We are so proud of Somayra Mamsa who was awarded the Rising Star award for the category STEM Academia and Research at the Women in Tech WA Awards earlier this month.
It was a big month at Women in Tech WA with the conference and awards, and we are thrilled to see so many of our community, alumni and mentors were recognised. Earlier, we posted about Ben Fitzhardinge who won the Outstanding Allyship award (read about that here). We are equally proud of mentor Somayra Mamsa who won the Rising Star award in her category STEM Academia and Research at the WiTWA awards night.
Somayra has been mentoring with She Codes since 2020, notably supporting the HTML/CSS and Python modules of the Plus programs, working on Flash Data and supporting high schoolers through Flash Next. She is currently a PhD candidate in biochemistry, using molecular and computational approaches to study the brain with Python and R, but her first love as a self-taught coder was web design and development. She has previously taught primary school students at Code Camp, co-designed and delivered a series of workshops on HTML, CSS and JavaScript for community members interested in learning to code through the Community Arts Network, and has also taught hundreds of high school students and dozens of high school science teachers at the BioDiscovery Centre.
Somayra is passionate about helping others to reach their full potential. She says “I know how important mentorship is, and it’s amazing to be able to support the students and see their progression. It’s a privilege to work with our dedicated students.”
Some of the feedback Somayra received from She Codes students during her time mentoring includes:
- “Ellie and Somayra were life savers – both so patient and knowledgeable and good at problem solving on the spot”
- “Somayra went above and beyond to make sure we got it and was super helpful.”
- “All of the mentors were amazing! Raissa, Hayley and Somayra were all especially helpful and great at explaining different concepts and processes in a way that made sense, as well as answering additional queries. They really made the week welcoming and an exceptionally aspirational learning experience.”
- “Thank you so much Somayra – being a visual learner, her style of quickly using notepad and explaining things with simple sketches makes things look a lot simpler. I enjoyed her mentoring in both HTML/CSS and Python. Thank you Somayra!”
We asked Somayra how she felt about the award and she said “I feel very blessed to have this recognition, and the awards in general are a fantastic opportunity to see the incredible community of women in technology we have here in Western Australia.”
Somayra has just finished mentoring in Python for the She Codes Plus program in Perth, and we can’t wait to see what she does next.
Congratulations Somayra!
To find out more about our incredible community, check out our latest Community Profiles and Videos.