Overcoming Barriers : Giovanni Bonin
It’s no secret that when it comes to getting into the tech industry, there are significant barriers for certain people — a fact that our Fellows know all too well. Whether it be internal, like imposter syndrome, or external, like discrimination or immigration, these Fellows have faced them all and despite the odds, overcome them. The following was written by Sonia Hamilton, our Summer Documentation Intern, and is part of a series on #wethe5th.
Giovanni is from a small town in Brazil and has always dreamed of moving to the United States to work in the tech industry. “I’ve known I’ve wanted to do tech since before I could remember. I grew up telling my parents that one day I would open my own video game or robotics company.” While his parents were always supportive, his father owned a farming business that he wanted Giovanni to eventually take over. “I always felt stuck between that safe option that would make my dad happy and my dreams.”
Eager to travel to the United States, at fifteen, Giovanni found an exchange program on his own and spent a year in South Carolina. There, he toured college campuses and researched how he could go to college in the U.S — something that was unheard of in Giovanni’s small hometown. “In Brazil, there were absolutely no resources to find out how to do that. If you asked a counselor, they wouldn’t know. I didn’t know anyone who’d done it either.” He learned that he could attend the University of Miami through their Visa program and was accepted after applying his senior year. Though his father argued for him to stay, Giovanni’s passion shone through and he eventually persuaded his father. “I sacrificed my dad’s business. But in the end you’re just a seventeen-year-old kid who believes in himself.”
Upon arriving at Miami, however, Giovanni discovered a two-fold problem: the weakness of his school’s computer science program and the lack of a tech presence. “I didn’t learn anything in my classes. Everything I learned, I learned on my own.” He resorted to self-teaching and spent most of his time watching videos of lectures at top CS schools like Stanford and Berkeley, taking online classes on Coursera and Udacity, studying textbooks he found on MIT course syllabuses, and even assigning himself and grading his own projects — all on top of his regular course load.
In addition, Giovanni experienced the frustrating reality of tech’s limited recruitment practices, which center almost exclusively on elite schools. “I wanted to work for a big company like Facebook or Google, but they would never come my school. I understand why they don’t, but what about the students there that really care? One of them could be a genius and just because they didn’t have the resources to go to a top school, that talent’s never going to be found.” Giovanni experienced similar frustrations with recruiters. “The first question they ask you is your name and the second is where you go to school. I have to start off by explaining that my school isn’t an accurate representation of who I am. Tech companies should be looking for capable people with curiosity, passion, and motivation. I don’t think a brand name can tell you that.”
Having experienced the hardship of entering the tech industry coming from a “non-top” school, Giovanni has a lot of insights into how tech can alleviate its recruitment issues. “One thing that the tech industry can do is set up mentorship programs in places that don’t have a strong tech culture or community yet. If companies really want to make a difference, they need to go out and look for people. They need to invest and be involved in communities that aren’t being reached and have a relationship with them.”
After years of sacrifice and struggle, Giovanni is now interning at Intel, where he’s working on a machine learning project. In the future, he hopes to work in a wide range of fields, including AI and biotechnology, with the goal of having a far-reaching humanitarian impact. “I left my own country, I left my small town in Brazil, because I saw the opportunity for tech to make the world a much better place. I grew up seeing violence and corruption all around me, and I saw the potential for technology to change all of that. It’s not about money or prestige for me. It’s the knowledge that in the Valley I can solve a lot of the problems I saw growing up in a poor country.”
Giovanni is a member of #wethe5th, our fifth class of Fellows.
