My Personal Story

Curious and passionate, I discovered IT through a data entry training course that my father paid for during my 5th-grade school holidays (2013), where I learned to use MS Word, Excel, Publisher, and PowerPoint on Windows 98 or XP. Seeing that a machine could be used to write just like in a notebook fascinated me immediately. Not having the means to own one at home, I spent hours at the cybercafé, captivated by the computer and everything I could do with Microsoft tools. After obtaining my BEPC (first cycle secondary school certificate), I continued on to high school, becoming my father's first child and first daughter to choose the technical education path. I started in 2017 in the Installation and IT Maintenance program, where over three years I earned my professional diploma with honors, discovering hardware and doing internships in IT maintenance in a male-dominated world. At that time, IT and technical education were still in their early stages in my country, and there were only two women in our second-year and third-year classes, which forced me to stand out to be selected for group work. I was later admitted to the Institute of Training and Research in IT, one of the best computer science schools in my country, where I pursued further studies in IT security. During my university studies, I joined several communities and initiatives promoting female leadership and excellence in the digital field, and I also trained through short courses. In 2022, my team and I won first place in the Digital Women Heroes program, which supports women in digital entrepreneurship. We developed Dotomi, a digital solution allowing young people to speak freely and learn about sexual and reproductive health. As a co-founder, I led the technical team responsible for developing the application. To complete my university studies, I did a final-year internship where I discovered the cloud and the need for automation. The company had a VPS and several web applications. I assisted their system engineer in maintaining servers and applications, and I set up a monitoring system to oversee their physical, network, and application resources. This experience revealed the real needs of companies in terms of automation and the cloud, and since then I have specialized in optimization, cloud computing, and DevOps. At the same time, I advocate for breaking the glass ceiling in response to the low number of women in IT or in technical positions. Personally, I invest my time in several groups and associations to demonstrate what I can do and to encourage other women to take the leap.