Presentation: DivDay, University of Texas

I’m not too sure where to even begin, but I wanted to tell you all a bit about very first experience being a speaker and presenting at a conference. And yes I was nervous.

But first, let me tell you a bit about the conference itself. It’s a one day event put on by the Hispanic Association of Computer Scientists & The Association of Black Computer Scientists at the University of Texas: Div Day. The event is meant to encourage students to learn more about what diversity and inclusion looks like in Tech and find ways to better navigate it as they begin to shape and step into their careers.

I would like to start off by saying never in a million years did I think I would be presenting and sharing a bit about my own story and my journey into tech — and even up to a few weeks ago I didn’t. When I first heard about the event, I was thought “wow this is amazing…how can I get involved?”. And so I reached out to the organizer and said — hey let me know how I can help, volunteer or so forth? And he replied saying…well why don’t you speak? My immediate reaction was — ummm NAH…but then I thought well..why not? .

I was quite honored to have been considered, and more so honored to have had the opportunity, but I’ll admit — it was a huge challenge for me to muster up the courage to present. I took on the challenge because one- I didn’t think I could do it — and that’s when I’ve learned you need to charge at the opportunity with the greatest amount of force, and two — I wanted to share any insight I had with these amazing students that were about to step into the tech world.

As to not bore you all with too much detail — I took weeks to prep, and learned a lot about myself in the process, and was able to reflect a lot about my own journey but was genuinely inspired by the mission of the organization the, passion of the students, and opportunity to meet some amazing future engineers.