My tech journey

My name is Fiona Mbithe a cybersecurity personnel and AWS Cloud Architect.

My journey with tech can’t be described as a straight line, in my teenage years I wanted to be an architect. I enjoyed seeing complex projects being created from very simple sketches. I enjoyed seeing the curation of beautiful, well functioning structures that had different designs and styles all serving the same purpose.

Unfortunately , I did not manage to land in an Architectural course, but in the back of my mind I knew, what I had to do for a living needs to involve creating functional and purposeful things from scratch.

With the guidance of my mother, I landed in tech.

For my first year and a half in tech, I spent most of my time moving from one track to another looking for where I fit in. I started off with data science then full-stack engineering, and slowly realized that they didn’t sit well with me. Endless headaches, from a code not working, failed modes and a huge dependency for coffee was not for me.

Then I landed in cybersecurity, and everything started to make sense; safeguarding networks, monitoring systems and discovering vulnerabilities became a breeze for me. I then integrated Cloud Computing into my studies and this brought out the little architect I always dreamed of becoming. I learnt that you always don’t have to figure it all out on the first day, doing what you loved is much better than forcing yourself into others.

I learnt that attending events and making sure to network is really helpful.

If I were to go back to my first year in tech I would make sure to attach myself with someone in the tech industry, a mentor, a friend or a neighbor , this really helps in career guidance, accountability and motivation during challenging times.