“Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in our absences.” - Sheryl Sandberg

Hi everyone, my name is Brianna Sewell and I am in Grade 10.

I have 4 siblings and one amazing mother. I have two older siblings (girl and boy) and two younger siblings (girl and boy). In my free time, l like to read, bake and/or stroll around my neighbourhood. I do these things to calm myself because, with my siblings, it can get a little hectic in my house.

As of July 2nd, I started to teach myself how to draw and paint so I can become much better. I love teaching myself and trying new things because I love how at first it can be hard and with a little bit of hard work, I am able to improve!

I have been programming just a little over a year. I first started programming around December 2018 to prepare for the Hackergal Spring Hackathon in 2019. I started because my friend said how it would be a fun and new experience. In the beginning, it was hard because I had to remember all the new words and commands. But, after a few weeks of coding and writing down the commands to remember, it started to get easier and kept practicing 2–3 times per week.

There were times when the coding was hard or confusing. When that happened, I just needed to just pause and try to figure out when I want to do and what commands I needed to use. To be honest, I would get really frustrated with the program and want to quit, but I stuck with it. The more you code, the better you will become. Coding is all about being creative and knowing how to problem solve. You might use a command that doesn’t work at first, so you have to look over your code and try to figure out what to do. With coding, you can build anything! You can program countless things, like make your own game, movie, and even use code to make learning more fun.

The Hackergal Ambassador Program is teaching me to code and helping me to interact with other girls who are learning to code with me. With the program, I have achieved so much like being able to make to draw, add sounds and add moving figures. The program I am working right now is coding a game to educate people on LGBTQ+ role models. I am going to explain what the community is and all the terms/flags that there within it. For the game, I am going to give scenarios and the player has to tell me what term it is describing. I also want to include celebrities that many people do not know are part of the LGBTQ+ community.

For me, tech is like my escape for life because technology is everywhere. We use tech for almost everything we do and with the skills that you learn, the possibilities are endless. Learning more about the technology around us is an important life skill. For me, it is important to understand and know more about why and how we use the tech in our lives.