Shams Ahson, 22
Shams Ahson: "You’re the Hack Dearborn Girl, Right?"
Shams Ahson didn’t grow up coding. In fact, when she started university, she hadn’t written a single line. “I was an econ major on a pre-law track,” she laughs. “I was, and still am, passionate about helping others and solving problems by making an impact. I just didn’t know I’d be doing it through cybersecurity.”
That changed with one unexpected hackathon.
After stumbling across MLH’s Global Hack Week (only because the theme was cybersecurity), Shams decided to give it a shot. She only knew C++, her teammates dropped out, and it was entirely virtual. But she and a friend stayed up all night trying to build a solution for Chromebooks with limited educational resources. It barely worked, but they pitched it anyway.
To their shock, they won second place.
“That moment transformed me,” she says. “We didn’t win because of a polished product. We won because we believed in the problem and pitched the solution like it mattered, because it did.”
Since then, Shams has made it her mission to give others that same moment of transformation. She founded Hack Dearborn, her university’s first-ever MLH-affiliated hackathon. What began as a project with six student organizers is now a signature event drawing hundreds of hackers across North America. In three years, Hack Dearborn grew from 120 hackers and 29 demos to over 300 hackers, 70 projects, and a sponsor list full of industry leaders.
But the numbers aren’t what matter most to her.
“I’ve had hackers who never wrote a line of code come to our event, learn from our workshops, and then get invited to demo their project at Google Detroit,” Shams says. “That’s the impact I care about.”
Alongside Hack Dearborn, she also founded Google Developer Groups on Campus and a Women in Cybersecurity chapter. Building spaces where students from every background feel empowered to grow. Over 80% of her leadership teams are women. “As a woman in tech, leadership opportunities don’t always come easy. So I created my own, and made sure others could too.”
She pulled all this off while maintaining a 4.0 GPA, proving that hustle and heart go hand in hand. Whether she’s organizing Capture-The-Flags, mentoring new hackers, or helping other schools start their own events, Shams brings energy, empathy, and excellence. She’s been called a “listener before a leader,” and she proves it by transforming feedback into action. At her final Hack Dearborn, veteran hackers told her it was the most fun and most organized event they’d ever been to.
Now known in her community as “the Hack Dearborn girl,” Shams is still just getting started. A recent graduate as of April 2025, now a cybersecurity engineer with a love of vlogging, a deep affection for Kali Linux, and a weirdly accurate psychic streak (ask her about predicting her sister’s birth), she’s proof that you don’t need to follow a traditional path to make a powerful impact in tech.
Quick Facts
Shams Ahson, 22
Shams Ahson: "You’re the Hack Dearborn Girl, Right?"
Shams Ahson didn’t grow up coding. In fact, when she started university, she hadn’t written a single line. “I was an econ major on a pre-law track,” she laughs. “I was, and still am, passionate about helping others and solving problems by making an impact. I just didn’t know I’d be doing it through cybersecurity.”
That changed with one unexpected hackathon.
After stumbling across MLH’s Global Hack Week (only because the theme was cybersecurity), Shams decided to give it a shot. She only knew C++, her teammates dropped out, and it was entirely virtual. But she and a friend stayed up all night trying to build a solution for Chromebooks with limited educational resources. It barely worked, but they pitched it anyway.
To their shock, they won second place.
“That moment transformed me,” she says. “We didn’t win because of a polished product. We won because we believed in the problem and pitched the solution like it mattered, because it did.”
Since then, Shams has made it her mission to give others that same moment of transformation. She founded Hack Dearborn, her university’s first-ever MLH-affiliated hackathon. What began as a project with six student organizers is now a signature event drawing hundreds of hackers across North America. In three years, Hack Dearborn grew from 120 hackers and 29 demos to over 300 hackers, 70 projects, and a sponsor list full of industry leaders.
But the numbers aren’t what matter most to her.
“I’ve had hackers who never wrote a line of code come to our event, learn from our workshops, and then get invited to demo their project at Google Detroit,” Shams says. “That’s the impact I care about.”
Alongside Hack Dearborn, she also founded Google Developer Groups on Campus and a Women in Cybersecurity chapter. Building spaces where students from every background feel empowered to grow. Over 80% of her leadership teams are women. “As a woman in tech, leadership opportunities don’t always come easy. So I created my own, and made sure others could too.”
She pulled all this off while maintaining a 4.0 GPA, proving that hustle and heart go hand in hand. Whether she’s organizing Capture-The-Flags, mentoring new hackers, or helping other schools start their own events, Shams brings energy, empathy, and excellence. She’s been called a “listener before a leader,” and she proves it by transforming feedback into action. At her final Hack Dearborn, veteran hackers told her it was the most fun and most organized event they’d ever been to.
Now known in her community as “the Hack Dearborn girl,” Shams is still just getting started. A recent graduate as of April 2025, now a cybersecurity engineer with a love of vlogging, a deep affection for Kali Linux, and a weirdly accurate psychic streak (ask her about predicting her sister’s birth), she’s proof that you don’t need to follow a traditional path to make a powerful impact in tech.
