Gabby Banaag

To Gabby Banaag, technology has helped define her life’s purpose, giving her a pathway to create change and foster community. Her involvement in the tech world continues to expand, and she shares her passion and impact with the hacking community.

She got her start in web design during middle school when she lived in the Philippines. She enjoyed going above and beyond on her assignments, using HTML and CSS in her tech class to design and build websites. Although she learned some Python, she felt limited in her programming future until the day her family moved back to Silicon Valley. There, her curiosity flourished, learning as much as she could about the world of computer science. She joined women in tech groups, volunteered at the local technology museum, and even taught children how to build and program robots.

In her senior year of high school, Gabby joined her first hackathon: SuperPosition, Spring 2020. She was nervous and unsure of her ability to complete a major project, but she dove into the experience. She and her team built a web app that showed images of users’ interests that provided emotional support, and the project got first place for the best web application. That was the push she needed. Since SuperPosition, she has participated in more than a dozen hackathons.

Coding was not always effortless for Gabby. For various reasons, she was unsure about majoring in computer science in college. She says, “I had stumbled upon previous tech ‘hiccups’ before - from struggling to grasp new programming languages to coping with impostor syndrome.”

However, she stuck with it and persevered, and hackathons were a significant motivation. She says, “Hacker events also teach me to persist - even if at the end of an event I don’t win an award or I come across a huge error that halts my work, I continue to keep building and to problem-solve as much as I can.”She discovered a welcoming community and engaging platform to bounce ideas around and learn from others. Forming bonds with other hackers helped her thrive.

Gabby soon realized the power of tech could help her ignite social change. She formulated a plan by combining her hacking abilities and desire to help coders everywhere - especially newer ones - reach their goals. She launched a nonprofit called Helloo World, an organization that “aims to find the intersection between technology and social change through multimedia content, coding projects, and events.” She and her organizer team built a hackathon from scratch, providing a place for new coders (60% of the attendees had never coded before) to collaborate and develop projects. It was a resounding success, and the organization plans to hold many more future events.

Besides her nonprofit, Gabby has served as TechTogether’s resident sticker designer. She was also a graphic designer and co-technical director of TechTogether New York, where she helped build the website for the event.

She appreciates the hacking community and the connections she has made through tech, and she is paying it forward with her nonprofit and continual involvement. As she says, “I worked with my team to create our own little space in the hacker community.”