From Dakar to Paris at 17: A journey of resilience, belief and building the bridge

I left Senegal for France when I was 17, driven by one thing: I wanted to become an engineer. I made that move with my sister by my side, and our mom cheering us on the way she always had, pushing us to do more, to be more, to study well, to stay ambitious, to be unapologetically our own version of amazing. My mother and my sister were my first role models, the first people who made it seem possible before anyone else did.

That dream of becoming an engineer started with my uncle. He never once told me a girl couldn't be an engineer, couldn't lead, couldn't achieve big things. Because of that, I grew up genuinely believing I could be and do anything I saw myself doing. I didn't know at the time how rare and valuable that was.

Coming from Africa to study in Europe at 17 is not easy. There were hard moments, the kind that come with distance from home, with adapting to a new system, with figuring things out largely on your own. But I met far more good people than bad along the way, and I held onto resilience as a default setting. I worked hard and refused to let negativity slow me down. I finished my engineering degree at the end of 2022 and started working right after.

Once I was actually in the field, a different pattern became clear. We were never many girls in STEAM, not in the classroom and not in the workplace. The big jobs, the raises, the promotions, they tend to go to the boys first. As a woman in tech, you learn to fight for things that should be given freely, and to justify decisions no one would ever question for someone else.

Two women shaped how I saw what was possible during this period: Chloé and Jennifer. They were role models before I had the language to explain why I needed one, and they still are.

I work as an engineer in Paris, but I'm from Senegal, and in 2023 I asked myself a question that changed my direction: I show up and do the work every day, but what impact am I actually having beyond my own career?

That question pushed me outward. I joined associations in Senegal, in France, and in the US. I found myself in rooms at UNESCO and at the UN that I never imagined I'd be in as a young engineer from Dakar. It was at UNESCO Paris that I met Ayumi, and around the same time I found a mentor in Angela. Together with a group of women who believed the same thing I did, we co-founded Women in Tech Senegal.

The mission was simple to state and hard to execute: close the gender gap in tech by doing the actual work on the ground in Senegal, not just talking about it from a distance. From Senegal, to the world.

That same conviction is what led me to start building SENPASSIA, the first AI bridge company built to connect continents, data first, then AI. Not AI for its own sake, but AI grounded in solid data foundations, designed to move between Africa and the rest of the world instead of treating one side as a market to sell into and the other as an afterthought.

I believe we go further as a group than alone. My mother and my sister gave me that belief first. My uncle gave it a shape. Women in Tech Senegal gave it a community. SENPASSIA is where I'm putting it to work, building the bridge I once needed someone to build for me.

Because the girl who left Senegal at 17 didn't just want to become an engineer. She wanted to prove that where you start doesn't decide where you can go, and that once you make it through the door, you go back and hold it open for the next one