Bhawna Chauhan

Bhawna has a gift for hacking. She spends her free time scrolling through GitHub rather than Instagram, and has played the part of participant, judge, mentor, organizer, and founder at several renowned hackathons. Since her first hackathon in 2020, Bhawna has participated in many more, creating winning projects at more than 20 events. She’s learned so much, from Android app development to Web3 and Blockchain. She is passionate about growing the hackathon community and guiding other students along their own paths in technology.

Bhawna got her first computer in 2017, and at the time wasn’t even sure how to open it. She jumped right in anyway, teaching herself C# while working on a game with her friends. What began as a short learning experience to make a few small edits to the game became a love for programming which Bhawna says first inspired her to pursue a career in computer science. She fell in love with the aspect of problem-solving so many in the hacking community crave, and was eager to share her love of programming with others. After beginning her studies at the Hansraj University of Delhi, she realized the program focused more on theory than providing guidance and mentorship. She made it a priority to find opportunities to learn outside of school.

She signed up for several coding workshops and technical clubs, and was inspired to take the leap and register for Hack This Fall 2020 with a friend. At the event, they created their first app, DigiManager, which placed in the top 15 among more than 200 projects and won Best Use of GitHub. She was hooked! Through her involvement with the hacking community at events like HackHarvard, Hack The League, and hackCBS 5.0, Bhawna slowly found the passionate coding community she had missed at her university.

Bhawna first stumbled upon the Major League Hacking community after reading about someone being selected for the MLH Fellowship on her Twitter feed. Despite having no prior experience with Discord, Bhawna joined the server and found a mentor who helped her navigate the community and get involved. Bhawna says “overall, my experience with the MLH Community has been transformative. It has not only provided me with a platform to develop my coding skills, but it has also enabled me to find a community of individuals who share my passion for programming. Through this community, I have been able to connect with individuals from all over the world, learn from their experiences, and contribute to the broader open-source community.”

Eventually, Bhawna herself was accepted to the MLH Fellowship! It wasn’t easy breaking into the tech scene, particularly as a student in a three-year degree program up against students with four-year technology degrees, but her experience in the hacking community outside of her classes gave her the experience she needed to hone her technical and interpersonal skills.

She has since organized her own hackathon, SheBuilds, which focuses on increasing the inclusion of women in tech. In January 2023, their first event attracted over 2,500 female college students and received more than 200 submissions. Bhawna says the most fulfilling part was hearing from students who had been inspired to declare a major in computer science. Recently, she was invited to speak at an event organized by Ordinateur which was attended by more than 800 people. She hopes to continue inspiring other students to pursue careers in tech, and shares her knowledge with others through her YouTube channel. This year, Bhawna returned to Hack This Fall as a mentor. Her hacking career has truly come full circle.