Tell us about yourself, and your journey in tech/STEM
My background is in arts - I was always an arts kid growing up, I did music and theatre and my favourite subject was English. But I was also a very destructive kid - I loved to take things apart, namely the VCRs, remotes and disposable cameras, I just loved to tinker and do stuff.
My parents are refugees and so my mum sewed a lot of our clothes because we didn’t have very much money growing up. I loved looking at how she constructed and made things, and I’d try to do the same out of paper materials.
I was really fortunate to have some amazing teachers throughout my life who recognised my skills and my talents and didn’t just write me off as a delinquent chatterbox, but actually helped me to channel that energy and need to understand ‘how things worked’ into something productive.
I have a very distinct memory of being in year 7 and in my first ever science class. We were doing that food colouring and milk experiment, and remember finding it really neat. Something that sticks out was hearing words such as “hydrophobia” and hydrophilia”, which I thought sounded super smart and I knew that I wanted to be that smart - and that was my spark that made me think science is pretty cool, and I’ve never looked back!
