Alumni Spotlight: Mariam Mayanja (CDF ‘18)
By: Chris Kuang
Tags: Public Speaking, Civic Digital Fellowship, User Research, Coding It Forward, Diversity In Tech

The following has been lightly edited for clarity.

Coding it Forward: What have you been up to since finishing as a Civic Digital Fellow in 2018?

Mariam Mayanja: I was a 2018 Fellow, so when you say “It’s been two years,” it doesn’t feel like it was that long ago, but when I sit back and reflect on everything that’s happened since then and the chain of events that the Fellowship started for me, it feels like it’s been almost a lifetime.

After the Fellowship, I got more involved with the Washington State Opportunity Scholarship. The Civic Digital Fellowship Demo Day was one of the largest presentations I’d given up until that moment, and then the Washington State Opportunity Scholarship asked me to be their scholar speaker for one of their breakfast events, so I went from giving a speech to a hundred or two hundred people at the Fellowship Demo Day to a thousand.

Mariam presenting at CDF Demo Day in August 2018

The Demo Day experience was something I really appreciated having, especially considering how many cool people were watching our demos. Transitioning from the Fellowship and slowly giving incrementally larger speeches was really cool, and helped me realize how much I love public speaking and presenting my work in an accessible format, where people from non-technical backgrounds can still understand and enjoy.

And during the Fellowship — this really started watching all of the Fellows during our “Side Hustle Sundays” — I decided to try and be more ambitious and do things whenever something interested me. I started Minorities in Tech at the University of Washington, which is a student organization that fosters a diverse community to increase solidarity, allyship, and support to promote higher retention rates of minorities within the technology industry and academia.

Starting Minorities in Tech and getting involved in civic tech and tech for social justice is something that I had very long overlooked until I did the Fellowship, and then I was around all of these amazing people — between the Fellows and the folks at USDS — that were using technology to advance social good, and I have really leaned into that since then.

CIF: Can you talk a little about your experience at DSVA? Your project, the team you worked on, and the things you learned as a Fellow?

MM: First and foremost, being a Fellow — it was the first time I was in a tech environment that was diverse. Working at DSVA — with so many coworkers of color, so many female coworkers — really helped me find my voice as a Black woman in the tech space, especially with how young I was at the time. I was 19 and right out of freshman year, and it was such an opportunity to be around so many professionals of color who were really strong mentors.

I’m especially grateful for Marvo Dolor and Florence Kasule at DSVA, and how wonderful of an influence and mentor they were. Marvo and Florence were amazing mentors and inspirational to me being able to watch other Black women in the workplace thriving and doing amazing work.

Everyone in that office was so excited to be a mentor to myself and R. R and I would write different sticky notes for our coworkers and we would put them on their desk or their monitor and the notes would say “Hey,” and a super corny tech joke, and then we’d ask if they wanted to get lunch with us that day. We’d have lunch with a different employee every day.

All the mentors that I had really inspired me and helped me find my voice as a Black woman in the tech space and I am very grateful for that. I still think about their leadership a lot whenever I am creating initiatives at the Allen School surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion, and I’m really grateful I have them as role models.

I was first introduced to UX and UI through the Fellowship. During the VA project I was working on, I was basically running user research and acting as a PM (product manager) for the GI School Feedback tool, and from that experience I realized how much I loved user research.

I’ve embedded user research around diversity, equity, and inclusion in how I’ve structured Minorities in Tech, and I’ve also been doing different design research internships with Microsoft so I’ve been able to have lots of opportunities to get better and grow in design research since I was a Fellow. I may not have found design research without the amazingly positive experience I had at DSVA as a Fellow, so I’m really grateful for that.

CIF: I’d love to hear what you might tell a student who is considering the Civic Digital Fellowship.

MM: I remember when I was applying to be a Fellow and I so so badly wanted to work with the Department of Health and Human Services, but now, I can’t imagine a better fit than DSVA (Digital Service at Veterans Affairs). The matching that the Coding it Forward team does behind the scenes to make sure that each Fellow is a good fit for the environment that they’re in is phenomenal—it’s top tier.

While you may have your heart set on being with a specific department or agency, trust that Coding it Forward will place you in an environment where you will thrive. All of my friends, from my recollection, were also placed in environments where they thrived, even when it was not in the place where they thought they should have been or anticipated ending up. Everyone was put in places where they could thrive, grow, learn, and develop as a better professional.

CIF: You’ve done a few internships at Microsoft and you’ve been very active on campus with regards to the tech community. What are you most hopeful about when it comes to technology?

MM: I am really hopeful about how much we’ve developed this conversation about allyship and around supporting each other. I think that that’s really one of the first steps into creating a genuinely inclusive civic tech community — and tech community in general — is to focus in and lean into allyship.

Between all the people who are so willing and eager to be mentors and everyone who is willing to sit down and have tough conversations about equitu, inclusion, racism, and accessibility, I’m really hopeful about how much people want to talk about things. And I’m really hopeful about how much people want to look inward, become introspective, and ask themselves how they can be better allies. I think that this is going to transform this industry more than anything else.

CIF: What do you see as your next steps? What do you hope to do?

MM: For me, I’m happiest when I am helping someone else be heard. I’m happiest when I’m acting as an advocate, when I make life a little bit easier for someone else, when I make someone feel more represented, more seen, more accepted.

I think that’s why I love user research so much. But also why I like tech. Tech gives us such a huge platform to do social good and to uplift people whose voices haven’t been heard yet. So for me, my plan is to continue doing user research, to lean into user research on groups that are historically underrepresented in tech, and try to make both the tools and the people working on the tools more cognizant of different backgrounds, capabilities, and socioeconomic constraints, so that everyone can benefit from this tech revolution that we’re having.

CIF: Is there anything else that you want to share to people in the Coding it Forward community?

MM: This summer, I’m going in on my fifth tech internship and, especially with me being one of the younger Fellows—I did Coding it Forward right after my freshman year—I feel like this is less advice about Coding it Forward and more in general.

If you are an underclassman, if you don’t have that much tech experience, put yourself out there anyway, because the worst thing that could happen is that you get practice submitting an application.

Even if you might feel a little bit under-qualified, even if you feel you’re not the best fit for something— if there’s anything that interests you, always apply. And if you ever get a whim to apply, follow it and just go for it, because a lot of really amazing things will happen.