Sumaiya Tabassum, 26
Sumaiya completed her first degree at City College, CUNY in Psychology with a double major in English. While pursuing her third degree in Computer Science at Queens College, CUNY, she found the easiest way to get more exposure to others in her major was through joining a club and learning about available opportunities from students. She joined the Association for Computing Machinery and along with three other board members, soon helped re-open the Women-in-Tech club at her school. There, she served as the secretary of the club where she learned about MLH and volunteered with the club to organize their first Local Hack Day. That same year, a friend kept encouraging her to go to this thing called a "hackathon" and she eventually caved and attended.
For Sumaiya, being in the hacker community allowed her to see the potential career paths related to her degree. Most importantly, the hacker community and hackathons have inspired her to apply what she is learning to her own community in Queens.
Working as both director and executive director for multiple hackathons such as HackAttack and TechTogether NY, Sumaiya grew a lot as a leader. She learned how to increase her patience, plan better budgets, and negotiate with sponsors to meet their hackathon’s financial goals. She also improved her communication and marketing skills while reaching out to potential hackers, volunteers, and others interested in getting involved. These skills transferred over to her career goals as well. She now uses these skills to encourage others within her community to take on organizing events of their own. Outside of hackathons, Sumaiya has led many workshops (Localhost and some of her own) as well as mentored hackers. Having graduated with her third degree, Sumaiya is currently working as an adjunct lecturer at Brooklyn College, CUNY.
Her favorite project was from TechTogether Spring 2018 where she worked with her friends on Look-Listen-Learn. The project focused on connecting individuals to resources ranging from free online therapy to food banks to shelters in order to better the user’s mental health. She enjoyed the project because her time had a short time frame to collect the resources to promote mental health while working with a variety of technologies like Javascript, HTML/CSS with Bootstrap, and APIs to make their application work.
Quick Facts
Sumaiya Tabassum, 26
Sumaiya completed her first degree at City College, CUNY in Psychology with a double major in English. While pursuing her third degree in Computer Science at Queens College, CUNY, she found the easiest way to get more exposure to others in her major was through joining a club and learning about available opportunities from students. She joined the Association for Computing Machinery and along with three other board members, soon helped re-open the Women-in-Tech club at her school. There, she served as the secretary of the club where she learned about MLH and volunteered with the club to organize their first Local Hack Day. That same year, a friend kept encouraging her to go to this thing called a "hackathon" and she eventually caved and attended.
For Sumaiya, being in the hacker community allowed her to see the potential career paths related to her degree. Most importantly, the hacker community and hackathons have inspired her to apply what she is learning to her own community in Queens.
Working as both director and executive director for multiple hackathons such as HackAttack and TechTogether NY, Sumaiya grew a lot as a leader. She learned how to increase her patience, plan better budgets, and negotiate with sponsors to meet their hackathon’s financial goals. She also improved her communication and marketing skills while reaching out to potential hackers, volunteers, and others interested in getting involved. These skills transferred over to her career goals as well. She now uses these skills to encourage others within her community to take on organizing events of their own. Outside of hackathons, Sumaiya has led many workshops (Localhost and some of her own) as well as mentored hackers. Having graduated with her third degree, Sumaiya is currently working as an adjunct lecturer at Brooklyn College, CUNY.
Her favorite project was from TechTogether Spring 2018 where she worked with her friends on Look-Listen-Learn. The project focused on connecting individuals to resources ranging from free online therapy to food banks to shelters in order to better the user’s mental health. She enjoyed the project because her time had a short time frame to collect the resources to promote mental health while working with a variety of technologies like Javascript, HTML/CSS with Bootstrap, and APIs to make their application work.
Quick Facts
