Reflecting on 2024: A Year of Growth and Contributions in My Career
As 2024 came to an end, I took some time to write down and reflect on the growth opportunities that have shaped my year. Here’s a look at the highlights from my journey this year, spanning volunteering, professional achievements, learning, and building connections.
Volunteering
The Collab Lab
This year, I continued supporting early-career professionals as a career mentor during the final stages of their experience. My contributions included:
- Reviewing resumes and LinkedIn profiles
- Conducting mock interviews
- Providing feedback and career advice.
Back in 2022 I was part of TCL-50 cohort where I built a smart shopping app with really cool people and mentors. I wish I had written my own article about my experience but this post by one of the mentors does it quite well.
In addition, I previously volunteered on the curriculum revamp committee, where I helped redesign aspects of the program to better serve future cohorts. I wrote about the benefits of volunteering here.
Unfortunately, The Collab Lab closed due to the challenges of running a non-profit solely with volunteers but I am incredibly grateful to have been part of this great community.
Chingu
As a project/voyage mentor, I guided a team through the project development process following agile methodologies. My role was intentionally hands-off, focusing on:
- Observing team communication and stepping in only if necessary
- Assisting when the team was stuck after trying to resolve challenges between themselves.
This experience allowed me to foster team autonomy while ensuring support when it was most needed.
Back in 2022 I also collaborated with a team at Chingu, though at the time there were no project mentors. I wrote about my experience here.
Work
This year has been packed with impactful projects and professional development opportunities:
- Building New Applications: I contributed to the development of security software in Attack Surface Risk Management (ASRM), empowering organizations to proactively identify and mitigate risks to protect critical assets.
In the second half of 2024, my team and I developed a mock-up for a new app that was presented at Black Hat, one of the world's leading cybersecurity events. I loved building this mock-up. I leveraged AI tools like GitHub Copilot to bring it to life quickly.
The app quickly gained client interest and through collaboration across 6+ teams, is now in private preview. For the front end, we’re leveraging React, TypeScript, and D3.js. I’m currently focused on delivering a key feature for the upcoming public preview release. This project has been my favourite to date.
In the first half of the year, I contributed to adding new features for an app we had started building in 2023, continuing to work with the same tech stack to enhance its functionality.
- Improved Internal Communication: Supported initiatives to enhance communication within the R&D organization, including hosting Q&A sessions and implementing an internal news feature. These efforts resulted in a measurable 2% improvement in organizational communication efficiency.
Participating in this initiative was a lot of fun! It was fulfilling to contribute to meaningful change while building connections and collaborating with colleagues across teams.
CTF Event Participation: Took part in a Capture The Flag (CTF) event, diving into cybersecurity challenges with my team.
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Knowledge Sharing: Contributed to knowledge sharing within team and whole R&D organization by delivering presentations, including:
- Exploring three use cases for GitHub Copilot.
- Showcasing a front-end feature my team built, presented in collaboration with the back-end team.
- Team sprint demos highlighting various features I worked on.
Mentorship: Acted as a buddy for a co-op student over two terms (eight months), providing guidance, support, and fostering her growth and integration within the team.
RISE Empowered Women’s Development Program: Participated in this multi-day professional development program, which featured sessions on topics such as impact, networking, visibility, leadership styles, and career resilience.
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Courses/Workshops:
- Building with Amazon Bedrock and LangChain Workshop by AWS. This workshop introduced generative AI concepts through hands-on exercises. Labs included prompt engineering, security and guardrails, chatbots, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), image generation & editing, and multimodal capabilities.
- Artificial Intelligence Foundations: Thinking Machines on LinkedIn Learning. This course helped me learn some key concepts behind artificial intelligence, including differences between "strong" and "weak" AI, while covering the history of AI, machine learning, technical approaches, AI in robotics, and integrating AI with big data.
Conferences
CascadiaJS in Seattle
Attending CascadiaJS was a major highlight of the year. I expanded my technical expertise, built connections with other developers, and shared key insights with my colleagues through a presentation at work. Check out my blog post here.
Content Creation
This year, I co-wrote an article with Web Dev Path titled How to Spot and Avoid Job Scams: A Guide for Junior Tech Professionals. The guide was aimed at helping early-career professionals navigate job hunting safely and confidently.
Relationship Building
Building relationships has been another cornerstone of 2024:
- Casual coffee chats with colleagues, as well as individuals outside of work, helped me build new relationships, expand my network, and foster shared learning.
- Active participation in the Women’s ERG book club fostered meaningful discussions, broadening my perspective and deepening my understanding of diverse experiences.
Closing Thoughts
I’m happy with the balance I struck between contributing to the developer community, growing in my professional role, and making meaningful connections. These experiences have not only strengthened my technical and leadership skills but also enriched my journey as a collaborator. I’m excited to continue exploring new opportunities for growth and impact this upcoming year.
Top comments (1)
A fantastic year!