I/Own It 2020 Recipients

By Laura Engstrand

For the fifth consecutive year , Optimizely, in partnership with Hack Reactor @ Galvanize, is running the I/Own It program to help women and underrepresented minorities jumpstart their career as software engineers. A previous post outlined the impact this program has and why we continue to offer it. I am very excited to announce that we have concluded the application and selection process and to introduce our 2020–2021 recipients.

I would like to first take this opportunity to thank every individual who applied for the I/Own It program this year. Each one of you put a lot of your time and energy into the application process and we greatly appreciate your effort. This level of commitment speaks volumes about you. It also gives me confidence that every one of you will realize your goal of having a career as a software engineer.

We have selected four recipients from this outstanding candidate pool. Each of these recipients will begin the Software Engineering Immersive program offered by Hack Reactor @ Galvanize in January 2021 and then will join us here at Optimizely for a three month, paid internship with our Engineering department in late April . The four recipients of our 2020 I/Own It scholarship and internship program are Cindy Ryoo, Anna Zhu, Helen Tael, and Ben Wu. Here is a little bit more information about each of them.

Cindy Ryoo

Cindy Ryoo

January SEI Austin

Cindy’s interest in coding began after learning how to use RegEx to clean data while working at an on-campus policy think tank at Rice University. She was enticed by the idea that code could help her generate creative solutions to real-world problems, but was already close to graduating with a BS in Ecology and Environmental Science. She started working full-time as an environmental consultant, but she realized that her favorite part of the job was the automation, standardization, and optimization of daily tasks. After she was laid off due to COVID, she used this unexpected free time to pursue her passion for coding and switch careers.

Cindy plans to leverage the software engineering skills she learns from both the immersive training and Optimizely internship to become the mentor to young female coders that she wished she had when she was younger. After developing the necessary skills in a software engineering career, she hopes to give back to her community long-term by returning to the classroom and teaching underrepresented minority students how to code. In her free time, Cindy enjoys baking, traveling, playing with her cat, and trying new foods.

Anna Zhu

Anna Zhu

January San Francisco SEI

Right before the Thanksgiving of simultaneously the least memorable and most unforgettable year in recent history (2020, what happened), Anna received a phone call and learned she had been selected to be one of the I/Own It sponsorship recipients. It was quite the surreal experience for the 27 year old San Francisco native, whose educational and professional career had taken detours she had never imagined for herself: from taking a leave of absence right before her last year of university to recover from burnout, to conducting neural stem cell research at UCSF and not returning to complete her degree, to having an existential career crisis at the ripe age of 23, to transitioning into the food and hospitality industry in a bout of pure curiosity. Anna is now determined to pursue a career in programming, despite not having prior experience, after realizing how the nature of programming seamlessly combines her penchant for logic and pattern recognition, desire to affect positive social impact, and need for constant challenge and dynamic growth. She is incredibly grateful for the opportunity to learn with and from equally motivated individuals at Hack Reactor and Optimizely.

Helen Tael

Helen Tael

January SEI Austin

Helen discovered coding through her engineering curriculum at the University of Wisconsin — Madison. Though it was too late to change her major, she enjoyed the classes so much that she added a minor in Computer Science to her degree and took courses on object-orientated programming, optimization, and computational mathematics. Since graduating, she has worked in health care IT as a SQL database and ETL administrator for multiple hospitals across the US. After it became clear that her career path was moving her away from software development, instead of bringing her closer to it, Helen decided it was time to make a switch. She is particularly interested in creating privacy tools, and making technology more humane.

Ben Wu

Yubin (Benjamin) Wu

January SEI San Francisco

Benjamin came to the US for grad school from China in 2011, majoring in multimedia communications at Academy of Art University in San Francisco. After grad school, he got a job as a radio show host and multimedia producer at a local Chinese radio station in the Bay Area. One day, during an interview with an Asian psychologist, he realized the importance of self-awareness of mental health issues in the Asian community, especially in gay Asian community. He had been told and had witnessed sad stories about mental health problems in the gay Asian community, because there is a lack of self-awareness in mental health. He got another job as a journalist, news anchor, and producer at a local Asian language TV station 3 years ago. His work mainly focuses on technology stories, then he came up with an idea to help people enhance their self-awareness in mental health with technology. To make his idea become reality, he decided to pursue another career in Software Engineering. He started taking Computer Science basic classes including a series of classes in C++ and Python in community college 3 years ago while still working as a full time media professional. He was accepted to the online Master of Science in Computer Science program at Georgia Tech last year. Benjamin hopes to achieve his goal in the near future to help the community with all the knowledge and skill of software engineering he learned in the past and upcoming bootcamp.

Each year, it takes a large effort from a number of people to run the I/Own It program. Since the beginning, we have been fortunate to benefit from the dedication, experience, and teamwork of our partners at Hack Reactor @ Galvanize. In particular, I would like to recognize Kelly Jackson, Program Manager for Scholarships and Galvanize Foundation, who helped make I/Own It a success again this year. We are thankful for everything that Kelly and her committed team have done for I/Own It these past months. There is also a devoted crew at Optimizely who once again volunteered their time to this program.

For anyone who is interested in beginning a career as a software engineer, please check out additional scholarship opportunities for the Software Engineering Immersive program offered by Hack Reactor @ Galvanize. If you would like to participate in the I/Own It program in the future, please visit our website and sign up for the mailing list; we will notify you when applications open again in the future

About Laura Engstrand:

Laura is the Senior Engineering Manager for the App and Data Platform teams. These teams centralize the infrastructures for the data pipeline and for our very own applications engineers. Prior to joining Optimizely, she spent 5 years at Pandora Media helping listeners discover the music they want to hear. In a previous life, Laura actually wrote code and can geek out on the superiority of the ‘C’ language. Laura’s raison d’etre is chocolate.