Participant Story: Kelly
Kelly is one of the participants of our six-month software engineering program! She sat down with Techtonica volunteer Mel Burke to share her story. You can support her journey at techtonica.org/donate.
Tell us a little about where you’re from and where you grew up.
I was born and raised in Manhattan, which is definitely a melting pot of all cultures. So it was very jarring moving to San Francisco where it’s not as diverse. It’s diverse in other ways (I’d never had Pho before moving here), but when you just look at it from face value it isn’t as diverse here.
Both my parents are immigrants, my mom’s Brazilian and my dad is from Cape Verde on the west coast of Africa. Both of them don’t have more than a high school level of education so my brother was the one who pushed me to interview at Bay Area startups and technical roles.
What made you decide to apply for Techtonica?
After four years of working for a startup that was acquired twice and a few department and role changes, I became tired of clicking buttons to do my job. I wanted to learn how to make the buttons, and I wanted to tell the computer what to do. I was attending meetings with engineers and wanted to understand how they were taking our feedback and translating that to code. I also realized that all the engineers we were working with were male and that all my fellow female-identified coworkers were in more maternal operational roles as opposed to technical.
What are you most excited to learn while in the program?
I’m excited to use a different part of my brain. I haven’t felt challenged in my day-to-day and during the Techtonica interview process I felt exhilarated to be problem-solving again as opposed to analyzing patterns.
I’ve also been learning about all the different ways you can use a full-stack engineering education — you don’t only have to be an engineer. So far I’m excited about technical writers and dev evangelists. People who speak on tech and know what they’re talking about even though they don’t code every day. I’m excited to provide a face to people to show them that engineers don’t all look one way.
Is there anything you want to change about the tech industry specifically?
A lack of diversity is what brought me here and started this journey. If you see an entire group of people doing this one thing and they’re kind of similar and you’re not that at all, then how can you imagine yourself in that place? Representation matters. You need to be able to see someone who looks like you or who is similar to you in any way in different realms and scopes to be able to tell yourself, “Oh yeah, I can do that too.”
Inclusion needs to drive that. Diversity is great, but until you actually include something it doesn’t matter.
What’s your dream project?
I don’t really have an idea yet. I think I’m still open to hearing other people’s stories. I don’t know where I’m going yet, but I’m still open to anything that exists and to anything that doesn’t exist yet. I think I would more-so want to advocate and to help people believe in themselves more when it comes to tech.
You can see Kelly tell her story at our launch celebration here.
If you or your company might be interested in supporting program participants like Kelly, please donate at techtonica.org/donate or take a look at techtonica.org/sponsor.
