Let's Chat: Value of Mentorship in CS

On Monday, we hosted our first Let's Chat session of 2022 - Let's Chat: Mentorship. We invited Jonah Andersson to chat with our guest moderator Ellie King, Co-Founder of Equal.IT, about her journey into tech and the role mentorship has played in her professional journey.

We chose mentorship as this month's topic for our Let's Chat session because we wanted to create a space to discuss the role this type of support can play in the long-term success of the technical careers of underrepresented individuals in tech. With a lack of representation and resources dedicated to supporting the learning and development of these folks in the tech industry, it can seem challenging to find a path forward if it has not already been carved out for you. Working with students looking to embark on a path into this industry means providing context on finding your community and support system, including mentors who can guide, reassure you, and open doors with their lived experience, networks, and wealth of knowledge.

During our chat, Jonah shared how she has gone from mentee to mentor over the course of her career. She hopes she can share her story and experience with others by mentoring, just as many of her mentors did with her. Through her experience as both a mentee and mentor, Jonah has recorded the traits of a good mentee/mentor relationship and what often makes them fail. Now, she can model successful relationships with her mentees to help others grow and develop in their personal and professional careers. Her tool to help better understand the values that are foundational to this type of relationship is to MENTOR:

As long as you remember to MENTOR, you will always have the fundamentals to build a strong mentorship relationship, whether you are a mentee or a mentor.

Other key takeaways from this week's event include:

• Utilize the tools at your disposal! LinkedIn is an excellent resource for networking. The role models you see online are a great starting point when you're looking for a mentor. Don't be afraid to reach out.
• Create a shortlist of potential mentors and as you're going through your journey, keep adding to this list. Reference this list to guide networking and relationship building.
• There's no perfect way to ensure that a mentor will genuinely understand the mentee's experience; as a mentee, the best thing you can do is be open and vulnerable. The more willing you are to trust your mentor, the more they will be able to connect with and help you.
• Set clear expectations and make sure both parties agree.
• The first step to the mentorship relationship is getting to know each other! Don't underestimate the importance of this step!

We hope you learned as much as we did from Jonah's story and advice. Have more questions? Don't be afraid to connect with her on LinkedIn!

Jonah Andersson?is a Filipina-Swedish full-stack software engineer, cloud developer, and Microsoft Azure MVP currently based in Sweden. She works as an Enterprise Software Engineer Consultant at Forefront. Jonah studied Computer Science and Agile System Development, which makes her very passionate about tech. She likes solving challenging problems and programming and is interested in developing new cloud technologies in Microsoft Azure. She believes in continuous learning, collaboration, and being allies with the tech communities. Jonah is also the founder and a community leader of Azure User Group Sweden. She shares technical knowledge at work and with tech communities through public speaking and mentoring others and is also passionate about making a difference by advocating and inspiring gender equality, diversity, and inclusion in tech. View the early release of Jonah's first book, Learning Microsoft Azure.

Ellie King is Co-Founder of Equal.IT; a mission-driven business working to diversify tech teams through refined talent acquisition complemented by diversity and inclusion consulting. As an #AzureHeroes Inclusive Leader, Ellie is passionate about amplifying the voices of womxn and non-dominant groups who are doing amazing work in tech to create relatable role models to inspire others to either pursue or continue a career in STEM. Ellie enjoys sharing knowledge and inspiration on all things career in tech, diversity, equity, and inclusion through public speaking, mentoring, facilitating workshops, and hosting the Equal Inspired Podcast.

CS for Success is preparing students to be leaders in a technologically advanced society -- we aim to create a more equitable, accessible, and inclusive landscape for high school computer science education.?Learn more now.