A New Kind of Preventative Medicine

This is the second in a series of pieces to spotlight the experiences of women who are beneficiaries of Scholarships For Women Studying Information Security, or SWSIS, a program sponsored by Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Applied Computer Security Associates.

When I was a teenager, I thought there was one career path for people who wanted to save lives: medicine. I chose my pre-medicine major, confident that if I wanted to make a difference and help others, this was the path for me.

It only took a few months before I discovered a very different route to have the kind of impact I craved － one to which many women are never exposed. That first summer after freshman year, I interned at the Air Force Research Lab and worked on a surgical simulations project that helped paramedics overseas save the lower legs of soldiers through a special surgical procedure. By creating a medical tutorial using an android and iPhone application with a team of other students and even creating secure algorithms for disaster rescue missions, I saw how the defense industry would allow me to make a difference in the lives of Americans through the use of technology.

I had an epiphany: software engineering was a form of “preventative medicine.” Algorithms and applications of computer science could be the key to preventing disasters and helping others to be better prepared when the worst happens.

So as a second year student, I switched my major to computer science, now knowing how technology could save lives and prevent soldiers from harm’s way.

Suddenly, I was one of the only women in my class and in the computing field. Sometimes I felt isolated. I was often bullied and patronized, made to feel different because I didn’t look like the rest of the cohort. But I was lucky to find external support from Northrop Grumman, where I received a scholarship and a co-op position at the Cincinnati, Ohio branch working on research and development in the field of cyber warfare. Whenever I felt uncertain about my cybersecurity career — and not sure if I belonged in the field — my job and the community that I found at Northrop Grumman reminded me that I was in the right place.

I was fortunate to find that safe haven and wanted to provide the same for other minorities. I became determined to bring other underrepresented groups into the field, and to give them the sense of the community that I had found: In 2014, I founded my own student chapter to help other women called the Association for Computing — Committee for Women (ACM-W). As the founder and president of this women in computing group, it was my goal to dedicate the organization’s mission to retaining and recruiting women by serving the community. Like me, many of the women in ACM-W felt ostracized as minorities in the field. Now, they had a safe space — a place where they could express themselves and learn from others about how to thrive in the industry.

In two short years, the group began to garner attention, and funding, from local and outside supporters, notably Microsoft, Northrop Grumman and Google. Throughout the last year we partnered with Google on our “Bearcat Coders” service initiative, where we introduced tutoring and mentoring in computing to the students from inner city schools . Fifty to sixty volunteers from all majors at the University of Cincinnati tutor and mentor 9th — 11th grade students at Hughes STEM High school during their IT/CS Programming and Web Design classes tutor and mentor students from inner city school districts on how to code. Since I was first attracted to the field by learning about the impact that cyber security and technology has on real people, we emphasize the human-centered nature of coding during Q&A style panels after each session to relay that message to students.

In the fall we collaborated with Microsoft to bring the successful Digigirlz coding and networking event for high school girls to campus and in the spring we partnered with Northrop Grumman to host our annual career networking event for university women interested in pursuing careers in cyber security. The efforts of the group have brought to campus dozens of young women who might otherwise never have considered a career in computing.

Even though I’ve graduated, I do not plan to stop paying it forward and trying to encourage more minorities to consider a career in the field: For starters, I hope to make a difference as the youngest board member of the ACM-W Council to give back on a larger scale. And I’m sharing what we’ve learned with the broader community: I published a paper with Google all about how to increase and retain women in computing, explaining how and why the peer mentoring and community-creation strategies we’ve used have been effective.

I hope my story will inspire more people like me to have epiphanies of their own — to suddenly see computer science as a path to make the difference they wish to see in the world.