Sarah Graywood, 31
Sarah Graywood has always had a knack for mentoring others. A career educator who recently made the switch to a career in tech, Sarah has been able to leverage her impressive background in education to both share her knowledge with others and develop her skills as a programmer in her own right.
For someone who has always loved being a mentor, leaving a career in teaching was a difficult decision. Before Sarah decided to pursue a career in tech, she was working more than 60 hours a week, struggling to find time for her family and feeling the drag of perpetual burnout. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, teaching more than 100 students remotely, Sarah became interested in how the technologies she used to connect and educate students actually worked. She started using a mobile app to code on her 15-minute breaks between classes. Within three months, Sarah had been admitted to a Techtonica bootcamp, and she was able to translate that experience into an internship with Flickr beginning that fall.
After a hiring freeze at Flickr prevented her from securing a full time position with the company, she learned about Major League Hacking (MLH). The CEO of her Techtonica bootcamp recommended she continue learning through the MLH Fellowship. Sarah initially felt intimidated about applying, knowing she would be up against career hackers. But Sarah thrives on the challenge of overcoming adversity, so she applied anyway. She was admitted for the Fall 2022 season, and participated in her first hackathon, the MLH Fellowship Orientation Hackathon, where she developed an even greater love of programming.
Sarah says the support from MLH Fellowship friends and fellow hackers has helped her learn and grow, while also allowing her to guide others. Sarah is grateful for the hackathon experience, which she says has helped her hone her programming skills while gaining exposure to completely new concepts. She has felt less stress, is able to better balance her work and life, and feels like she truly enjoys her new career in tech.
This isn’t to say Sarah is no longer practicing her skills as an educator. As a woman of color in a field where both women and people of color are underrepresented, Sarah understands the challenges many new hackers face in building a career in tech. Her experience as an educator, which totals more than a decade, makes her well-suited to mentor others and to understand their unique circumstances. She believes her ability to empathize with others makes her stand out within the hacker community. Sarah is passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and focuses her efforts on increasing accessibility for hackers who have had non-traditional paths and lacked the resources to attend computer science programs. Recently, she was admitted to the Adobe Digital Academy, and has since secured an internship with Adobe starting this June. She plans to continue on to a career in full stack software engineering.
Quick Facts
Sarah Graywood, 31
Sarah Graywood has always had a knack for mentoring others. A career educator who recently made the switch to a career in tech, Sarah has been able to leverage her impressive background in education to both share her knowledge with others and develop her skills as a programmer in her own right.
For someone who has always loved being a mentor, leaving a career in teaching was a difficult decision. Before Sarah decided to pursue a career in tech, she was working more than 60 hours a week, struggling to find time for her family and feeling the drag of perpetual burnout. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, teaching more than 100 students remotely, Sarah became interested in how the technologies she used to connect and educate students actually worked. She started using a mobile app to code on her 15-minute breaks between classes. Within three months, Sarah had been admitted to a Techtonica bootcamp, and she was able to translate that experience into an internship with Flickr beginning that fall.
After a hiring freeze at Flickr prevented her from securing a full time position with the company, she learned about Major League Hacking (MLH). The CEO of her Techtonica bootcamp recommended she continue learning through the MLH Fellowship. Sarah initially felt intimidated about applying, knowing she would be up against career hackers. But Sarah thrives on the challenge of overcoming adversity, so she applied anyway. She was admitted for the Fall 2022 season, and participated in her first hackathon, the MLH Fellowship Orientation Hackathon, where she developed an even greater love of programming.
Sarah says the support from MLH Fellowship friends and fellow hackers has helped her learn and grow, while also allowing her to guide others. Sarah is grateful for the hackathon experience, which she says has helped her hone her programming skills while gaining exposure to completely new concepts. She has felt less stress, is able to better balance her work and life, and feels like she truly enjoys her new career in tech.
This isn’t to say Sarah is no longer practicing her skills as an educator. As a woman of color in a field where both women and people of color are underrepresented, Sarah understands the challenges many new hackers face in building a career in tech. Her experience as an educator, which totals more than a decade, makes her well-suited to mentor others and to understand their unique circumstances. She believes her ability to empathize with others makes her stand out within the hacker community. Sarah is passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and focuses her efforts on increasing accessibility for hackers who have had non-traditional paths and lacked the resources to attend computer science programs. Recently, she was admitted to the Adobe Digital Academy, and has since secured an internship with Adobe starting this June. She plans to continue on to a career in full stack software engineering.
Quick Facts
