Building a Tech Career in a Warzone
Simegn’s story is one of our favourites because it shows how resilient a woman can be in the face of great hardship, once her mind is made up.
For the longest time, one of Simegn’s goals has been to find a way to merge epidemiology, biostatistics, and computer technologies to solve health problems using data-driven decisions. In exploring various options to do this, Simegn pursued a career in Data Science while sourcing for scholarship and internship opportunities in health data analysis or epidemiology and biostatistics to do her Ph.D.
She made this decision while doing her Masters because she realized that data handling and analysis processes were the primary sources of headache for most Masters and Ph.D. students in her country. As her Masters program required some research, she had to read many research papers, and she saw that the quality of most papers was poor due to a lack of data. It was then she decided to devote her time to data science.
Simegn got to know about Tech4Dev through social media and signed up for the Women Techsters Bootcamp. The Bootcamp training was a fantastic experience for her, and as a result, she was inspired to further her Tech career.
After the Bootcamp, she signed up for the Women Techsters Fellowship because the focus areas and objectives matched her interest. She got admitted to the Data Science learning track after a rigorous screening.
During the duration of the program, Simegn faced various challenges, primarily because her location became a war zone and required her and her family to move to an IDP camp for a while. Continuing with her classes in an IDP camp was almost impossible as she couldn’t go with any device but her phone. She had to resort to taking lectures on her phone. In addition, she had to deal with network issues and a lack of learning facilities.
When Simegn finally returned to her home, her laptop had been taken by terrorists who also destroyed the network facilities within her area. She had to go to great lengths to scout for network to be able to join classes and participate in her group activities. She had to rely greatly on the support of her colleagues in the Fellowship and her facilitator who were very instrumental in helping her see the Fellowship program to the end.
Simegn’s resilience in the face of difficulty stands out, and we are so inspired and proud of her accomplishments in the Fellowship, especially her making it as 2nd best-graduating fellow.
As a result of the nature of her job as a Lecturer, Simegn plans to help her community through volunteer activities. She also plans to maximize the knowledge gained during the training by engaging in further studies and participating in workshops and presentations. She is looking forward to an internship that will be very important for her to learn practically with the community and different tech organizations.
