Mentorship and Teaching
I’ve found that the most rewarding and cathartic moments in my career have come from the opportunities I’ve had to teach and mentor young people. My drive to help a new generation of developers entering the industry stems directly from my own personal experience. As a woman in a technical role, the lack of diversity in game dev is a stark and persistent challenge. I aim to take on every opportunity I can to help support and shape the change I want to see in this industry.
Leading the Design Internship Program at Ubisoft SF
Ubisoft, San Francisco (2021 - Present)
For the last two years I have volunteered to lead the Ubisoft San Francisco office’s Design Intern Program. This presents a uniquely difficult challenge of setting students up for success within less than 4 months. The process is much more than just taking on the role of hiring and managing, although both are certainly important. Each year I have created a curriculum plan to onboard students and design a project that allows them to both stretch their creative muscles and contribute to our studio in a tangible way. I personally lead ‘courses’ to speed teach them the technical skills they will need to utilize proprietary game engine and visual coding language. It is essential to me that interns are not just used as a means of handing off menial busy work for cheap, but that they leave the experience with significant new experience and work they can proudly display in their portfolio. After their time with our studio ends, my role as a mentor goes on. I take great joy and pride in the responsibility of supporting mentees at every stage of their career, doing everything I can to help them reach their career goals, even if those goals are outside of my studio.
Neuro Diversity in Tech Summer Internship
UC San Diego, San Francisco (2021)
Weekly meetings to offer technical support
Offering week-long support through Discord
“Over the course of 8-9 weeks, our interns work in teams as programmers, project managers, artists, and designers with the aid of a peer coach to develop an educational or research-based video game... The teams are also supported by professional mentors from the video game industry, including Ubisoft…
Our goal is to provide comprehensive workplace training in a supportive environment to enable individuals to thrive in tech occupations.”
Women’s Leadership Forum Mentorship Program
Ubisoft, San Francisco (2020 - Present)
I’ve been a member of the Women and Non-binary ERG since I joined Ubisoft. Outside of participating in community forums and events, I also volunteer as a Mentor for their internal peer mentorship program. I help Mentees with advice and coaching to help them reach their career goals.
“Within the San Francisco group, the Women's Leadership Forum, we have an internal mentoring program that matches people of different experience levels and skill levels for career-development advice and coaching, but it's very much peer-to-peer. It's not a formal program through HR. It's really up to the initiative of the mentor/mentee pairs to define their goals and drive the cadence of their meeting”
