I have a dual degree in commerce and computing. Started out at Deloitte doing a mix of audit and consulting work and started pivoting more toward data analytics

Goals for the program: Help others learn from my past experiences, build a relationship

I studied Computer Science at Queens before joining Deloitte as a Technology Management Consultant. I’ve since made the move into industry where I am now a TPM at Shopify. While at Queens, I was involved in many extra curricular activities, including QWIL which fostered a community of women seeking to make an impact in business - I am eager to give back!

Goals for the program: Support women interested in tech careers!

I have a computer engineering degree from Queen’s, I’ve always loved computers and video games and I found my first few programming courses to be very interesting and rewarding, which is what led me in the comp eng direction. In first year, I originally chose applied mathematics & engineering with a computing subspecialty, but I switched to computer when I realized I didn’t want to be doing math long term. I went to Deloitte after undergrad because they have a lot of opportunities to work across so many domains, giving me the ability to apply my degree to different projects in different sectors.

Goals for the program: Help students figure out what to do after their degree, answer questions, provide support

I am originally from Iraq. Used to live in Iraq, then Jordan and ended in Canada. I joined University of Jordan as a science however, within 2nd year need to pick up on of the field which I got Computer science since I found it close from my way of thinking (logic)

Goals for the program: Helping others, time management, leading for right direction, get some session out

Graduated with a degree in Software Engineering (UNB'19) after five long years from the University of New Brunswick. While getting my degree I managed a computer science education start up founded by a cybersecurity professor at my university. I found that there was a lot of opportunities around being deeply technical that didn't necessarily require you to be a hardcore developer. During my final year, I was headhunted to Microsoft, started as a technical account manager, wanted more technical challenge and now I work as a Cybersecurity Technical Specialist bringing in multi million dollar deals across Canada, helping secure Canadian Businesses ( yes this is technical!). Why tech? I used to be more of an artist, and still gravitate towards that. Software Development and tech require a lot of creative problem solving and I naturally found my way here. I hope this help!

Goals for the program: To gain just as much value as my mentee! Ultimately my goal would be to make sure that at the end of the two months my mentee feels more capable of taking on specific goals within their career and education

I always gravitated towards technology through experiencing video games at a young age. I found it incredible creating experiences on a screen from just writing words. I graduated from Queen's University in Computer Engineering in 2018 and I found what I enjoyed doing through winning QHacks 2018. I was able to create a web app from writing basic HTML, CSS , JS and I was able to develop something that could help benefit society. So now I build my career revolving around that aspect, writing lines of code to benefit people in their everyday lives.

Goals for the program: To help student(s) gain a better understanding of the options they have in tech and help bridge the gap of knowledge on tech careers earlier!

Studied CS @Berkeley, Cisco / Yahoo / Google Software Engineer, recently switched to Developer Relations (basically technical content creator). Got into tech because didn't know what wanted to do in college, it was something I wanted to try because I've always like math / logic. Full story: https://medium.com/@andreacareer/my-career-journey-adfd377781e0

Goals for the program: Be as helpful as I can be for students!

UofT -> Internship after 2nd year -> dropped out to work full time -> Wealthsimple -> Block

Goals for the program: Help out students, share career advice, and be generally with advice I wish I had going through university.

I am a recent grad of Queens Computing (2022) where I studied cognitive science. I was able to use my specialization to break in to the Product Manager roles at startups during my summers and do psychology/computing research during the years. In my 4th year I completed my undergrad thesis at an AI lab where I focused on chatbots and proposing a new algorithm for their conversation paths.

Goals for the program: I would love to help any undergrads who are interested in research or their masters degree to get a better idea of the process as it can be very isolating. I would love share my tips and knowledge on the experiences at Queen's available and make personalized recommendations to my mentee! I also love making friends so I would love a mentee that goes beyond the strictly school chats!

Background: master environmental studies, was a prof than worked as a career educator than at 37 decided to career transition. I networked and took online courses.

Goals for the program: To help a mentee navigate the security world

Computer engineering at queens, heavily involved with EngSoc, including director of IT, Advisory Board Chair, and President. Got into tech because I enjoyed the way of thinking and understanding how to create modern solutions using technology. I am now interested in how technology translates to people and our governments, so I am dropping my job to part time this Fall and attending law school.

Goals for the program: Help students understand their career options

I had no idea I wanted to get into tech when I joined Queen's. I figured that out after first year and never looked back. I've tried a lot of different things, working in old big tech, startups, freelancing, and now Google.

Goals for the program: I would like to give insight on what working as a software engineer is really like. How you can prepare for interviews. What types of things can you do to differentiate yourself from others in a difficult job market.

I grew up in a small town in Ontario and when I graduated high school I thought I was going to go into Civil Engineering at Queen’s. During my first year I learned about programming and fell in love with it. I decided to major in Computer Engineering instead. During my time at Queens I decided to get involved with extracurriculars to grow my skills and meet likeminded folks; I Co-Chaired the Queen’s Space Conference (QSC), QHacks, and the Queen’s Technology and Media Association (QTMA). After graduating, I spent the first 3 years of my career working as a Full-Stack Software Engineer at Ten Thousand Coffees where I saw the company grow from 12 people to more than 30. I now work at Skillful where I just the team as the Founding Engineering Lead. The common thread in my career is working on things that help people find meaning and success in their careers.

Goals for the program: Help students reach their full potential in their career

I studied compsci at Queen's and graduated in 2020, but had no idea what the tech industry was like for most of my undergrad. Through QWIC and other clubs (QWIC 2020 co-chair here!), I was able to learn more and get exposed to different companies and different positions. I finally landed on being a software engineer at Microsoft, and started working on Azure Compute, a distributed cloud platform (I knew nothing about distributed cloud platforms). Throughout my time at Microsoft, I've continued to mentor interns and other new employees, cause this industry is so broad and you can always be learning so much.

Goals for the program: I would love to meet someone and just help them discover their career path in tech! I had a million different things I wanted to do before I decided to become a software engineer, so I want to help people know their options, and how to succeed in whatever field they decide (industry, academia, or anything else)

I studied engineering and discovered that i liked programming :) I followed opportunities from there until i got into cloud, big data, and reliability work.

Goals for the program: Help others and give back + gain experience mentoring others + learn about new tech

Queen's Comm 2016. Worked in management consulting out of school before breaking into tech in San Francisco. Worked for a variety of startups of different sizes including at Stripe.

Goals for the program: Share resources and experience that will help young women

After hating my first summer internship I knew I wanted to find roles that challenged me and gave me the opportunity to learn and explore. Despite being terrible at coding (if you saw me briefly in CISC 101 before I dropped it no you didn't), I completed two more internships in tech adjacent roles- business technology analyst (working with Salesforce) and product management marking (cybersecurity). I joined QWIC as a community coordinator in my 4th year after participating in the mentorship program as a mentee. Now I work to bring together people focused teams and functional tech teams to modernize technology in the federal government.

Goals for the program: Help more students without "typical" tech backgrounds feel more confident applying for tech or tech related roles.

Hi, I'm Christina — a Staff Software Engineer at Wealthsimple. Our goal at Wealthsimple is to help everyone achieve financial freedom! I'm currently on the Developer Tools team, building solutions to enable engineers to deploy their code faster and with more confidence. During my career, I've made contributions to web and mobile development, product development, UX design, incident response, scaling, and performance. I'm passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion. I founded (and led for four years) an employee resource group at Wealthsimple for folks with marginalized gender identities in Engineering and Data Science. I was a founding member of my organization's inclusion and diversity committee, identifying and implementing solutions to make Wealthsimple a more equitable and inclusive workplace. I studied Computer Science at Queen's University — I chose this program after being introduced to coding in high school. I was initially drawn to Computer Science as it allowed me to exercise my creative skills and logical thinking, two of my strongest skillsets! I'm extremely grateful for studying Computer Science, as it has exposed me to many more career paths in tech than I ever thought possible.

Goals for the program: Mentor someone!

I completed a cs degree from queens, with the biomedical computing specialization. I fell in love with machine learning and my current masters research area is ai focused on biomedical data

Goals for the program: I hope to be a good resource and connection

I’m a former philosophy student/theatre director turned software engineer. I did my MFA in Theatre Directing before doing a 9-week boot camp program and transitioning into web development. I’ve also taught web development full time at Juno College.

Goals for the program: Just to offer any career advice I can to emerging students!

I'm from Ottawa and I studied computer science at the University of Ottawa by accident (I as gonna go into chemistry). I never programmed before my first intro to computer science lab, but I quickly realized that I chose the right program. During school I was part of the coop program and worked for several Ottawa area startups. After graduation I decided not continue my undergrad research and instead I moved to Toronto. I joined Collage, a small HR SaaS company, as the first engineer. I worked there for almost 5 years as a full-stack engineer. Collage was acquired in 2019 and in 2021 I left for Instacart. At Instacart I work on high-performance APIs and API gateway platform that provides Instacart services to external partners. I have a lot of experience and knowledge in systems design, programming, optimization, interviewing, and startups. I hope I can share what I've learned and experienced and help others as they navigate tech.

Goals for the program: My main goal is to provide guidance to students regarding the tech industry, job hunting, and career development. I am a mentee participant in Instacart's internal engineering mentorship program. I have benefited greatly from receiving mentorship and I want to give back and help others.

"I studied at Queen's back from 2008-2012 in the Bachelor of Commerce program. After graduating, I worked as an analyst at a medium-sized IT consulting firm offering some business applications in the regulatory space. I wore many hats at the company (analyst, sales engineer, PM) but my favourite was writing some of the configurable SQL rules that were inputted into a rules engine for one of the products. After working with other engineers for a while and watching Youtube videos on how to write SQL and Python, I realized I wanted to become a software engineer and went back to school for my Bachelor of Computer Science at UBC. After the program and a couple of internships, I started working at Microsoft on the Bing local search team working on data mining, search relevance, and machine learning. After 4 years there, I moved to Splunk where I've been working on cloud observability to scale the company's monitoring platforms. During this time, I've also been working part-time on my masters in computer science from the University of Washington, doing some remote night classes to finish that up at a steady pace."

Goals for the program: To help students figure out what opportunities exist in the tech space and navigate the dynamic world of tech interviews, mentorship, and career growth

I'm Krish and I went to learn computer science in Tier 3 college. I was extremely passionate about technology and building products usable to the world, so I spent copious amounts of time writing code, going to hackathons and learning tech via online courses. I'm the first one in my family graduating with a technical degree and I come from a family of merchants and small traders.

Goals for the program: To empower and give more clarity to aspiring next gen folks

I'm a Smith School of Business graduate and am extremely passionate about women empowerment. I currently work at Deloitte Digital in the Advertising, Marketing & Commerce practice working on various digital marketing, digital strategy, and marketing technology projects. Outside of work, I love spinning, traveling, and interior decorating.

Goals for the program: Empower women to pursue careers in technology, digital marketing

Studied computer engineering at UWaterloo and interned as a software developer at 5 companies including Microsoft in Japan. Spent my full time career transitioning to product management, which I've been doing for a few years now at 3 different companies.

Goals for the program: Help answer any questions about careers in the technology industry.

In university my major was Biology and my minor was Statistics, so definitely not directly related to computing! But in school I decided I wanted to pick up some coding skills to make myself more employable in the future. I did this through self learning, clubs like QMIND, a program through DDQIC, and a couple of computer science classes. I found an interest in web development and I was lucky enough to get an interview for a front end development position at Deloitte. By talking about my projects and experiences I was able to land my current position!

Goals for the program: With this mentorship program I am hoping to meet with some students and help answer their questions regarding pursuing a career in software engineering. I am also hoping that sharing some of my own experiences will help students better understand what a career in software engineering could be like for them!