International Women’s Day 2019
Written by WWC Team
Every week Women Who Code publishes a newsletter to share news and to highlight upcoming events. In addition, the newsletter’s #ApplaudHer section celebrates the milestones and achievements of our members. In honor of International Women’s Day, let’s applaud the women who work hard to make the New York City network of Women Who Code a success. It wouldn’t happen without them!
As part of this effort and to highlight our network’s diversity, our directors and leads tell us about their careers in tech and what their plans are for 2019.
 |
 |
 |
|
Luisa Marieth Morales Engineering Fellow The Mayor's Office for Economic Opportunity (NYCO) Women Who Code Lead |
Ruth Naebeck Datadog Technical Writer Women Who Code Lead |
Jiaqi Liu Senior Software Engineer Button Women Who Code Director |
 |
 |
 |
|
Jazbel Wang Women Who Code Lead |
Danielle Adams Senior Software Engineer Heroku (Salesforce) Women Who Code Lead |
Dushyanthi Pieris Software Engineer 2 Audible Women Who Code Lead |
 |
 |
 |
|
Kamilla Khabibrahkmanova CBRE Build Women Who Code Director |
Elizabeth Funk Software Engineer Priceline Women Who Code Director |
Brenda Cortez Deverell Software Developer Koneksa Health Women Who Code Director |
 |
 |
|
|
Jennifer Choudhry United Technologies Digital Accelerator Women Who Code Lead |
Anna Leonenko Web Developer, Student Women Who Code Lead |
What do you enjoy most about your job?
Luisa: Knowing that my work positively impacts New Yorkers and their well-being.
Jazbel: Helping to create products that I am passionate about and working in a safe, inclusive team.
Danielle: I love the people and the product!
Ruth: The variety of topics I work on.
Jiaqi: I'm the Tech Lead of my team, and I love seeing us all work together to come up with elegant technical solutions for our core platform.
Kamilla: Building things that make people's lives easier.
Elizabeth: I love problem-solving and using my brain everyday. I also love building interactive components that millions of users touch.
Brenda: I really enjoy learning about new tech tools that help me solve problems at work. I also think that my work is meaningful in the field of health and this makes it much more meaningful.
Jenny: Being in a digital transformation organization, I take part in innovating the aerospace industry. Knowing the work I can do can impact people’s lives is rewarding. I’ve also been fortunate to work with great people and have built connections with many of them.
Anna: There is never a familiar path. Every problem I face, I face for the first time and have to learn every day.
How long have you been volunteering with WWCode NYC and what have your roles been?
Luisa: I've been volunteering as a Lead for roughly a year and a half.
Jazbel: Since Feb 2018. Volunteer, Lead, Speaker.
Danielle: 2 years, and I just got back into it!
Ruth: 1 year – lead.
Jiaqi: Since 2015, Volunteer, Lead and now Director.
Kamilla: I’ve been volunteering for 4 years and have been a Director for a year.
Elizabeth: Since 2015, Volunteer, Lead and now Director.
Brenda: I’ve been a WWCode Director since the fall of 2014.
Jenny: For 2 years I’ve served as a lead kickstarting meetups across organizations in NYC.
Anna: I have been volunteering with Women Who Code for almost a year, and now I’m a Lead.
What do you enjoy about volunteering your time with Women Who Code NYC?
Luisa: I enjoy being able to put together events that provide value to other engineers, regardless of their experience level. WWCode was pivotal in my career transition, and so I love being able to give back and meeting others making the same leap. Being surrounded by women engineers who are further along in their careers is really impactful because it shows me firsthand what's possible, and I believe it has the same impact on others. Being a part of that is a privilege.
Jazbel: I love it when the attendees of events tell me that the events went well and they learned a lot when they originally thought they wouldn't.
Danielle: I like to see beginners get inspired. I think it’s really powerful to have a few people in a room look at someone speaking and want to follow in their footsteps.
Ruth: Giving back to others who were like me prior to my career change.
Jiaqi: I'm deeply inspired by our Directors, Leads, Volunteers – their stories, their careers, and the commitment they have to making tech a better place to work for everyone.
Kamilla: Definitely getting to connect with our members at the events and hearing about how our community has inspired them in their career. As a director, getting to work with other organizations trying to bring more women into their fields has also been very rewarding and interesting.
Elizabeth: I love providing support to our members and creating a safe space in which they can explore tech and their career options.
Brenda: I like volunteering to WWCode NYC because of its diversity in topics we try to cover, attendees we reach with each event, and volunteers. We are an inclusive network and as a mother working in tech, I think it can help others see themselves giving back to the community through volunteering.
Jenny: Spending time with my co-leads. We meet quarterly as a group outside of events to build relationships with each other. Many of us have similar goals and sometimes find ourselves dealing with similar struggles.
Anna: The supportive community that I can see at all of our Women Who Code events inspires and empowers me. To be a part of those events makes me feel that I’m doing the right thing.
How do you balance work with life outside of work?
Luisa: In full transparency, I'm not the best at it right now. I see work-life balance as being a bit of an art. The way I manage to keep some balance is by attaching an importance-level to tasks/things I want to do and block schedule them all into my calendar. I'm currently a full-time computer science graduate student at Pace University, a Graduate Assistant, and an Engineering Fellow at NYCO. My fellowship is part-time and the rest of my week gets blocked out for GA duties, evening classes, and coursework. Life outside of this is pretty much sprinkles of self-care (exercising, time with friends and family, alone time), meal prepping, volunteering, and anything else that is linked to a goal or becomes of high priority at the time. Needless to say, some weeks are more balanced than others. Block scheduling has been a huge help.
Jazbel: I boulder at Brooklyn Boulders Gowanus and dance.
Danielle: Lists, Trello boards, and a calendar I follow religiously
Ruth: I work my 40 hours and don’t allow work to consume me.
Jiaqi: Every Tuesday evening, I go rock climbing with some fellow tech women and we've really grown together, become stronger and more confident. Activities like this help me unplug from work.
Kamilla: Barely! I started gradually shifting my wake up time two years ago and now am usually up by 6am, which gives me a few hours to go to the gym/catch up on side projects and relax before starting the grind. I also try to set limits on everything – not work late more than once a week, limiting the monthly hours I spend doing pro-bono work, saying no to invites when I need some 'me' time, etc.
Elizabeth: Spending time with my 12-year old parrot, Donut, gives me perspective — he doesn’t care at all about code. Otherwise, I’m still working on achieving balance.
Brenda: I work for a company that puts value on a flexible work from home schedule. This allows me to work from home one day per week, which in turns helps me not only enjoy my family more, but also leads me have better mental health, by avoiding some stresses on that day, and really focus on my work.
Jenny: I take a yoga class at my yoga studio 5x a week which motivates me to leave work at a good hour. Plus, my dog 🙂
Anna: I fail to do it.
What accomplishments from 2018 are you most proud of & what goals do you have for 2019?
Luisa: I'm really proud about applying and being accepted into graduate school. It was something I'd been wanting to do for a while. I'm also proud of having been chosen as a Graduate Assistant and my role as an Engineering Fellow at NYCO. For 2019 my goals include landing an awesome summer internship where I can develop my backend/data engineering skills in a supportive and challenging environment, continuing to ace my classes, and publishing a GitBook on web accessibility.
Jazbel: I switched companies! All my goals for 2019 are for bouldering and dancing. In general, to just get better at them.
Danielle: I started graduate school at NYU 🙂
Ruth: 2018 – First year as a Women Who Code lead (organized 3 meetups). Started working for Datadog and transitioned into a role I’m really happy with.
2019 – Find opportunities to write or speak and excel in my new role.
Jiaqi: In 2018, I became a Director for Women Who Code, worked with amazing volunteers on events. I blogged about the oncall culture at work. I started to develop more thoughts and philosophies around technical design and spoke at PyCon about building data pipelines and observability. In 2019, I am planning on reading more, becoming stronger and speaking up for what I believe is right both at work and outside of work.
Kamilla: Becoming the largest WWCode network in the US and starting a new job at a new company! In 2019 I want to learn more about in-depth software engineering, especially machine learning and NLP, and apply to grad school.
Elizabeth: In 2018 I did so many new things. I became a director for Women Who Code, participated in our company hackathon and won first place, and was fearless about solving difficult technical problems at work. In 2019, I hope to deepen my knowledge of front-end frameworks and systems design, and to start speaking at conferences.
Brenda: I learned to use Reactjs and deployed my first web page at work. I also learned some Android development and built my first few Android apps. In the new year I’d like to explore React Native and Kotlin development for mobile apps.
Jenny: Finding a job, workplace, manager and team that’s right for me. My goals for 2019 include reading more than I do now and leading an engineering project from start to delivery.
Anna: I went to a bootcamp and polished my web development skills.
What advice would you give to any woman entering the tech sector, trying to move up in their career, or just trying to stay in tech?
Luisa: Community is key. Look for a community where you feel seen and heard, a place where you can share your concerns and have honest and constructive feedback provided. Also, make time for the goals you want to achieve and speak up about these goals. Ask for the promotion or pay raise, sign up for that online class, submit the job application. In 99.99% of cases no one is going to hand you what you want, you need to ask for it and you need to take whatever steps are needed to get where you want to go.
Jazbel: Tech is not my entire world, it is just a part of it. Find something outside of tech that you enjoy, because it's easy to get stressed out at work/in tech and your hobbies can ground you. I feel like once I realized this, I am happier and things end up going well.
Danielle: Be confident in everything you do. If you have that, everything else follows.
Ruth: If you’re trying to enter the tech sector, make sure you like tech by trying some free online coding courses. If you’re ready to transition, consider a coding boot camp.
Jiaqi: Don't let other people's negativity weigh you down. Allow yourself to feel and then move on. Keep a brag sheet to remind yourself that you are good at what you do. And if you ever need a vote of confidence, just come talk to one of us at one of our events.
Elizabeth: Be coachable and respond positively to sincere feedback. Keep learning all the time! Finally, stick with it and do not give up even when things seem like they are not going well. Situations and people always change. If you keep working toward your goal, you can make it happen.
Kamilla: I think community is really important – form friendships with other female software engineers and use it as your support network for getting to where you want to be in your career. Women Who Code events are great for finding a squad!
Brenda: I would tell her to be perseverant, that it will likely not be an easy path to a career in tech, but that it can happen. Any sacrifice made in the process will be temporary, but if it helps her reach her goals, then those sacrifices may be worth it. If time permits, she should try to volunteer or join communities that can offer support while she navigates the field to where she wants to be.
Jenny: Find the work environment that’s right for you. The culture of your workplace can be one of the most defining characteristics of your growth and success.
Anna: Don’t underestimate yourself. It takes time and effort for anyone to learn a new skill. You just need to invest time in it. It may be more time than you expected, but don’t let that scare you.
In all, five directors, twelve leads and a host of other volunteers, sponsors and allies made it possible for us to support over twelve thousand members with 52 events in 2018. In a country where women occupy only 27% of chief executive jobs and make up only 20% of all software developers, these events which support women to excel in technology and to advance in their careers are essential.
So let’s #ApplaudHer — all the women who make the New York City network of Women Who Code possible and all the women around the world who make Women Who Code a success. Happy International Women’s Day 2019!