From Mentee to Mentor

Five years ago, I was stuck. I had a degree in biology and a job I did not love. I was good at it, but I felt nothing. Every morning I dragged myself to work. Every evening I came home exhausted and empty. I knew I wanted something different, but I had no idea what or how.

I am from Chicago. Born and raised on the south side. No one in my family works in tech. No one even knows what a software engineer really does. When I told my mom I wanted to learn to code, she asked me if that meant I was going to fix computers. I love her, but she did not get it.

I started teaching myself at night. I would come home after work, eat something fast, and open my laptop. I followed online tutorials. I built tiny projects that no one would ever see. It was slow and frustrating. Some nights I cried at my desk because I could not figure out something that seemed so simple.

Then I found MakePossible. I joined the community not really sure what to expect. I filled out my profile. I said I was looking for someone who had made the transition from a non tech background into software development. Within a few weeks, I was matched with Sarah.

Sarah was a senior engineer at a company in the Loop. She had studied chemistry in college and switched to coding in her late twenties. When we had our first video call, I was nervous. I did not think I had anything interesting to say. But Sarah was kind. She asked good questions. She listened.

Over the next year, Sarah became my guide. She helped me figure out what skills to focus on. She looked at my resume and told me what to change. She did mock interviews with me until I stopped shaking before them. And when I got my first job offer as a junior developer, she was the first person I called.

Getting into tech was only half the battle. Once I started working as a developer, I realized how much I still did not know. Everyone around me seemed to have been coding since they were twelve. They talked about things I had never heard of. I felt like a fraud.

Sarah warned me about imposter syndrome. She told me it would hit hard in the first year. She was right. There were days when I was convinced I would be fired. When I would hide in the bathroom and cry. When I would call her after work and ask if I had made a huge mistake.

She always had the same answer. You belong here. You earned your spot. Keep going. And she would tell me about her own early years in tech. The times she felt stupid. The mistakes she made. It helped more than she knows to hear that someone I respected had struggled too.

I also faced challenges that Sarah did not. Being a Black woman in a mostly white, mostly male workplace is exhausting. Microaggressions. Being mistaken for the intern. Having my ideas ignored only to hear a man say the same thing and get praised. Sarah could not fully understand that part. But she listened. She validated my feelings. And she helped me strategize about how to handle specific situations.

Having a mentor did not make the hard parts disappear. But it made them bearable. I was not alone anymore. Someone had my back.

Last year, Sarah moved to a new job and told me she would have less time for mentoring. She suggested that I think about becoming a mentor myself. At first I laughed. Me? A mentor? I had only been a developer for a few years. I still felt like I was figuring things out.

But she was insistent. She said you do not need to know everything to help someone. You just need to be a few steps ahead of where they are. And there are plenty of women who are where you were three years ago.

So I signed up to be a mentor on MakePossible. I was nervous at first. What if I gave bad advice? What if my mentee was disappointed? But my first mentee, Maya, was wonderful. She was a recent bootcamp graduate looking for her first job. She reminded me so much of my younger self.

Helping Maya was different from being helped by Sarah. I had to articulate things I had learned intuitively. I had to be patient when she did not understand things that seemed obvious to me. And I had to admit when I did not know the answer. That was humbling but also freeing.

Maya got a job after three months of working together. She sent me a message that said I changed her life. I cried. I finally understood what Sarah must have felt when I got my first job. There is nothing quite like knowing that you helped someone become who they wanted to be.

Being a mentor taught me things I never expected. It made me a better engineer because I had to explain concepts clearly. It made me more confident because I saw that I actually knew things. It made me more empathetic because I remembered how hard it was to be new.

It also connected me to Chicago's STEM community in a way I had not experienced before. I started going to local events. I met other mentors. I joined a group of women developers who meet once a month in a coffee shop in Logan Square. I finally felt like I belonged.

Sarah and I still talk, by the way. We get coffee every few months. She has become a friend, not just a mentor. And she still gives me advice when I ask for it. The relationship did not end when I stopped needing her in the same way. It just evolved.

Maya is now a mentor too. She texted me last week to say she had taken on her first mentee. That made me so proud. The chain continues. That is how real change happens. Not through one person saving another, but through a network of women helping each other, one conversation at a time.

If you are reading this and you are thinking about finding a mentor, do not wait until you feel ready. You will never feel ready. Just start. Reach out to someone. Send that message. The worst that can happen is they say no or do not respond. That is not the end of the world.

If you are already in a place where you could help someone else, consider becoming a mentor. You do not need to be a senior director or a genius. You just need to be willing to listen and share what you have learned. That is enough. That is more than enough.

Mentoring changed my life. Not because someone handed me opportunities, but because someone believed in me when I did not believe in myself. That belief gave me the courage to keep going. Now I get to do that for someone else.

You can do it too. Join us on MakePossible. Find your person. And when you are ready, be that person for someone else. That is how we build a stronger, more connected STEM community in Chicago and everywhere else.

© Copyright SCWIST 2026
MakePossible was created by SCWIST
(Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology)
With project funding support from Women and Gender Equality Canada

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