Intern Mentorship

In summer 2019 I mentored my first intern, Sienna. We worked together on a project that would allow customers to view the network data generated from the AWS Discovery Agent. I really enjoyed being able to have a positive impact on a soon-to-be industry engineer. I was able to give advice on avoiding burnout, having a positive impact on your workplace culture, work-life balance, and on what to expect after university. I learned that helping people further their careers is a big motivating factor for me. Working with Sienna has helped solidify my long term career goal of managing a group of developers. I look forward to mentoring many more interns in the future!

Girls Who Code

For 1.5 years I volunteered with Girls Who Code (GWC) as a volunteer instructor. I taught a small group of middle-school to high-school aged girls to program with Scratch and JavaScript. I organized and presented weekly lectures on Computer Science fundamentals. The primary goal of GWC is to teach algorithmic thinking. I enjoyed helping the girls learn that they have the problem solving skills to be a Computer Scientist. One thing I learned quickly was that a lot of my students had a false notion of who could get into programming, usually excluding themselves from that group. Helping young girls get the confidence to tackle any problem was incredibly rewarding. I hope that I helped open some options for the girls in my club.

Kansas City STEM Alliance

For 2 years I was a business liaison and a volunteer instructor for KC STEM Alliance, a youth outreach group. Girls in Tech is an on-going program that is specifically targeted to help young girls gain access to STEM. I volunteered at several Hour of Code events for middle-school girls.