In recent years, more women have been breaking barriers and changing the narrative to enter technology and innovation related careers. From being self taught to joining communities to upskill and reskill their technology expertise in their field of choice. Here is a story of Brittney Ball whose story is no different to a majority of young developers and engineers in Africa. She is a self-taught software engineer, public speaker, event organizer and mentor based in Charlotte, North Carolina.
After enrolling in a Year Up, a one-year career development program that provided college-level course, career training and a six month corporate internship. Brittney then embarked on completing her IT courses and landed internship with Food & Water Watch as a Junior developer where she did a lot of design and web development.
She the moved her family to Charlotte after few years of doing contractual work for non-profit organizations with the hope of landing a full-time role in software development. Though she didn’t have a home and a lined up job, she was determined to make it work, she linked up with Charlotte Developers and connected with a company called Skookum (Which builds digital products with an aim of optimizing user experience). They offered her a six-week contract as a front end developer, and later confirmed her as full time job software engineer.
Its through this roller coaster journey that she made it her mission to inspire, to mentor and pave way to young women and girls. She thus hosts meetups Charlotte developers as away of giving back as well to helping developers come up with innovative solutions. She is the organizer of girl develop it and her goal is to pay it forward and assist people acquire a new perception that you don’t have to go through traditional route to be successful. You can actually start now, as long as you want it, you can achieve it!
From single mom in a shelter… to self taught software engineer …. statistic to success story… and I’m just getting started 💪🏾💪🏾💪🏾
— Brittney (she/her) 🧠👩🏾💻✊🏾💅🏾 (@Brii_toe_knee) November 28, 2018
