SOLVED

Women ITPros - Post your intro here!

Microsoft

Wow we had a wonderful kickoff meeting last week and I'm already chatting with several people who attended. One of my action items was to create a thread where people can introduce themselves. So here it is! (NOTE: be mindful that this is a public forum, so if you want to connect with someone, I suggest using the Private Messaging feature in TechCommunity - click the name and in the profile, use the Send a message button.)

 

Here's a list of suggested things to tell us about yourself:

1) How did you get into working in tech?

2) What is your current tech job? (or if you aren't in tech yet, what kind of job you think you might like?)

3) What do you like best about working in tech? (or what do you think you might like best about working in tech?)

4) What skills do you have that might help women either get into ITPro work or advance in ITpro careers? 

 

You don't have to be a woman or an ITPro to introduce yourself - we welcome everyone who wants to support women in the ITPro world! 

 

44 Replies

@s0phi wrote:

Not sure if I need to name a tech skill here, like Visio, or Tableau or more generic like research and technical writing. 


@s0phi 

Any skills you are willing to share, share! 

1) How did you get into working in tech?

I'm not sure I'd say I currently work in tech, as I'm not necessarily a practitioner. That is, outside of simple power user tech skills, I leave the difficult tasks for professionals. That said, I work for a technology company (LinkedIn), and I kind of backed my way into it. I started my professional career in technical book publishing as an Admin Assistant, and worked my way up to Acquisitions Editor. That lead to my role as a content manager at LinkedIn and LinkedIn Learning.  

2) What is your current tech job? (or if you aren't in tech yet, what kind of job you think you might like?)

I am the Manager of Content for LinkedIn Learning, LinkedIn's training portal. The team I lead oversees the IT and Data Science segments or our larger Technology training library

3) What do you like best about working in tech? (or what do you think you might like best about working in tech?)

For me, it's about innovation. How can we use technology to make our lives easier or better, and how do we get from A to Z?

4) What skills do you have that might help women either get into ITPro work or advance in ITpro careers? 

LinkedIn Learning can provide a voice for women to advocate for getting more women into the tech field. One of our initiatives is to build content created by under-represented minorities, and to create content that helps URMs gain the skills and confidence necessary to succeed in the tech world. In fact, as I type this, we're in the process of releasing a number of courses titled Women in Tech that will provide some insights into the opportunities for women in this space. 

 

@Cathy Moya 

1) How did you get into working in tech? I got into tech on the programing end before decided I wasn't a fan of that and started on the break-fix side of things and have been doing that for the last 15 + years.

 

2) What is your current tech job?  My current Job is Senior IT Tech although it has morphed into a few other things over the years from teaching teachers in a beginning tech class to now working with HR and doing New teacher Orientation and helping out the interns with learning the routine and how to fix things. 

 

3) What do you like best about working in tech? I work for a school district so every once in while getting to see the kids do something cool with the computers is awesome. But since I mostly deal with the teachers and administration I love the fact that I can help people understand the technology they are given. and in education it's ever-changing so I am always learning something new also.

 

4) What skills do you have that might help women either get into ITPro work or advance in  IT pro careers? Honestly, being the only female in my department other then the secretary I have found learning as much as you can, don't be afraid to ask questions & most importantly google & youtube are your friend when you don't know how to do something and the guys a reluctant to help.  I have even been able to show the guys a thing or two. 

 

 

1) How did you get into working in tech?

I used to work in fashion retail, but wasn't happy and was thinking that it was about time to change.

One day I was talking to one of my friends and she told me about IT careers. This pushed me to start to make researches on what I can do to get into the tech world. I found so many useful online website and meetups that helped me not only to do netwroking, but also to learn new skills that I have developed in my free time.

 

2) What is your current tech job? (or if you aren't in tech yet, what kind of job you think you might like?)

I am currently working as a Cloud Developer on Azure. I have the chance to work on different projects with different companies, from implementing Azure infrastructure to app migration.

 

3) What do you like best about working in tech? (or what do you think you might like best about working in tech?)

I like the fact that you never finish to learn new things everyday. I also like that it is an open field where I have met people from different backgrounds and you have the opportunity to connect with other likeminded people and feel part of a big community during meetups and conferences.

 

4) What skills do you have that might help women either get into ITPro work or advance in ITpro careers?

I am at the beginning of my career in IT, so I am not expert on a specific subject yet. However I can help by sharing my career path and how I got into the cloud field. I can share my knowledge about CI/CD Pipeline, Terraform, Azure resources and what it means to work in an Agile environment.

@Cathy Moya Thanks for starting this thread! As some others mentioned, I'm happy to have found a tribe not focussing on code. I'm more end-user oriented but still feel at home with the IT crowd.

 

1) How did you get into working in tech?

Oh boy, my path is anything but a logical one! Short story is that I'm a biochemist, that worked a little as a lab technician, then did various jobs in a telecommunication company, ended up in training, then instructional design. I got hooked to technology as a trainer and instructional designer and that sparked my idea to start my company in 2004. 

For the more detailed story, you can have a look at my Humans of IT guest blog post here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/humans-of-it-blog/guest-blog-public-speaking-excellence-how-t.... Thanks again to @ShonaBang for the opportunity!

 

2) What is your current tech job? (or if you aren't in tech yet, what kind of job you think you might like?)

My business, CHABOS, is specialized in presentations & visual communications. That means that I speak, train and coach about public speaking, good presentation structure, presentation best practices for design and accessibility, PowerPoint, and the basics for presentation equipment & AV. For the in-depth part of Av & other technical needs, I rely on my business partner/husband.

 

I also have some courses on the LinkedIn Learning platform on PowerPoint, impactful presentations, communications and public speaking (in French).

 

Of course, having to develop my knowledge and expertise in many Microsoft O365 tools for my own needs, I also help my clients leverage all the power and productivity that comes with the Suite. My exciting challenge of the moment: building an interactive training content in PowerPoint, host it in a Teams team so my client can invite participants that need to be trained & certified, have them use PowerPoint for web, and create the exam in Forms so my client can test their knowledge. Totally excited about the whole thing. :)

 

3) What do you like best about working in tech? (or what do you think you might like best about working in tech?)

There is never a dull moment! Yes, there are a few frustrating ones at times. But the ongoing technology improvements keep us in a learning mode I find exciting. It's incredible how technology can help us become more efficient and productive in our everyday work, even if technology does also bring us glitches and down time. In the end, we still have saved some time.

 

4) What skills do you have that might help women either get into ITPro work or advance in ITpro careers? 

My passion is leveraging technology so people communicate in an empowered and impactful way, and have fun doing it! I started as a very shy & introvert person, so I know how crippling that can be. Not only can technology help speakers become more confident with their delivery (if used well!), it's also a very efficient way to have greater impact and help audiences remember more of what you said. The human brain is wired to react more quickly to images & visuals, why not use that as our advantage when we speak? ;)

 

Oh, and if any have the secret dream of sharing their big bold ideas on a TEDx stage, I can help with that too. I have helped some speakers get some pretty amazing results in the past.