Student Spotlight: Gabriela
Gabriela spent most of her childhood in her home country of Guatemala — where a 36-year civil war made conflict a way of life.
“There’s a lot of poverty. We didn’t even have water sometimes; it was harsh!” she said of her life in Guatemala, where her mother was an activist in the legal sector and her father left the family to focus entirely on a career in medicine. “I just knew there wasn’t a future for me there.”
At the age of 15, she left on her own to move to California. Despite not speaking any English, she enrolled in high school and was determined to learn.
“When I’m dead-set into something I have to do, I just have to do it. You can’t change my mind,” she said. “I fell in love being in a country where I could pursue anything.”
Gabriela got involved in cheerleading, dance, and art club, and eventually developed language skills that rival native English speakers.
“It could’ve been easy to hang out with the Spanish speakers, but I really pushed myself outside the box,” she said. And after completing high school, her next big accomplishment was sorting out her legal status so she could stay and work in the U.S. to build the life she wanted.
She stayed involved in the local arts scene, teaching herself sewing skills to make her own dance outfits and completing several murals around the city. Her first mural commission was a significant project — she directed 8 male artists who were more than a little skeptical of her ability. But she took charge and made it happen.
“They were a little weirded out that I was the art director and in charge. Even in art, there’s always going to be sexism,” Gabriela said.
She went on to complete murals all over San Francisco, and she loves what they bring to communities. Part of what Gabriela loves about murals perfectly reflects what she loves about technology.
“With murals, you can reach a lot of people. It’s for everyone to see and share,” she said. “I want to be in tech because I want to be part of something useful and massive. I love that through technology, you can reach so many people really quickly!”
To develop the skills she craved, she enrolled at the City College of San Francisco. At the same time, she took on work typing up code for a developer friend healing from a hand injury.
“If I was curious before, I was seriously curious now!” Gabby said of doing the developer dictation work. “He was really encouraging me to pursue a bootcamp. I tried to figure out how to do that, but I didn’t have the money to go.”
Developer bootcamps can cost $15,000 or more and can’t typically be funded with student loans, so while students are likely to make up the money once they’re hired, they need to have the cash upfront to make it happen. So when Gabriela heard Techtonica Founder Michelle Glauser was starting a training camp for free, she was stunned.
“It took me like 2 minutes to fully comprehend that it was a free program she’d started. I just couldn’t believe it,” she said. “Since learning about Techtonica my stress level has dropped so much. I was really stressing about how to pull the money together.”
Now that training costs are no longer the barrier Gabriela is facing to enter the tech field, she feels like nothing will truly hold her back. And she can’t wait to pave the way for other underrepresented groups in tech.
“I want this program to happen — not just for me, but for more cohorts. I want other people to benefit from this,” she said. “I want us to change the world we live in.”
Watch Gabriela’s talk from our Sponsor Info Event:
If your company might be interested in supporting students like Gabriela, please look at techtonica.org/sponsor and send an email to info AT techtonica.org.
