Giovanna L.

R. T. Aveiro

about me

from 2017 - Cambridge, UK

  • current status: full-time administrative assistant at the Isaac Newton Institute (INI);
  • Volunteer as part of the INI Green Team. We achieved Bronze, Silver and are now working towards the Gold award;
  • In September 2019 I completed a short course in front-end web development - in love with CSS 💘 and getting confused with JS since!

from 2015 - London, UK

  • Moved to the UK without speaking a word of English;
  • Worked in catering for 3 years to learn the language;
  • For a year had a second-hand shop with a friend 👭 on Instagram with the mission of increasing the life cycle of garments and support charity shops in London;

before 2015 - Brazil

  • Pursued academic career in Social Sciences;
  • Have a master's degree in discourse analysis, where I discussed the concept of 🚺 femininity in a women's magazine against its readers' perspective.
  • While at university, ran workshops to teenagers in schools in poor areas about gender identity 🌈, violence against women and sexual education.

why...

…coding? It was not until mid-2017 that the idea of coding hit me. I had just moved to Cambridge and, struggling to move away from the catering industry and to have financial independence, started a part-time job that would allow me to do an online course in front-end web development. Over time, I found myself wanting to learn more with real people. Saved some money and in July this year I joined a part-time course at General Assembly in London. By the end of the 20 classes (focusing on HTML, CSS and a touch of JS), I was completely hooked 😍, but also had realised that I still had a long way to go if I wanted to pursue a career in the field.

…Founders and Coders? During this process, a friend mentioned that the company she worked for had hired entry-level developers fresh from this coding bootcamp that has a good reputation in the area (💁‍♀️- her words). It took me by surprise that Founders and Coders had such a clear vision on how to shift the industry through valuing community, inclusion and collaborative learning in a safe space. I felt inspired by the hands-on 💪 structure of the programme to be not just someone who can code, but that is also able to contribute to a project with social impact seeing the bigger picture; a developer that can come up with creative solutions, who works better in a team and is striving to give back (and maybe is not the only woman in the group! 😉).

…me? Although my life in Brazil and my life in the UK seem to be worlds apart, doing something with social impact gives meaning to who I am and keeps me motivated. I would love to combine this with a career in web development, forged around Founders and Coders core values. I am looking forward to learning while collaborating to the Tech for Better programme as part of the 2020 spring cohort and helping others do the same.