Michelle Shen

Michelle Shen was introduced to technology by chance after being roped into helping her friend organize a CodeDay DC hackathon in high school. At the time, Michelle didn’t see herself as a coder, but as she worked closely with her team to grow the event to accommodate hundreds of attendees, she was able to meet so many incredible people that made her feel welcome in the community. Through her meaningful experience organizing CodeDay DC, she says, “I fell in love with the creativity and acceptance I found in the hacker community.”

It wasn’t until after Michelle had graduated high school and started her chemical engineering degree at Georgia Tech (GT) that she registered for her first hackathon as a participant: a hackathon hosted by Women at the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, where her team placed 1st in the Education category. That experience gave her the motivation to continue learning about technology, which eventually developed into a strong passion for the power of creation involved in programming.

Michelle has continued to stay involved in the community by organizing hackathons for others. At Georgia Tech, she got involved with the HexLabs technology team, helping to organize hackathons such as Georgia Tech’s flagship HackGT. The summer after her freshman year, Michelle was selected for the Major League Hacking (MLH) Fellowship's Production Engineering track, where she learned how to take a project from idea to production. Working with two other fellows, Michelle created a meaningful project that ended up winning them 1st prize at the MLH Fellowship’s project expo. Michelle enjoyed the experience so much that she reapplied and was accepted into the MLH Fellowship again, this time for the Open Source track. As an Open Source fellow, she collaborated with Meta to roll out changes on their Hip-Hop Virtual Machine that are still being used by developers across the company.

Following these impactful fellowship experiences, Michelle has continued to gain experience as a Software Development Intern for PENTA Construction Management and a Software Engineering Intern with Stripe.

Giving back to the MLH and broader hacker community, Michelle was recently featured on a panel at The Linux Foundation Member Summit to promote exciting new partnerships between Linux Foundation teams and the MLH Fellowship for future student fellows. She has also written a post on the MLH blog speaking on her experience getting into the tech field and opened herself up to advising students still nurturing their interest in coding.

Fostering a more inclusive and accepting environment in the hacker community is incredibly important to Michelle. She’s been heavily involved in the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) since beginning college. Moving from a general member to committee chair to becoming VP of Finance of her college chapter, she helped lead the largest minority-interest student organization on campus. She now serves on the Society’s National Finance Committee helping chapters around the nation maintain their finances.

Recently, she was also an organizer, mentor, and judge for Georgia Tech SWE’s first high school hackathon, which introduced students from the local Atlanta community to coding through hands-on workshops and events. Through the organization, she also volunteers her time to mentor female students considering STEM majors and help with female recruitment events at Georgia Tech.