Mudasiru Rasheed Taiwo

Like many students in his high school, Mudasiru believed that smart students should study medicine. With this goal in mind, he studied for his entry level exams, but the field was incredibly competitive and he failed the test three times. He was left questioning whether medicine was the industry for him.

Before he had time to get down on himself, his teacher introduced him to his first tech event. Thanks to the supportive words of the organizers, Mudasiru now saw that there was a career path that better suited him, and that path was coding.

Once he discovered his passion for coding, Mudasiru dove in head first. If there was a computing event nearby, Mudasiru would be there. When he wasn’t at events, he was teaching himself with the resources he had. His goal to become a doctor was fueled by the desire to find solutions to problems and become a valuable asset to his community. Seeing now that he could repackage those desires into a totally different path that supported the same goals, he was drawn to tech.

After being admitted to his university, he opted to run for a leadership position in a new Developer Student Clubs (DSC) chapter. When the position was given to an older student, he quickly became an active and supportive community member, attending events, workshops, and hackathons. Seeing all the work that he was putting into the club, other members encouraged him to organize an MLH event. Mudasiru was glad to accept, and soon MLH Local Hack Day 2019 was up and running at Mudasiru’s university. Without a doubt, he was now a large part of the local community, giving back in the way he intended.

Just a year later, after seeing how much work he put into the club, his peers chose him to lead the DSC. Keeping the same goals in mind, he made sure his community had access to tons of resources, ranging from AWS to Google products, in order to learn and explore easily together. This leadership experience brought him to GitHub, where he was chosen as a campus expert, and used community feedback to guide the way he leads by bringing tailored events and workshops to his equally eager peers.

No longer just an attendee of hackathons, Mudasiru and his team sought to give back at the Sustainable Development Goal Challenge event by building an app designed to tackle goal number one in his country: zero hunger. The function of the app allowed farmers easy access to produce orders and the general produce market. Now, still a student, Mudasiru and his peers were bringing noticeable change to their immediate community. He hopes to bring his knowledge from events such as this to become a software engineer to continue to bring such change nearby and around the world.

Unfortunately, a new hurdle presented itself in the way of his new passion — COVID. All of the resources and technology once available to him were now suddenly gone due to the pandemic, but Mudasiru didn’t let that get in the way of his journey. In an area without access to the tech needed, communities such as Google Developer Student Clubs (GDSC), GitHub, Hack Club, Google Developers Group (GDG), and MLH are what gave him a platform to learn. With the onset of the pandemic, he was forced to teach himself virtually, where he found that these communities could provide said access, further accelerating his stance as a learner and a leader.

He started with goals of creating android apps, but his system didn’t allow it. During his time spent inside, he didn’t let his dreams of bringing change grow stagnant, instead learning many new frameworks and languages that would be added to his rolodex of information. He also used his knowledge to earn certificates in IT Support from Google, CompTIA, and others. The virtual MLH Localhost workshops that he attended, however, allowed him to leverage these new frameworks so that he was no longer at a disadvantage with resources. Mudasiru isn’t one to give up, as shown by his journey with DSC, first denied a leadership position, then accepted as the head. He’s thankful for his teacher, who saw that he wouldn’t give up on medical school, and introduced him to a new path that he could put just as much energy into.