to try to stay as educated as possible about my heritage.

I decided to share five things that I plan to do this February to celebrate and promote Black History Month. Whether it be watching a film, reading an article, or starting a conversation, I hope that you will join with me.

“All my life I have wanted to lead people to an empathy space. To a gratitude space. I want us all to fulfill our greatest potential. To find our calling, and summon the courage to live it.” …

This week I served on a panel at Hackbright Academy entitled “How I Got My Job Alumni Panel.” Before the event, I prepared a list of things I did throughout my job search that ultimately lead to me getting a job as a Site Reliability Engineer at Dropbox soon after Hackbright ended.

One thing that I have learned in the last six weeks as an SRE, is the importance of thinking about scaling. After the panel was over, I thought to myself, how can I share and scale my knowledge to reach more people? …