Girlstart’s Women in STEM weekly series highlights various women who are making a difference in STEM. Be inspired as these incredible women describe how they became interested in their field, provide insight into a day in the life, and share learnings from their experiences.

Bruna Dahm

Software Engineer @ Dell Technologies

Briefly describe your career/field.

I was a young mom at 17 years old, I had two kids and not much money, didn’t have a rich family, so I started working with business management, in a company that makes 3D screens for cinema, there I discovered myself in IT due to a project I conducted. Since then, I could not stop studying, I fell in love with the area. I started an internship as a Software Developer when I was at my first semester of school (IT has so many opportunities for those who do not have experience), there I started learning more and more. I built websites that could read data from the database I created, could make automations in large databases regarded to protection data laws. So, when my internship was about to end I started looking for a new job. I’ve always been interested into Data field (Data Science and Data Engineering) and I found one as a Software Engineer at Dell Technologies, to work with big data, data engineering and a little of data science. I thought I couldn’t make it, but I did. And now I work for my dream company and everything is as I always dreamed it could be.

What is your greatest accomplishment?

So far working at Dell as a Software Engineer with Big Data and Data Science, it’s something I’ve always wanted.

Why is confidence in STEM important for girls?

Very important, when I got started in technology I was not very confident about how it would be being a woman in tech. But I started anyway, now I can say there are too many opportunities and my gender hasn’t been an impact. Technology needs us!

What sparked your interest and made you want to volunteer with Girlstart?

I wish I could have had one woman to tell me everything would be great in the area and I would have the same opportunities a man would.

What would you like to tell girls who are interested in pursuing a STEM career? What words of encouragement would you share with them?

I was not good at math in high school but what I’ve learned in these years is that there is absolutely nothing we can’t learn from zero. I came from nowhere, was a young mom and even with this scenery I could make it, so all of you can make it too. Don’t be afraid.