Shivani Rajgopal, 21
Shivani Rajgopal Codes Communities Into Being
“I joined the hacker community during my senior year of high school, right in the middle of the COVID pandemic when everything had shifted online.” That single click into TecHacks 2.0 catapulted Shivani Rajgopal from Python‑curious teenager to one of Major League Hacking’s most recognizable regulars. Virtual weekends soon blurred into a streak of thirty‑plus hackathons; if someone was live‑streaming opening ceremonies, Shivani was already in the Discord, ready to build.
Shivani’s programming interest stemmed before Hackathons, however. When she was in middle school, she attended a summer camp through Microsoft where she learnt basic programming skills and made her own games. In high school, she joined a four-year Design and Engineering track where she worked on various Engineering projects and was the only girl in that class. While Shivani was able to enjoy working with the different engineering disciplines and putting ideas into motion, especially in 3D printing, she was often put down by other boys in her class. But Shivani never failed to prove everyone hard and push through with her perseverance and continues to embody this spirit in College today.
Her rapid‑fire projects racked up an impressive virtual trophy shelf. TechTogether Boston crowned her music‑focused website Most Courageous Hack and was the first hackathon that she won. Girls Hoo Hack sparked a Twilio obsession that led to multiple Best Use of Twilio awards for chatbots that answer everything from planetary trivia to mental‑health check‑ins. Do‑Re‑Mi Hacks II pushed her from front‑end JavaScript toward Node and full‑stack fluency, while Python remained the language she trusts for security scripts and machine‑learning experiments.
That persistence paid off when Shivani earned a coveted seat in the MLH Production Engineering Fellowship, making her an official alumna of the program. “Hackathons have truly changed my life by laying the foundation for many of the bigger accomplishments I’ve pursued since starting college,” she says. As the youngest in her fellowship pod, she mastered Flask, revamped her résumé, and even joined a Capture the Flag with her podmates, cementing a new fascination with cybersecurity.
Back at The Ohio State University she channels that fascination into leadership. As outgoing Vice President and incoming President of the Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS) chapter, Shivani planned workshops, mentored newcomers, and co‑hosted a campus‑wide CTF in partnership with the Ohio Cyber Range Institute, introducing dozens of students to packet‑slicing and privilege escalation in a single afternoon. Shivani hopes to be able to continue to host similar events to help get people interested in programming and cybersecurity.
“I don’t just want to succeed in tech, I want to change the culture around it,” Shivani explains. That culture‑making shows up everywhere she logs in. GitHub is her command center, neatly tracking every hackathon repo and the code for her personal portfolio. LinkedIn holds a growing number of connections that Shivani has built friendships with over the years in college. Even her apartment tells the story: half knitting needles, half GameGo console running the sprite games she codes for fun. Shivani hopes to be an inspiration to other young girls who want to step into STEM roles so that they know that if she can do it, so can they.
This summer, Shivani is doing an Internship at Immuta in the Columbus office and is a Production Engineering intern in it. She has enjoyed being able to continue to grow her skills in those domains and work in technologies like Go, Kubernetes, SQL, and more.
Ask what is next and she lights up: more CTFs for students, a hackathon track devoted to accessibility, travel to her sixth country, and finishing the hand‑knit wardrobe she started while stressing for midterms. Wherever she goes, expect Shivani Rajgopal to keep doing what she does best, showing up with curiosity, fixing what feels exclusive, and proving that when you combine Python with tenacity you can stitch an inclusive tech community that fits everyone.
Quick Facts
Shivani Rajgopal, 21
Shivani Rajgopal Codes Communities Into Being
“I joined the hacker community during my senior year of high school, right in the middle of the COVID pandemic when everything had shifted online.” That single click into TecHacks 2.0 catapulted Shivani Rajgopal from Python‑curious teenager to one of Major League Hacking’s most recognizable regulars. Virtual weekends soon blurred into a streak of thirty‑plus hackathons; if someone was live‑streaming opening ceremonies, Shivani was already in the Discord, ready to build.
Shivani’s programming interest stemmed before Hackathons, however. When she was in middle school, she attended a summer camp through Microsoft where she learnt basic programming skills and made her own games. In high school, she joined a four-year Design and Engineering track where she worked on various Engineering projects and was the only girl in that class. While Shivani was able to enjoy working with the different engineering disciplines and putting ideas into motion, especially in 3D printing, she was often put down by other boys in her class. But Shivani never failed to prove everyone hard and push through with her perseverance and continues to embody this spirit in College today.
Her rapid‑fire projects racked up an impressive virtual trophy shelf. TechTogether Boston crowned her music‑focused website Most Courageous Hack and was the first hackathon that she won. Girls Hoo Hack sparked a Twilio obsession that led to multiple Best Use of Twilio awards for chatbots that answer everything from planetary trivia to mental‑health check‑ins. Do‑Re‑Mi Hacks II pushed her from front‑end JavaScript toward Node and full‑stack fluency, while Python remained the language she trusts for security scripts and machine‑learning experiments.
That persistence paid off when Shivani earned a coveted seat in the MLH Production Engineering Fellowship, making her an official alumna of the program. “Hackathons have truly changed my life by laying the foundation for many of the bigger accomplishments I’ve pursued since starting college,” she says. As the youngest in her fellowship pod, she mastered Flask, revamped her résumé, and even joined a Capture the Flag with her podmates, cementing a new fascination with cybersecurity.
Back at The Ohio State University she channels that fascination into leadership. As outgoing Vice President and incoming President of the Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS) chapter, Shivani planned workshops, mentored newcomers, and co‑hosted a campus‑wide CTF in partnership with the Ohio Cyber Range Institute, introducing dozens of students to packet‑slicing and privilege escalation in a single afternoon. Shivani hopes to be able to continue to host similar events to help get people interested in programming and cybersecurity.
“I don’t just want to succeed in tech, I want to change the culture around it,” Shivani explains. That culture‑making shows up everywhere she logs in. GitHub is her command center, neatly tracking every hackathon repo and the code for her personal portfolio. LinkedIn holds a growing number of connections that Shivani has built friendships with over the years in college. Even her apartment tells the story: half knitting needles, half GameGo console running the sprite games she codes for fun. Shivani hopes to be an inspiration to other young girls who want to step into STEM roles so that they know that if she can do it, so can they.
This summer, Shivani is doing an Internship at Immuta in the Columbus office and is a Production Engineering intern in it. She has enjoyed being able to continue to grow her skills in those domains and work in technologies like Go, Kubernetes, SQL, and more.
Ask what is next and she lights up: more CTFs for students, a hackathon track devoted to accessibility, travel to her sixth country, and finishing the hand‑knit wardrobe she started while stressing for midterms. Wherever she goes, expect Shivani Rajgopal to keep doing what she does best, showing up with curiosity, fixing what feels exclusive, and proving that when you combine Python with tenacity you can stitch an inclusive tech community that fits everyone.
