Alaina Kafkes — Students in Tech
Why did you chose to study computer science/pursue tech?
I got into tech because my boyfriend at the time was studying computer science. CS seemed so cool, but like a guy thing since I had no knowledge of any women that were working with computers, software, or anything “techy” at that time. He and I broke up, and shortly thereafter, I decided to try computer science out. To start, I took a Python class online through MIT. I didn’t expect to get much out of it, but it was actually quite fun to solve problems with the language of logic. That problem solving fulfillment was something that I had never gotten out of my chemistry and humanities courses. This led me to take my first computer science class at Northwestern, which was taught by an amazing professor named Sara Sood, a new hire. She was the first female professor of any intro classes at Northwestern, and female enrollment in CS shot up the year she started teaching. I was one of the women at the head of that curve, and was lucky enough to get to know her. She strongly convinced me to change majors, and at the end of my sophomore year I started officially studying computer science.
How did you begin your tech journey?
Another defining moment helped me decide that I wanted to be a computer science major. I heard about a new club on campus called “Women in Computing,” since it was advertised by some seniors on a listserv. As they were graduating, they needed people to continue and reshape this organization. Though I felt that I was not qualified at the time, I decided to apply since it seemed like WiC could help me figure out my place in the tech sphere. Amazingly, I got selected as an executive board member, and I had the privilege of meeting other females who had a better idea of their place as aspiring developers — be it in biotech or front-end development — which gave me my first role models. I already knew that I wanted to study computer science, but the faith of the WiC community in me convinced me to declare the major.
Being on the WiC executive board for its first fully operational year was a fantastic experience, since we were the first to establish a community of women in computer science and related fields at Northwestern. We sent 25 WiC members to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Fall 2015, and the hype of #GHC2015 helped our membership and impact grow. We got to do a lot of outreach projects with local middle schoolers, and we ran well-attended hack nights with two other tech organizations on campus. As the new internal president, I even founded and ran the pilot of Northwestern’s first ever mentorship program for undergraduate and graduate women in tech.
A year ago, I felt like a computer science outsider. I would have never expected to be leading one of the most prominent tech organizations on campus today, and I owe a lot of what I have achieved to Women in Computing for jumpstarting my tech journey. The WiC effect does not end with me, however; now, Northwestern women in CS actually know each other socially, professionally, and academically. The existence of this community means that if an engineering professor is approached by a female student who asks for help, they often send them to us. It’s cool to be there to help people find their place in the major, especially considering how lost I felt until I found WiC.
Favorite project you have built? Most rewarding project?
My favorite project that I’ve built is called Dibz. The purpose of Dibz is to better the seller’s experience in informal online communities. When I say “informal online communities,” I don’t mean Amazon or eBay — I’m referring to the college student or stay-at-home mother who rely on Facebook and other existing social networks to buy and sell goods. My teammates and I found that people really like Facebook as a platform, but that they hate the features that Facebook offers. Sellers have to post across multiple social media groups and sort through comments, notifications, and messages in order to find the best offer. Dibz allows the seller to post all of their items all in one place: the Dibz online dashboard. From there, they can generate bit.ly links to share their items on Facebook or Twitter, for instance, which compels buyers to use that link to “call dibz,” or make an offer. That way, the seller then gets a more organized view of who will commit to buying their item. Intrigued? Feel free to check out our beta version at https://dibzmarket.com.
Dibz is my favorite project in the sense that it is the most rewarding project that I’ve ever worked on, since it is the first long-term project that I’ve built it from start to finish. Dibz marks many milestones for me as a developer: the first time I’ve wrangled multiple APIs into a single product, the first product that I’ve created that has the appropriate architecture to scale, and the first team project that I’ve worked on outside of a hackathon. Even though it’s neither my passion nor the perfect product, working on Dibz has increased my coding confidence and skills astronomically.
Favorite class you have taken? Why?
Probably my first intro class with Sara Sood. As you’d expect in an intro class, there is a wide variety of skill levels in the room. You have the child prodigies who have been programming since they were 12, and you have people like me who just started CS in college. That’s quite the spectrum, and can often lead to newcomers feeling intimidated. One of my favorite memories of this class is when Sara received a question from someone that was highly self-aggrandizing. She teaches in the Lisp functional language, and this student asks a question about a Java alternative. Many students (like me) in the room don’t know Java yet, and we’re wondering, “Uh, is that the level we should be at?” Her response to the question was perfect because she set the tone for future classroom questions. She agreed that the student’s Java alternative was correct, but asserted that questions like that should not be asked in front of the entire class to ensure that no one felt like they had to know that. I loved her faith that anyone can learn to code, and her commitment to preventing the classroom environment from deterring that faith.
Could you talk a little more about important people or mentor(s) who helped you, and about the way they impacted you?
I’ve talked about Sara Sood a lot, and I’m about to do so again — she’s truly that impactful! While taking my first Northwestern computer science course, I would go to her office hours and hang out with her, even if I didn’t have any questions. Inevitably, she got to know me and my story: how I wasn’t feeling very passionate about the other things I was studying, like chemistry and the humanities. I vaguely liked them, but they weren’t challenging me in the right way. But coding in Sara’s class did challenge me, and it made me feel like I was gaining tangible skills from assignment to assignment. She could tell that I loved her class, so she somewhat bribed me into majoring in computer science by volunteering to be my advisor. How could I turn that down? She’s probably one of Northwestern’s best assets in the computer science department, and I’m lucky to have her advice and guidance.
Other resources you have used to learn computer science?
In between my freshman and sophomore year of college, I took a massive open online course (MOOC) in Python through MIT. It was really cool as my first programming experience, doing math-y, puzzle problems, and I learned enough to be able to be use special features and libraries of Python to use the language efficiently.
Internships/research opportunities you have had?
I’ve only done research internships in the past. Last summer, I worked on a computational chemistry project for the National Science Foundation; I computationally optimized aluminum biomolecule structures to examine their impact in surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy. I loved the opportunity to meet and work beside college students from around the world, but I quickly realized that research and academia was not a field I wished to pursue since it lacks the fast pace of product development.
This summer, I’ll be pursuing my interest in medical technologies by working as a software engineer at GE Healthcare. I’ll be refining a medical imaging product that will be used by real doctors, which is quite exciting.
(Why wasn’t CS research/academia the best fit for you?)
The reason why I like computer science is because it’s growth-oriented. It’s easier to see a product go from start to finish, whereas research feels like it extends forever. You publish a paper and attempt to contribute to other research out there, but it doesn’t feel like you’re making something, you’re adding to something. And I like getting to that end point.
Resources you used to get those internships?
I receive all of my internship offers and interviews through attending the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing. I highly recommend going.
Advice for students interested studying CS or pursuing projects?
Don’t be afraid to ask questions. I’ve found that it is about as painful to ask a question as it is to try something hundreds of times and not know how to move forward. The biggest challenge to starting to code is not that you don’t know a lot, but it’s that you don’t know how to find out what you need to know, be that the correct API or even the vocabulary that developers and other people in tech use. Reality check: this is normal. Everyone has to begin somewhere, and the quickest way to learn is to ask for guidance, advice, mentorship, or whatever you need when you need it. You’ll undoubtedly feel overwhelmed (I know I did), but sooner than you think, you’ll be the one answering, guiding, and mentoring.
