Techtonica’s 2020 cohort is graduating on July 1st!
Time has flown since our current software engineering cohort of Bay Area women and non-binary adults with low incomes started in January! The participants bring a lot of unique experiences and perspectives to their cohort. They’ve learned so much in their quest to #BridgeTheTechGap and persevered through a sudden move to remote collaboration—most recently, they completed their final projects, reviewed data structures and algorithms, and did a lot of interview practice.
Because of so many pandemic-related hiring freezes, we’re doing our best to place as many of our participants as possible, but 100% may not be possible as with past cohorts. If your company could give one of our participants their first experience in tech (as software engineers, technical support engineers, associate product managers, sales engineers, etc.), please check out techtonica.org/sponsor and get in touch!
Read on to learn more about this fantastic group of participants and show your support by joining us for our virtual graduation on Wednesday, July 1st.
Ariel (they/them)
Bio: I trace my roots back to Compton, CA where the lack of resources inspired me to grow into my best self to bridge those gaps. Since then, I’ve been taking leaps of faith and confidence. I leapt to UC Berkeley, where I unfortunately didn’t finish and found myself homeless thereafter. But I leapt back into life and quickly climbed into managerial roles, before commiting to transition from food industry to tech. I can’t control what happens in life, but I have learned how to roll with the punches, and to always invest in myself and choose abundance.
Project name: Moodify
Project description: There is power in what we tell ourselves, and with Moodify, through self-affirmation and hearing it out loud, I want the user to reclaim that power.
APIs used: Watson Text-to-Speech API, Custom REST API
Hardest part of building your project: The hardest part was working with sending audio data: I played around with Base64 encoding and decoding, and then fumbled through piping and buffer for streaming the mp3. That’s a lot of jargon and that’s how I felt going into this, it was a lot to digest, break down, and break several times before I got a better understanding of the process. But I love seeing how many times I have to break something to learn from it!
Favorite part of building your project: Normally, I enjoy working the backend more, but this time was a little different. I just mentioned the hardest part was working with the audio, so when it worked, I was jumping and yelling. This may sound counter-intuitive, but as frustrating as it was, it was so great to learn from the many ways I broke my app before I got it to its current state. I was struggling with React less than 2 months ago, and it turned out to be a secret joy, and I am walking away with an interest in deep-learning and more React depth.
Cadence (she/her)
Bio: Before joining Techtonica, I was a medical assistant for two years. Since tech is everywhere in the Bay Area, I became very curious how a website works in the back end and I wanted to build my own, so I took basic web development classes like HTML , CSS, and JavaScript. I used HTML and CSS to build my portfolio to be mobile compatible and responsive. I wanted to keep improving my programming skill, so I joined Techtonica to build up my skills. Now, I am able to build a web application from scratch using technologies like React and Postgres. I want to continue contributing my skills to building applications and serving in the tech industry.
Project name: GoConnect
Project description: GoConnect is a social networking application where registered users can share photos and moments with other users with similar feelings or experiences.
APIs used: Firebase
Hardest part of building your project: The hardest part of building my project was setting up the chat conversation data model to store the data and render it on users’ screens.
Favorite part of building your project: My favorite part was also building the chat feature with Firebase and React Native.
Gabby (she/her)
Bio: I am from East LA and studied Cognitive Science in college. I was interested in web development early on in college but never really knew how to break into the field. I moved to the Bay Area after completing a Sales Engineering type role, and decided to pivot completely to software engineering after learning about Techtonica.
Project name: PacoGo
Project description: Play, Program, Learn.
APIs used: Authentication API for students and educators, custom REST API
Hardest part of building your project: Getting Paco to actually go was really challenging. Time management and feature design was difficult as well.
Favorite part of building your project: Making my project colorful and approachable to kids was my favorite part.
Gloria (she/her)
Bio: A little bit about myself is that I am from San Francisco. I got into tech as a QA manual tester. I always had an interest in software development and dabbled a little bit back in college, but I never had the time or resources to fully commit to it until Techtonica came along. I really enjoy the fact that you can make something out of nothing with a few lines of code.
Project name: ProPlan
Project description: Whether you are creating a schedule for an event, a work trip, or a vacation, ProPlan can help give you a better understanding of what you are trying to accomplish.
APIs used: Google Maps API, Google Places API, AG-Grid, Heroku, Auth0, Custom REST API
Hardest part of building your project: The hardest part of building my project was understanding how other application’s APIs worked and integrating them into my project.
Favorite part of building your project: My favorite part of building this was seeing it all coming together and the satisfaction of making something work.
Gloria was placed at Pantheon.
Lisa (she/her)
Bio: Growing up in San Francisco, I was aware of the tech scene but did not know what software engineering was. In college, I decided to stick with chemistry, which was the subject I was good at. However, I stayed curious about software engineering and wanted to try it out. When I found out about Techtonica, I took the opportunity to step out of my comfort zone and follow my curiosity to pursue software engineering. I realized that this was something I enjoy doing and I’m excited to continue honing my technical skills and learning new technologies.
Project name: PlantTasks
Project description: Never forget to take care of your plants again! PlantTasks is a mobile app to keep track of your plants and all their tasks.
APIs used: Custom REST API
Hardest part of building your project: Learning about mobile development in a short amount of time while juggling the various roles involved in creating a product (design, UX, etc) but this was incredibly rewarding and a great learning experience.
Favorite part of building your project: It’s exciting to take an idea, break it down into smaller parts, and be able to interact with the app on my phone as I’m building it!
Lisa was placed at AppDynamics.
Nasreen (she/her)
Bio: My background is in mechanical engineering. I picked up coding as a hobby during months of tedious waiting for my legal immigration paperwork. I enjoyed the problem-solving and creative process of web development. It is the same as what I did as a mechanical engineer but with a different and more accessible toolset.
Project name: CarLog
Project description: A Java Spring Boot web application which helps users to track their car maintenance data
APIs used: Custom REST API, NHSTA Vehicle API, AWS API
Hardest part of building your project:
- Encrypted Password Authentication
- Using Amazon s3 for file storage
- Exploring React to give my app the ability to generate PDFs, store files in AWS, and build the UI in general. Proud to have challenged myself to do that in spite of my area of interest being the back end.
Favorite part of building your project: Developing my backend API using Test Driven Development
Nasreen was placed at Freenome.
Quincey (she/her)
Bio: I was born and raised in California and previously pursued a career as a fine artist. I moved to the Bay area to continue this journey when my life took an unexpected turn. I was reintroduced to computer programming as a highly created art. I saw an opportunity to continue challenging myself as an artist which also included my love of logic and theory as a software engineer.
Project name: Recycle Monster
Project description: Learn to recycle with Recycle Monster, a game that teaches proper recycling.
APIs used: Express JS, Heroku
Hardest part of building your project: I used a fairly new framework called ReactPIXIFiber. It had very little documentation, so I had to learn a lot about it through trial and error. It was a lot of work but, it was worth it in the end!
Favorite part of building your project: My favorite part was giving life to one of my drawings by animating it through PIXIJS.
Tahshara (she/her)
Bio: At an early age, I was exposed to STEM. As an African-American woman from a low socio-economic background, I was placed in a program called MESA (Mathematical, Engineering, Science Achievement). I began to discover my love for all things math. I realized I had an aptitude for problem-solving and design. I loved being able to solve a difficult math problem.
In undergrad, I participated in Alternative Breaks, a volunteer program that challenges all involved to understand his or her relationship with the global community through direct service. This program was my catalyst for social service. Thus, I obtained my Master of Divinity Degree in Pastoral Care in Counseling with five units of clinical pastoral education in hospital chaplaincy. These units helped solidify a solid foundation in assessing the needs of people. I have learned many people need help and there are limited resources.
Project name: MoodLifter
Project description: A simple app that creates a playlist based on your mood to let someone be in their feels.
APIs used: Spotify’s web APIs
Hardest part of building your project:
- Working with asynchronous and synchronous code
- Working with Spotify’s documentation—the authentication uses Request, which has been deprecated
- Creating a user-friendly experience by having a sleek modern app design
Favorite part of building your project: My favorite part of the project was bringing an idea to life. I loved solidifying and implementing things I learned as well as learning new concepts and understanding them (i.e. the authentication process).
Tahshara was placed at Pantheon.
Zarina (she/her)
Bio: I’m originally from Uzbekistan, and moved to the US ten years ago. I got my degrees in Art, Fashion Merchandising, and Business. While pursuing my MBA, I became very interested in technology and started following the latest news in the tech industry. I wanted to learn to code but didn’t know where to start until I received a scholarship from Google to study Android Basics. That was my first time being exposed to coding and I really enjoyed it! I was able to apply my art background, problem-solving skills, and attention to detail to build simple interactive mobile apps. Since then I have continued pursuing opportunities in tech by studying online, attending tech conferences, meetups and workshops, and eventually applying to Techtonica.
Project name: Trakker
Project description: Trakker is a web app that helps users organize and keep track of their job search progress.
APIs used: Auth0
Hardest part of building your project: Integrating Auth0 for user authentication and managing the state of the cards and columns.
Favorite part of building your project: Transferring my idea into a practical and fully-functioning application that brings value to users during difficult times.
Zhag (she/her)
Bio: I’m a Central Asian, I was born and raised in Europe before moving to the US in my teen years. I started to learn to code years ago from my younger brother, who (correctly) thought I would love it. I spent a couple years after high school budget travelling and volunteering, using my free time to learn web development. When the opportunity to move to the Bay Area presented itself, for the second time I abruptly packed up my comfortable, quiet life in Europe and moved — this time to California. It’s been an adventure ever since, I’ve spent the past few months immersed in code with my cohort.
Project name: OfficePlace
Project description: A virtual office space for your team that closes the distance between remote coworkers so even when you’re working on your own, you’re working together.
APIs used: Face-api for facial detection, Socket.io for websocket connection to share real time data, Redis for storage of that real-time data
Hardest part of building your project: Sockets and state management! I really struggled with figuring out where to put my socket object so that all my components would have access, and so that I could properly listen to and emit events. I tried using middleware, React context, just a simple variable, and ultimately — putting my socket object in my Redux state and passing it to components so that they could listen for the relevant events.
Favorite part of building your project: I had a lot of fun with this whole project. I really enjoyed working with the video face-detection API. It opened my eyes to how accessible tech is nowadays—the tools for building what would once have seemed like a complicated app are at our fingertips, for free, and there are many medium articles walking through how to do it.
Do you also believe that the first tech job is vital? To set Techtonica participants on the pathway to success, advocate for your company to become a hiring partner or make a donation today.
