Ellie Farrisi’s first tryst with tech was when she learned to program in Basic at school, she loved the joy of seeing her code do tasks. Not too long after she found herself programming a Raspberry Pi in freshman year to make an Amazon Alexa-like speaker, which we believe was probably on par with the actual amazon alexa speaker because of how much she went above and beyond building it. This made her fall in love with engineering and she found herself switching her major to computer science. This led her to be a part of famous conferences of technologists like Grace Hopper where she was able to meet more like-minded individuals and strengthen her beliefs in herself to take on more meaningful projects to supplement her curriculum at university. This was the onset of Ellie recognizing her ever-curious nature and desire to learn and do cool stuff.

Gia Adams Wheeler’s touch with technology started with Myspace during her teenage years where she would hop on to her computer after school and chat with her friends. Now as a seasoned brand marketer and a founder, she references Myspace as an example of how she would showcase to the world who she was during those early days: “What I loved about designing the page \[Myspace] was how it was tied to your reputation… it was like buying a new outfit that represents you that you’d wear to school”.

Jade Darmawangsa wants her younger self (and all of us, frankly) to know one thing: everything is going to be okay!

We are Malvika, Nima, Mari, and Beren and we are writing a book!