Participant Story: TaLea
TaLea is one of the participants of our six-month software engineering program! You can support her journey at techtonica.org/donate.
Born in Los Angeles, TaLea moved around a lot with her parents and sisters. Although her nomadic childhood meant she was frequently adjusting to new places, it also meant she got really good at creating an exciting world for herself.
“I read a lot of books. I loved Goosebumps. I actually started a little club with my sisters and cousins, and I was the president,” she said with a laugh. “Once high school started, my whole life was basketball. I thought I was going to be the first woman in the NBA.”
Although she went to college instead of the NBA, a new passion came into her life: her three children. TaLea’s spent most of her time over the last several years homeschooling her kids and building community with other local parents in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood, where she now lives with her husband.
“This has been my safe haven and I know what to expect. Stepping out into the new environment is an unknown,” she said about “taking off the mommy hat” to invest in creating a meaningful career for herself now. “It’s going to be very hard to be away every day because I’m the primary caregiver and we spend every day with each other.”
TaLea knows balancing work and being a parent will be challenging, but she’s focused on the exciting learning experience in front of her.
“My children teach me all kinds of lessons, but now I get to be the student,” she said, adding that seeing both her husband and a close family friend complete their own coding camps encouraged her to do the same. “What makes me most excited about joining the Techtonica program is the fact that I get to now be completely immersed in a learning environment surrounded by a small community of others who are striving to learn the same things.”
Ultimately, she’s eager to take what she learns and bring it to a wider community of people who, like her, may have never considered a career in tech as an option.
“I once saw a man with a shirt that said, ‘Coding is the new literacy’. It really jumped out to me as a reader, as someone who values literacy. It stuck,” she said about why she feels learning to code is so valuable and important. “I feel as though working in tech will give me a tangible way to contribute to my community in ways that are relevant, creative, and necessary in times where everything is knowingly or unknowingly being affected by technology.”
If you or your company might be interested in supporting program participants like TaLea, please donate at techtonica.org/donate or look at techtonica.org/sponsor.
To read about our other participants, please click on their names below:
