My Journey Through 2024: From Last Leadership Fellow to Google Cloud Architect

Note: This article appeared originally on my website here.

The year 2025 has begun, which means it’s time for me to release my retrospective of 2024!

TL;DR Summary

The year 2024 started off strong with me leading the Women Who Code Mobile community through our first ever group open source projects. Then, I lost my Leadership Fellow job and my community all at once when Women Who Code shut down. It was hard to move on, but I joined a Cloud Architect program and became a Certified Google Cloud Architect. Here’s my journey through 2024 and the lessons I learned along the way.

Lesson 10: The success of open source projects requires laying down the groundwork beforehand.

At the beginning of 2024, I was almost halfway through my Leadership Fellow position at Women Who Code Mobile (WWCode Mobile). I had been preparing the groundwork for the volunteer team to launch our first ever group open source projects for the community: the Task Tracker app, for iOS and Android.

While the open source projects, from launch to delivery, ended up lasting about 3 months, it took another 3 months beforehand to lay the groundwork for their success.

In late 2023, several volunteers delivered open source workshops to the community. Devanshi M. and Cecelia Martinez McCrea taught the workshop on open source contribution, and Jacqueline Chan and Regina Arcilla taught the workshop on open source maintenance.

I had helped the volunteers create outlines for their workshops and provided a template for their slides. They then created the content and filled out the slides, and we did practice run throughs of their workshops before the actual events.

These workshops were necessary to start creating the process for how we would work together, both the maintainers and the contributors, once the projects were launched.

By December, I had formed the project maintainer teams from my volunteer team. Together with the teams, we created the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) wireframes. Once the process for maintaining and contributing to the projects was put into place, and the scaffolding for projects put into Github, we finally launched the project kick off presentations in January 2024.

The result of all this groundwork was that we delivered the MVP of the Task Tracker app for iOS and Android in April, within 3 months of project launches.

To learn more about the groundwork that we laid down prior to the project launches, check out this other blog post that I wrote.

I also had the opportunity to speak at SwiftCraft in the UK in May 2024, where I leveraged this experience to give a talk about Android development for iOS developers. In my talk, I also went into detail on the Task Tracker open source projects themselves. Check out my talk slides to learn more about those projects.

Lesson 9: Lead a global volunteer team through servant leadership.

In addition to laying the groundwork for the open source projects, I also leaned on my servant leadership skills for the projects’ success, as well as the success of the WWCode Mobile community as a whole.

You see, while my Leadership Fellow position was paid, my job was to lead a 20+ member global volunteer team in delivering events for a virtual global technical community, with over 1000 members on Slack and averaging about twenty attendees per event. And if you’ve ever had to lead or manage volunteers, you know how challenging this can be.

But what makes leading volunteers such a difficult task, you ask, and how does leveraging servant leadership help?

Well for one, volunteering is exactly that: an optional activity. And when a volunteer has more pressing priorities in their lives such as taking care of family, or deadlines to meet on a paying job, sometimes the volunteer activities are the first thing to go.

Second, since the team is a global virtual one, everyone is on different schedules and timezones. Scheduling and planning events can be really hard, and it’s impossible to get everyone together at the same time. Asynchronous communication and holding meetings with smaller groups within the larger volunteer team is the way to go.

So what does it take to motivate people who choose to be there, to deliver on challenging initiatives for the good of the community? How do you pull off something as difficult as group open source projects, something that has never been done before in the WWCode Mobile community? The answer was servant leadership.

To put it simply, my definition of servant leadership is when a leader works for the ones who report to them.

In my career, I’ve had managers of wildly different qualifications. But the managers that I was happiest working for, and where I was most productive, were those that embodied servant leadership. My manager at Minitex, Paul S. , was the one that best demonstrated servant leadership for me. Back when I interviewed for the iOS mobile developer position at Minitex, I remember Paul saying to me, “My job is to work for you.” And that’s what he did.

I told myself back then that when I was in a position of leading or managing others, that was how I was going to do it. And I did. My job as the Leadership Fellow was to work for the volunteers.

I had some requirements to meet, or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) as part of my job. One of them was to deliver 3 virtual events a month for the WWCode Mobile community. But I had to deliver them through my volunteer team.

That’s because being a Leadership Fellow is like being a manager, and the volunteers are individual contributors. Therefore, as the Leadership Fellow, I supported my volunteers by guiding and training them in planning and delivering the events, rather than delivering all the events myself. That was also why, as mentioned earlier, I provided guidelines and a presentation template for the open source workshops, but had the volunteers create the content and deliver the workshops themselves.

At the volunteer team planning meetings, I told my volunteers that I would support them in planning events that they wanted to deliver for the community.

I placed volunteers in opportunities that lined up with their skills, interests, and availability, and provided mentorship, training, and guidance to help them succeed.

If a volunteer was struggling, I would ask, “How can I help?”

For example, when the Android team was falling behind on the MVP, I asked the maintainers, “How can I help?” I noticed that Sepideh M. , a community member, was actively contributing to the project and DM’d me to ask how else she can help. I went to the maintainers of the Android project and asked if they would be interested in adding Sepideh to the maintainers team. They said, “yes, please!” And that was when I added active contributor, Sepideh, first to the volunteer team (because only volunteers were allowed to be project maintainers), and then to the Android maintainers team. Adding Sepideh to the Android maintainers team allowed the Android project to deliver MVP at the same time as the iOS project team.

Lesson 8: Lead with gratitude.

Besides leveraging servant leadership, I also learned to lead with gratitude.

I read the book “Leading With Gratitude”, by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton, which I highly recommend. I applied some of the tips from that book to my leadership style, with help from the social media team. In fact, I learned that using gratitude is a highly motivating technique for volunteers!

See these amazing graphics on the WWCode events in my article? Guess what? The WWCode Mobile social media team made those.

In fact, the social media team was instrumental in promoting Women Who Code events through social media and Slack, and shining a light on members and volunteers. They made it easy for me to lead with gratitude.

I’ve given plenty of shoutouts to WWCode Mobile volunteers and members through previous articles I’ve written, but not enough to the social media team who made it possible for me to give proper recognition to everyone else. So here’s my chance to give that recognition now ….

Thank you so much to the WWCode Mobile social media team, led by Athina Vrettea , for serving our community. Also props to the rest of the team, including Pamela Hill ?? , Laura Esmeralda Sanchez (Esmeralda), Vivian Smiari , and Preeti Agarwal .

Lesson 7: Build on what previous leaders have built.

Don’t ever start from scratch. Always build on, and learn from, those who’ve come before you. I was fortunate that the WWCode Mobile community had several exceptional Leadership Fellows (a Fellowship position lasted for a year) before me, whom I could learn from and build on their legacy.

For example, having volunteers work on long term initiatives as part of a group as opposed to individually, was a practice I learned from Navati J. , who started doing this during her time as the Leadership Fellow.

Challenging, multi-month initiatives have a better chance of success through small group implementation versus relying on individuals. Spreading responsibilities and work load across multiple individuals also helps prevent burnout of one person. One off events like a single workshop or talk can be led by one person. But maintaining an open source project lasting several months, for example, is better done as part of a team.

And the whole reason that we had a social media team, as opposed to individuals doing one off graphics or the Leadership Fellow doing all the promotions for the community, is because of Navati forming a social media team during her Fellowship as well.

Another lesson I learned from previous fellows, Mackenzie Bryant and Sierra OBryan , is to build a close knit community first, and then the work will get done. I touched upon this in my 2023 retro blog post as well.

This is where I truly benefited from Mackenzie and Sierra’s leadership and community building during their Fellowship periods. Since the volunteers came from the community, if everyone already feels close, it makes it easier to work together to accomplish our objectives. Especially for volunteers, it’s more motivating to work with your coworkers when they’re also your friends.

Lesson 6: When facing loss, reflect on what you had with gratitude.

Shortly after the delivery of the Task Tracker projects, Women Who Code abruptly shutdown in late April 2024.

Everything I had the opportunity to do through WWCode, made me a stronger and smarter engineer and leader. Even enduring the tough parts, like learning to become a Leadership Fellow, made me better and helped prepare me for a future career, as an Engineering Manager, for example, if that’s a path I want to pursue someday.

There were so many times just having the support of my community was priceless. Even just being able to vent about what’s going on in my life on the WWCode Mobile Slack, is not something I can do anymore. Or celebrate special occasions or moments, like people’s vacations and weddings and engagements. It was a special community and I have not been able to find anything like it since, not yet.

In this blog post, I reflect with gratitude on all the things I was able to accomplish through WWCode.

Losing Women Who Code taught me an important lesson, and one that thankfully, I’ve already been living and that was …..

Lesson 5: Life will change. Figure out what’s important to you now. Make time for that.

Never did I imagine that I would be the last Leadership Fellow for WWCode Mobile or that after 10+ years and 300,000+ members, that the entire WWCode organization itself (spanning all technical tracks and local chapters worldwide) would collapse.

In early 2020, I was an iOS mobile developer when I started volunteering for the WWCode Mobile community, which launched its Slack in late 2019. WWCode Mobile was a virtual technical track within the WWCode organization, which consisted of 6 technical tracks including mobile and hundreds of local chapters worldwide. At that time, there were meetups for women in tech, but not mobile focused. There were mobile meetups and groups, but none specifically for women.

Women Who Code Mobile filled a need at that point in my career, and I wanted to be a part of that.

I could have easily said: no, I’m too busy to volunteer, I’m not ready for that. Instead, I decided to make time for it. I volunteered more when I had more bandwidth and volunteered less or just participated in events when things picked up in other areas of my life, like work. I always communicated my availability at any given time, though and never lost touch with the current Leadership Fellow or the community. I made it work. And then eventually, my volunteering led to my position as the Leadership Fellow for WWCode Mobile.

As a result of me identifying what was important to me and making time for it, I was a part of something I will always remember and cherish.

Lesson 4: Move forward by embracing opportunity.

I’ve had an incredible career as a mobile engineer, and many opportunities. I’ve published my own apps to the App Store, for iOS and also for Android, back when I was a cross platform mobile developer in Titanium. I ran my own technical meetup for Titanium in my local Denver area. I had several long term jobs working full time as a mobile developer, including ones where I was also a technical lead, plus multiple paid gigs as a freelancer. I spoke at meetups and multiple conferences, including international ones. In fact, I had just recently spoken at Swift Craft in the UK, in May of 2024! I was the last Leadership Fellow for Women Who Code Mobile.

I did just about everything in my career as a mobile engineer. When my Leadership Fellow position ended at Women Who Code Mobile, I was at a loss. As painful as that loss was, I was also considering that it may be an opportunity for me to explore new career paths that could leverage my other strengths and interests.

For example, I’ve been doing a lot of technical leading and speaking. I also have been more excited about architecture and back end development than front end (like mobile development) lately. Back when mobile development was brand new, it was exciting to build a piece of software that ran on a tiny computer. And when I was a cross platform developer, seeing that same program run on both an iPhone and an Android phone was amazing. It was magic to me!

But lately, I’ve been less excited about that. Sometimes it feels like front end development is all about building the UI just right, pixel pushing, and selecting the right colors. I’m more excited about writing the code that does fun stuff when you press a button than picking the right number of pixels and colors for that button.

Then, over the summer, the Google Women Techmakers (WTM) organization started offering free Google Cloud classes to its members. As a member of Women Techmakers and a WTM Ambassador (I became an Ambassador in late 2022), I took advantage of all the learning opportunities! In June 2024, WTM offered the free Google Cloud Launchpad for Women program. I attended the live virtual classes and then took and passed the exam to get the Google Cloud Digital Leader Certification.

Women Techmakers also offered a free Google Cloud Certification Journey: a Professional Cloud Architect (PCA) program that was starting in August. I spent July completing all the free pre-requisite classes in order to qualify for the program and was thrilled to receive an invite to join the program in August! I was enjoying learning about Google Cloud and getting excited about learning new tech again.

Lesson 3: Seek support through community, and be that support for others.

The community support I received through the WTM PCA cohort was incredible. It was 12 weeks of on-demand Cloud Skills Boost classes and weekly live class sessions with the instructor, Wayne Davis Jr . In addition, we communicated with each other through the cohort Google Group, moderated by our cohort coordinator, Aldana Perazzo . We also had a bonus class Discord, spun up by fellow classmate Vannia Hnatiuk .

At the conclusion of the cohort and once you’ve completed all the coursework, you can qualify for an exam voucher to take the PCA exam. If you take the exam by the early deadline, you can get a backup exam voucher in case you fail and need to take the exam again. Full transparency here: the PCA exam is really hard to pass and yes, I ended up needing to use that second voucher. But good news, I passed the exam on my second attempt and am now a Certified Google Cloud Architect!

Working on getting my PCA certification as part of a cohort class of women was really motivating. In addition to interacting with our instructor and my classmates during the live instructor led classes, we could ask questions and support each other through the class Google Group and class Discord.

I especially appreciated Vannia for setting up the class Discord, because that was where she shared solutions to the challenge labs to help folks like myself get unstuck. I gave back by sharing my solutions to a couple of the challenge labs with my classmates as well. In fact, many of my classmates would help one another by sharing their knowledge and mentoring one another through the Discord and Google Group.

As folks were taking the PCA exam, people would share in the Discord and Google Group when they passed or not, how they studied for the exam, and what they learned from the experience.

For me, I ended up sharing my experience with taking the PCA both times, when I didn’t pass and when I finally did, in hopes that my experience might be helpful to others.

And in the last month of studying to take the PCA exam for the second time, I posted weekly updates on my progress in the Discord. I did this to keep myself accountable and to support others studying to take the exam again. I believe it was this group support that made it possible for me to pass the PCA exam and I hope that my efforts have helped others in my cohort class to pass the exam as well.

In fact, in a full circle moment, when I passed the Google Cloud Architect certification, I wrote a blog post about it on LinkedIn.

Then, shortly after my announcement, Vannia posted that she passed the PCA as well, and tagged me as one of the people who helped her on her journey. So I was proud to hear that while Vannia helped me and others to pass the PCA, that I was able to give back and helped her pass the PCA exam as well.

Lesson 2: In uncertain times, do what you can with what you have.

In addition to being uncertain about my career, towards the end of 2024, there was a lot of uncertainty about the future of my country, the United States, as we headed towards the US Presidential Election in November. But fortunately, I had an opportunity to do what I can to help, by becoming an election worker.

I wrote about my experience as an election worker in the 2024 US Presidential Election in this blog post.

While some of the results were not what I wanted, I am proud that I did my part to help keep elections free and fair. By keeping elections free and fair, election workers allow us to vote on the issues that are important to our communities, and elect the politicians that serve our communities’ needs.

Some of the issues that are important to me involve protecting the vulnerable and the powerless. And some of the rights that are at risk, that we need laws to protect, are the rights of migrants, LGBTQ+, and reproductive freedom. My state of Colorado came through with voting for the issues and politicians this past election that will protect these rights, and I am proud to have helped play a small part in making that happen.

Lesson 1: Make time for joy and self-care in your schedule.

It’s going to be a difficult year ahead. I’ll be job searching, which is hard work, and it’s especially tough in tech right now. At the time of writing this blog post, I think Customer Engineer / Solutions Engineer and then Cloud Engineer are the types of Cloud roles I’m interested in pursuing. In addition, the policies of my country’s current administration could cause a lot of hardship, especially for those less privileged than me.

It’s easy to get discouraged and burnout. To prevent burnout, remember to live life like a marathon and not a sprint. Even when you’re fighting the good fight, pace yourself. Make time for joy. Make time for self-care. And schedule it, or else, it doesn’t happen.

When I was studying to take the PCA a second time, I scheduled my study days and my off days, including holidays. I was studying for my second round around the Christmas holiday season. This may have pushed my schedule to take the PCA out a little further, but it was worth it to prevent burnout, which made it more likely for me to pass the exam on my second try.

Ending With Hope

I’d like to end with a hopeful story. As I mentioned, the period after WWCode ended was a dark time. However, there was a period of light for me. My husband volunteers at our local animal shelter, and about 2 weeks after the announcement of WWCode’s closure, I received text messages from him about a bunch of small dogs that arrived at the shelter during his shift. This was unusual because small dogs don’t often arrive all at once at the animal shelter, and if they do, they go fast because they’re so popular!

Well, we ended up putting a second hold on a white schnoodle, a schnauzer/poodle mix. We didn’t know if we would get him, but thought we’d give it a try. To our surprise, the first hold fell through, and we got to bring our dog, Rocky, home. I believe that our dog arriving at the animal shelter that day was a message from God, and I’m glad that we listened.

Since bringing our dog home, my husband and I made sure to spend plenty of time with him! We did everything with our dog in the first six months, including: hiking, going to small dog meetups for playtime with other dogs, and taking him to training classes! Rocky can now do a bunch of commands and tricks, like: shake, lay down, and roll over. Rocky has provided me with so much unconditional love and support since we got him, especially in light of WWCode shutting down. And with the potential challenges coming up, I will need his support more than ever. Therefore, making time for family will be a priority for me this year as well.

Thanks for taking the time to learn about my journey through 2024. I hope you identify what’s important to you, and make time for that in the new year. Wishing you all the best in 2025!