I am a volunteer with Venezolanas in Tech, a nonprofit group that helps Venezuelan women build a career in tech by providing networking, tech talks, and mentoring.
As a software developer with 10 years of experience, I thought that my skills and experience would be helpful and joined the group in 2020.
Since joining, I participated in many activities with Venezolanas in Tech, including serving as an instructor in the programming school and participating in the mentoring program.
The school provides programming and web development instruction to teen-aged, Venezuelan girls with the goal of motivating them to pursue a programming career and providing them with the tools for continuous learning in this area. In my cohort, we trained 20 girls from underserved communities in basic web development, and most are planning to further their development at university or in the workforce!
The mentoring program is geared for women who want to transition into the tech industry or to apply their technical skills in a new area by providing networking guidance, technical training, and soft skill development.
I´ve just started working with my fourth mentee. Every person I have worked with has been looking for something different out of the process, which has made it really interesting. For example, I mentored a 19-year-old woman who was not sure what she should study in university to reach her career goals. Another mentee was an electronic engineer who had project management experience but not in the software industry, and so we worked together to help her apply her skills in a new in tech.
I have never been a mentor before, so having the opportunity to develop in this area was very enriching. The most important thing that I’ve learned is that every person is different and that I need to adapt to my mentee and not the other way around. Mentoring is also not a one-way learning process, and I’ve learned a lot from this experience.
I am grateful that AlixPartners provides the flexibility to pursue these opportunities. The program has been so successful that I am currently working with fellow members of AlixPartners’ Women’s Empowerment Matters Employee Resource Group (ERG) in Buenos Aires to partner with a local organization to teach programming skills to women in Argentina.