Tracy is a recent graduate of our She Codes Plus program in Perth, having previously completed She Codes Flash. Tracy sat down with us to share a bit of her story, background, and perceptions of tech and what’s next for her.
Tracy is currently a Business Development Manager in an IT solutions company. She first found out about She Codes through a friend that does hula hooping. “I didn’t know that that was a thing, that there was a space for women to learn coding” she shares.
In high school, Tracy’s favourite subjects were physics and maths. She shared with us that she went along to a university open day and the lecturer afterwards told her “Someone with your personality would be terrible in the lab”. From that one interaction, Tracy abandoned ideas of working in a STEM field and enrolled in law/arts instead. Tracy went on to tell us that after university she “couldn’t wait to leave Perth” thinking that there would be no opportunities there, moving to Melbourne to work in investment at ANZ in financial planning. After her partner got an offer to move to Germany, she had her first experiences working in tech in startups for 4-5 years. Tracy says “80-90% of the people I worked with were developers, computer vision experts, and 80-90% of them were men. My perception of the industry was all men, I had never seen so many women working in tech”.
Since moving back to Perth, Tracy joined Women in Tech WA, undertook She Codes Flash and realised she had aspirations to be a developer and be on the other side of the tech industry from the business development side she had experienced for so long.
Tracy fell pregnant during the Plus program, and just had her first son. She is excited by the opportunities ahead of her, balancing her new life as a mum with flexible opportunities in the technology industry.
For Tracy’s full story, see her interview here.