After writing her first line of code in high school, 15 year-old Kattya Cuevas was hooked.
Soon enough, Kattya was one of the few students in the class who was hungry for more. Given her earlier struggles, how did Kattya become of the one of the few female CTOs in Peru? Today, Kattya is driving initiatives to empower more women in technology and leadership and is the CTO of devAcademy, one of Peru’s leading software companies.
In a country where men dominate most industries and only 4% of women hold leadership roles, Kattya thrived against odds, and is looking to move waves to keep innovating and learning.
An initial bump
Kattya majored in Systems Engineering at a local university in Ica, Peru with the hopes of becoming a skillful developer. As a reference, Peruvian universities don’t offer Computer Science degrees and thus, through this program, Kattya learned how to code in archaic programming languages — languages that weren’t used anymore.
Fresh path with new opportunities
Before graduation, Kattya became a self-taught coder. She joined tech communities like Comunidad de Software Libre where she found a support system to learn faster and better.
In these tech groups, two main programming languages are taught — Ruby and Python. It was at this moment when Kattya faced gender biases in the tech industry. When she joined the Python community, she saw how the community interacts and didn’t trust them for help.
Kattya moved on and became part of the Ruby on Rails’ community and immediately after, she fell in love with this language. “The environment was much more different. I learned Ruby on Rails from scratch. Everyone was very supportive and that contributed to my passion for this programing language.” Along being part of this group, Kattya was learning online and reading coding books. Her favorite? Sandi Metz’ Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby.
Using programming and creativity to create positive change
“Who doesn’t like technology? New games, apps, companies are launched every day and I am part of the change. Look at PokemonGo and the fever that has conceived among smartphone users. It became a community and developers like myself were directly involved in its creation,” says Kattya. After being involved in the tech scene in Lima, Kattya joining devAcademy as a software engineer.
devAcademy is currently Peru’s leading tech company offering software development services and courses. The company has won a national startup competition hosted by the government and it’s currently expanding its services to the United States.
In her new role as a CTO, Kattya wants to change software education, the gender stereotypes around it, and build a tech hub in her city — an area in which the majority are unfamiliar with these concepts. But there’s always room for improvement. Kattya is constantly looking for new challenges as she sees them as opportunities to learn.
A big part of her plan is inspire others to take action. Through her speaking involvements at the first AngelHack Peru, RubyConf, and GDG Lima, Kattya has already motivated many people to code, be leaders, and live by the mantra of perseverance and positivity.
So watch out world — Kattya Cuevas is coming.
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