I ended up in IT and Cybersecurity by constant exposure ever since I was young. I started out with game consoles, handhelds, and a Windows XP desktop. In the beginning, I had only a basic idea of how these systems worked but I was having fun.
Eventually, I became curious about how to optimize things, and somewhere along the way that curiosity turned into a career path. My experience was built upon a need to make things faster, look better, and be efficient.
I've worked in server rooms, tutoring centers, and computer labs, and each environment taught me something different about what it really means to solve problems for real people.
When I started working as an IT intern at a school district, I stepped into an environment where technology had to just work for teachers in the middle of a lesson and for students relying on their devices every day.
Hundreds of devices needed to be managed across multiple buildings, and the margin for error was real. If a student's iPad wasn't configured correctly, a classroom's day got disrupted. I learned quickly that device management at scale is less about knowing the software and more about thinking systematically.
The work was varied in a way I didn't expect and I appreciated that. Auditing printers for vulnerabilities and coordinating with Apple Support when issues went beyond our internal capabilities was the first time I understood what "keeping systems running" actually means when the stakes involve kids and teachers, not just uptime numbers.
This role was a shift from fixing problems to helping people avoid them in the first place. I saw that there wasn’t a single, clear place for students and faculty to go when they needed help with technology. So one of the first things I worked on was building a central hub, a WordPress site that brought together tutorials, resources, and a way to book support.
I quickly realized that being “good with technology” isn’t just about knowing the tools. I also became more aware of accessibility and how easily it can be overlooked. Working on captioning and applying accessibility standards changed the way I think about design, not just making things functional, but making sure they’re usable for everyone.
This experience helped me grow in a different direction than my IT work. It strengthened my communication skills, pushed me to think more about user experience, and reminded me that technology is only useful if people feel confident using it.