On Saturday 30th January we held our first TechStylers inspirational meetup of the year. The subject for this session would be ‘passing the baton’ and our speakers would be sharing their experiences of this with the group.
Our first speaker was Haimantika Mitra, a Microsoft Student Ambassador from Siliguri in West Bengal. Haimantika shared her exceptionally inspirational story with the group, describing how becoming part of the Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors programme, and attending events lead by Dona Sarkar on building Power Apps with the Power Platform, motivated her to start building her own apps.
Using her new found skills to help and encourage others, Haimantika has supported many Community events, and spoken at Microsoft Build, Start Dev Change and Microsoft Ignite. More recently, Haimantika has passed a number of certifications and gained an internship, and speaks with an infectious enthusiasm on the life changing effects of the Power Platform!
Our next speaker was Christiana Otuko Odonkor, a SAP Consultant from Accra, Ghana, currently studying with the SAP Training and Development Institute. Originally having studied Business Administration, Christiana had worked in Finance before finding a passion for using digital technology, and particularly AI, to transform processes.
I was the third speaker that evening, and talked to the group about mentoring, what it is, why it is important and how it works. I shared my experiences with mentoring, both as a mentor and a mentee and signposted attendees to relevant resources. Having been both on the giving and receiving end of this particular baton, I can’t recommend mentoring enough.
Our last speaker for the January meetup was Olujumoke Toriola, a TechStylers leader and regular speaker at our meetups and affectionately known to our group as Jummie T. Currently participating in a mentoring scheme with an organisation called ‘Wentors’, Jummie outlined for us the value that both the mentor and mentee get from a mentoring relationship.
This lead nicely into Foyin introducing us to the Wentors scheme in more detail, and recommending us to get involved.
