Maria Ngo has adopted a new growth mindset and endless learning culture thanks to the tech industry, and she is having so much fun at it!
International Women's Day 2023 is all about Cracking the Code: Innovation for a Gender Equal Future. As part of our celebration of International Women's Day, LJ Future Skills is sharing stories of amazing women in the STEM industry who are letting their passion for STEM drive their career.
Maria Ngo, graduate in Mechatronics Engineering, in-training to be a Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services.
Maria has just finished university and has been exploring the workforce with internships and graduate programs. Her biggest and most exciting change is shifting her career from the Building industry to IT.
After a short stint at Schneider Electric, she decided to return to Amazon Web Services (AWS) where the faster pace of work in cloud computing was more suited to her personality. It was also more relevant to her career ambition of creating positive impact on people at a larger scale.
Steep learning curve
Starting out at AWS as an intern was not easy. Maria had a steep learning curve with many challenges. She could not find many ex-interns who had a similar experience, and she had to network extensively around the company to get some guidance on completing a project that was a core component of the internship program. She finally managed to get involved with a pilot program and even contributed to the company’s knowledge bank to further enhance the internship experience of many more in the future.
Technological help
For Maria, being a new-starter in a technology firm is clearly exciting, but it also meant there were lots of distractions too. For those who are passionate about STEM, you'll understand how it feels like to be in a sort of IT wonderland where there are so many things you want to be involved in.
To help her stay on track and be productive, Maria gets the help of apps and platforms such as a Kanban board, like Trello or Asana, to categorise and keep track of her tasks. For those who are trying to find a way to break social media addiction, Maria has got a nifty tool to share. She uses an app called One Sec. It delays the opening of an app of your choice, in her case it is Youtube, and encourages you to take a deep breath. Those few seconds are enough to make her change her mind about using Youtube and waste precious time blindly scrolling.
New growth mindset
Prior to working in tech, Maria was stuck with a fixed mindset and the belief that there is a limit to one’s intelligence and ability to learn. Now, she has fully adopted a new growth mindset thanks to her work environment which fosters a strong learning culture.
As part of the learning culture, she is always updating her knowledge in the fast changing landscape of cloud computing. But more than that, Maria really enjoys learning continuously. It exposes her to opportunities and new perspectives. For others who are eager to be in this field, Maria has this to say,
"Keep learning and stay curious, always. Rather than being intimidated by the difficulties along the way, focus on exploring and finding what is exciting and meaningful to you. The tech industry serves a huge and diverse population of users, it certainly needs diverse employees like you and I to do so."
Looking at all the inspirational stories of girls and women in STEM, we are looking at a very bright future in terms of improving gender equality and diversity.
If you are passionate about STEM and want to take it further for your studies, career or simply for your own personal interests, you can find tutors for a variety STEM subjects here.
About LJ Future Skills
LJ Future Skills is inspired to bring you a trusted STEM platform connecting learners with the best STEM experts quickly. This is Australia's online STEM learning marketplace, connecting children and their parents, adults or pensioners with trusted tutors.
Tutors are available face to face or online.
Whatever your age, SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, MATHEMATICS (STEM) and other subjects are key to your academic, career and life successes and a sense of achievement.
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