Interns of Silicon Valley
Profiles of the Silicon Valley internship experience
Compiled by Clarissa Bukhan
It’s July and Silicon Valley is abuzz with college students from around the world, who are getting their first glimpse of what it is like to work in the tech industry. This summer, Women of Silicon Valley will be sharing a series of profiles on interns from across the tech landscape. Through these profiles, we hope to share some insight into the intern experience — from their hopes and aspirations, to their challenges and fears, to the amazing work that they are doing or have done to get to this point.
As a first installment in the “Interns of Silicon Valley” series, we met with undergraduate interns at the Google Women in Engineering (GWE) Summit in Mountain View. The event was Google’s fifth annual summit of its kind, focused on the development and celebration of the community of women in tech at Google. Here are a few of the women that we met:
Chau Pham | Earlham College, Class of 2019
Hometown: Hanoi, Vietnam
Internship: Google, Engineering Practicum Intern on Supply Chain
“I want to be an activist fighting for the livelihood of as many people as I can, no matter where they are from or whether or not they look like me. Some people would tell me that engineers shouldn’t try to be activists, but when these issues are personal and we have the ability to fix them, we must.”
Gabby Jackson | Rice University, Class of 2020
Hometown: Atlanta, GA
Internship: Google, Engineering Practicum Intern on Technical Infrastructure
“I struggled with imposter syndrome a lot when I started this internship. I didn’t think that I was qualified, and I felt really overwhelmed by everyone around me. During the first week, we had to do an exercise in the command line interface, and I was terrified! When I arrived in my office, I didn’t talk for days, and my hosts assumed that I was really shy and quiet. I don’t think that I’m quiet at ALL, I was just scared that I was going to get fired! Over time, as I’ve submitted code and watched my project grow, I’ve felt a lot more confident in my skills, and I think that helped me a lot. I still feel like I don’t belong a lot of the time, and I think that’s just something I’m going to have to work on long-term.”
Valerie Garcia | Stanford University, Class of 2019
Hometown: Plano, TX
Internship: Google, Software Engineering Intern
“I went through a depressive episode this past school year triggered by a lot of personal changes; all my classes were suddenly much harder than freshman year, I came out to myself and to my friends as bisexual, and went through various other dramas and turmoils. For a long time I thought to myself “I know what’s wrong with me. All I need to do is X, Y, and Z and I’ll be back on track.” So I would forego reaching out for help because I didn’t want to look or feel weak and I thought I could figure it out myself. It took many months and a lot of failures before I finally admitted to myself that my mental health was more important than my pride. Since then, I’ve been working with a wonderful therapist, I’ve started depression medication, and I’ve repaired my relationship with my parents. Getting help seems like an obvious choice, but it was surprisingly hard for me to get there.”
Kendrick Umstattd | Yale University, Class of 2019
Hometown: Leesburg, VA
Internship: Google, Engineering Practicum Intern on Cloud Machine Learning
“‘This past year, I taught a lesson on the work of Alan Turing, Joan Clarke, and their fellow Bletchley Park codebreakers. When I finished the presentation, I was thrilled to see how many students expressed a deeper interest in computer science and were eager to have questions about cybersecurity answered. Having the opportunity to make careers like “engineer” and “computer scientist” more accessible to young students is incredibly important to me.”
Archana Simha | University of Washington, Class of 2019
Hometown: Cupertino, CA
Internship: Google, Engineering Practicum Intern on Ads Products
“A lot of my friends have been passionate about their future careers from a young age but even as I entered college, I was unclear about my future. Since then, I’ve realized that it’s okay not to have your whole life figured out because your interests can change!”
Varsha Venkat | UC Berkeley, Class of 2019
Hometown: Cupertino, CA
Internship: Google, Engineering Practicum Intern on Local Search
“As of now, my post-graduation plan is to work on projects that personalize and streamline the user experience by applying artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques (i.e. virtual assistants, improved recommendations). I also hope to travel and work with groups that support emerging entrepreneurs and minorities in engineering. I believe that positive impact comes from helping even one person, so my hope is that I can help at least one individual achieve their goals!”
If you’d like to read more about these and other interns across Silicon Valley, check out our Interns of Silicon Valley album on Facebook, where we’ll be posting new intern profiles periodically throughout the summer.
