Over the last month, I have gotten the chance to share my story with dozens of individuals. I was inspired to share this story with the world. My journey to my dream job hasn’t been easy.

The Beginning

I have been gaming since before I could read or write. I remember I had an original PlayStation, playing some random children’s games that I can’t remember the name of. My love for gaming continued for the rest of my life, but in 2008 I discovered ROBLOX. If you don’t know what ROBLOX is, it’s a platform known for letting users create their own games on their engine. When I first discovered it, I had no idea what I was getting into. I enjoyed playing a variety of games, from building games, survival, fighting, and roleplaying. At the young age of 8 or 9, I decided I wanted to learn how to make my own game on ROBLOX. I found out I would need to learn to program in Lua. I looked into it and gave up. I didn’t understand any of the documentation and had no idea where to go with this. I’m a first-generation Mexican-American. Both of my parents didn’t complete high school, so I had no one I knew who I could ask about how to get into coding.

Fast forward to middle school (for those not familiar with US schooling, middle school, also known as junior-high, is typically for ages 11 to 14), I learned that my school had a Robotics class and club. I was interested, but was told that I would have to wait until the following year to join. I stayed patient, and the moment I moved up to 7th grade, I enrolled in the class and joined the club. I had no idea that this was going to be the start of my journey. I didn’t know anything about the tech industry. I didn’t know that I’d be challenged for being a woman, or Latina. These struggles didn’t strike me until much later. I immediately fell in love with the work. I remember my teacher telling me that I learned the programming language for the robot, which is derived from C, faster than anyone he taught. That was the moment I realized that I found what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I had a lot of fun building robots. I explored opportunities afterwards. I was given the opportunity to explore the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada, California. I had a passion for space exploration, but wasn’t entirely sold just yet.

Unfortunately, I only got to spend one year in the Robotics club. I was homeless for a few months and had to eventually move far from my school, as it was the only place we could afford. I wasn’t able to make it to after school meetings because traveling home super late was dangerous in the new area I lived. I remember one of the members of my team expressing anger towards me for putting in so much work the year before and suddenly leaving without a reason. It hurt me deeply, because I didn’t know exactly how to give an explanation. I simply said, “I’m sorry for being poor.” During this time, we were struggling financially, my mom was on the verge of getting her car repossessed because she couldn’t make payments, we were getting late notices on our door from the property manager, and I felt like my life was falling on top of me. I had to take care of my sisters because my mom sometimes had to work outrageous hours to make ends meet. How was I supposed to explain that to someone who never had to experience anything like that in their life? I was only 13 years old. I knew that I had to fight to get to where I wanted, because I was always going to be at a disadvantage.

High School: Hunting for Opportunities

I didn’t know who to turn to for help with my career, so I spent my time seeking opportunities of my own. My mother always told me that she wasn’t able to give me a lot, but she knew I could always get a good education. Even though my school had some resources, a lot of what I was interested in wasn’t accessible to me. I had to find events, figure out a way to get there (which often was just trying to figure out how many buses I needed to take and when), and did my best to meet as many people as I could. No one taught me these skills, so I don’t exactly know how I got so good at it, but I was active on social media and found many opportunities this way.

In high school, I learned how to create websites using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I wanted to start exploring other areas of computer science and was given the opportunity to take a CodeCademy course for free. I learned about a program called #BuiltByGirls WAVE which allowed me to meet individuals in the field and receive mentorship through the program. I got to meet other amazing women pursuing tech and got to travel around Los Angeles to different companies, such as Netflix and Pandora. I then took the AP Computer Science Principles class and got incredibly close with my teacher who helped me seek opportunities.

During my senior year, I took his C++ class and led the Python Coding Club, where I designed lessons to teach Python to people at my school, as I was learning the language on my own during the summer and thought it was the perfect introduction for coding. I was able to do tabling for events and represented the programming department at my high school as a track and AP ambassador. That year, I also learned about SheLeads, now called Gen She, and the Entrepreneurship Makeathon. It was a two-day crash course at the Snap HQ. We learned the fundamentals of entrepreneurship and I had the opportunity to pitch an idea to judges where I won the grand prize. I learned about AthenaHacks, a hackathon at USC that was for women. I have never done anything like that before and had a blast learning new skills and meeting amazingly talented coders. My teacher had told me about Google’s Computer Science Summer Institute and I decided to apply. I was accepted along with 2 of my classmates and we spent 3 weeks during the summer after graduation learning about making web applications with Google’s App Engine.

Throughout this process, I learned that I wanted to learn about artificial intelligence. I had no idea where to start, and whenever I’d ask about it, I was always told it was “too advanced for me.” I kept that in the back of my mind, and learned about everything else in the meantime. I knew I had so much to learn, so decided to wait until college to start learning everything.

College application season came around and I got rejected from every single university I applied to, except my safe choice school. I felt like a failure. I had classmates asking me, “How did I get into this school and you didn’t?” I didn’t know how to respond. I remember everyone running into class saying decisions came out for a certain school, seeing everyone checking their portals, and having to hide in the back of the class because I had a bad feeling about mine. I didn’t know what I did wrong. I knew my grades started to decrease during my junior and senior years due to my life at home getting significantly harder, but I didn’t think it would result in this. Regardless, I kept my hopes up. I knew I was at least going to college and I was going to chase my dream.

College: Falling Over and Over

I remember the first day I arrived to campus vividly. We were driving to the middle of nowhere on a hot day, car incredibly packed with all my belongings, and a vision. My mom helped me settle in and then it was time to say goodbye. I’m her oldest and first to leave. It was an incredibly emotional moment, as one can imagine. I was declared as a Computer Science and Engineering major, had a pretty good schedule, and was ready to take on the year. My first year of school was absolutely amazing. I felt like everything was perfectly in place and it was the best feeling in the world.

Then COVID happened. The world froze. I had to move out in the middle of the spring semester. I got back home and it felt wrong. I had finally escaped home to live a life I wanted and had to come right back. I didn’t tell anyone, but I was failing classes back and forth during COVID. I remember telling my advisor that I was struggling with the remote instruction and they brushed me off saying it wasn’t that big of a difference. I felt lost. I went from A’s and B’s to D’s and F’s. I was never this bad of a student, so it caught me off guard.

The Life Changing Opportunity

Even on top of all of this chaos, In Fall of 2020, I received a message on LinkedIn from a recruiter at NVIDIA, asking if I’d be interested in applying for their new immersion program (now called Ignite). I was planning on taking summer classes to catch up, but this was an opportunity I knew I had to take. It came to me in a moment of darkness, a moment where I felt like my life was crashing over me, and I knew it was meant to be. I went forward with my interviews and during this time I was invited to participate in Google’s Software Product Sprint, an 11-week invite-only program where I worked on making web applications for social good. The web apps we created were a lot more complex compared to the ones I created during CSSI. It was completely virtual, so I was able to see some of my fellow CSSI friends virtually participating too. It was amazing. During this time, I was certain I would end up at Google. I had no idea what I wanted to do in life, but I knew I wanted it to be surrounding AI.

Spring comes around and I get notified that I was given an offer. I was shocked, surprised, and excited. I wasn’t planning on doing an internship, didn’t apply to other internships, but this one worked out for me. Shortly after, I was sent another message from my recruiter at Google asking me about applying to their STEP internship program. I told them I had moved on to another company for the summer. It felt so unreal saying that.

I remember breaking the news to my mom when she got home from work. “Mama, I got a job! A good one! At a company I love!” I had just built my gaming PC a year before that. I pointed at the GPU in my PC and told her, “They make these!” She had zero clue what I was talking about, but could tell that I was really happy. I remember receiving my first paycheck. I don’t know what the “typical” pay for an intern was, but that was the most money I have ever seen in my life. I paid our rent that month. I told my mom, “Look mom! I can take care of you!” I knew that was the moment I was going to be able to help change our lives.

School remained difficult moving forward. I took 2 semesters off at different times and last year had an emergency surgery that had me bedridden for 2 months. Typically, the surgery I had would only have me out for a week at most, but it had affected me so much more than I imagined. After this, I had to make the difficult decision to change majors to be able to finish my degree on time. I was minoring in Cognitive Science, as the courses were essential to learning about artificial intelligence and machine learning, and decided to change my major into that. I have been learning so many amazing things and still was given the opportunity to practice my programming skills, as I used Python for my senior thesis. I thought changing majors would ruin everything for me, but it worked out at the end and I still got to do what I love.

Ignite to Intern to New Grad

I was offered return offers every single summer. I made amazing memories during my internships, even though all of them I completed remotely. I completed 4 internships total, first being Ignite, and the rest were traditional as an Intern Ambassador. After my Ignite internship, I knew I found home. I couldn’t imagine myself anywhere else and I was doing what I could to make the experience as good for other interns, as well as encouraging my classmates to apply. This year, I finished my last internship as a Software QA Engineer for Omniverse and received a full-time offer. I was incredibly emotional. After all of the hardships I’ve experienced, a lot that I didn’t get the chance to even mention here, and feeling like I was going to fail out of college multiple times, and many moments where I couldn’t afford basic needs, I achieved my dream; the dream the younger me had.

Main Takeaways

I’m not making this post to brag about my job. All I’ve done since receiving my offer is provide 1 on 1 mentorship to individuals looking to work at NVIDIA for free. I do this because my philosophy has always been to share my story to prevent people from feeling alone in their situations. I want to show others that even through the moments you feel like your life is over, you can come above that all and achieve your dreams. It takes a lot of strength, but it’s possible.

Here’s a few quick pointers:

• Fight for your spot at the table
  Spaces aren’t always going to be built for you, and that’s a cold truth we have to accept. This doesn’t mean we don’t belong. Make your way in there, show that you deserve your place just as much as everyone else. Find your way into these spaces with professionals. Networking is key.
• Build opportunities for yourself
  Meet people, send cold emails, make social media posts, find the right accounts, do whatever it takes to find these life changing opportunities. After interacting with the right people for a while, opportunities will be easier to find, or may even come directly to you.
• Attend Hackathons
  Hackathons are an incredibly amazing thing. There you can learn new skills, network with other students and companies, and build projects you can put on your resume. Every single hackathon I’ve participated in was so much fun. Check out Major League Hacking for more information.
• Accept failure
  I was afraid of failure. I failed so many times during my journey and each time I was afraid of it. I learned afterwards that they didn’t keep me from being able to achieve my dreams, they just shifted the path. Don’t be scared to fail. It’s meant to happen.
• Have Fun
  This process is hard, so try your best to have fun through it. Do projects you’re genuinely passionate about, do things that make you smile, and make sure you have your eyes on the prize. Everything that I’ve done to get here was things I genuinely enjoyed. Passion is everything.

I hope this helps someone who’s struggling a lot right now. I know that it’s tough for a lot of people right now, but it won’t be like this forever. Keep pushing!

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