About two years ago I decided to change up my career. I was on an active break from Software Engineering, which (depending on the job market and finances) I highly recommend. By chance I saw a press release for a women in Cybersecurity contest and it reminded me of how much fun I had working on Cybersecurity research over a decade ago. I realized it could give me a path into something new and interesting.
I entered the Cybersecurity contest and won SANS courses and vouchers for the GFACT and GCIH certifications. The National Cyber Scholarship Foundation also held a similar contest where I ranked 1st in California, and I won a course and voucher for the GIAC GSEC certification which I quickly completed along with the others. My SANS trifecta was complete!
One of the SANS organizers suggested I look into City College of San Francisco because they have an incredibly strong Cybersecurity program. I enrolled in classes, entered competitions, and my CCSF team won 2nd in a regional CPTC contest. I also co-founded a Women in Cybersecurity chapter to help promote women in technology careers and to support training events at the school. My time there renewed my interest in mathematics, and I had an enjoyable experience taking Discrete Math, Linear Algebra, and Statistics classes while preparing for grad school.
City College of San Francisco is a great resource, and I think of it as the gift that keeps on giving. I joined an Astronomy Service-Learning group that organizes planetarium shows and was able to get research time on the Nickel telescope at Lick Observatory. I was also accepted into Lick’s Astral Workshop and will be staying at the observatory in mid-July.
One of the more memorable experiences these past two years was becoming a teaching assistant at City College and helping with Intro and Advanced Python courses. This led to working with students in other capacities, like teaching college workshops, exam proctoring, tutoring, and I’m giving serious thought to more academic work in the future.
My bucket list is currently filling up and it’s exciting to be involved with so many new projects. I’m currently working on video game related AI, open-source security research, and studying advanced mathematics and computer science. I’m looking forward to what the rest of summer brings.