The Servant Learner
I am on a never-ending quest for answers. Many people have been very kind to teach me and explain things to me. I hope to pass on this knowledge and serve.
About Me
My Beginnings
I am Lilian, and I was born in Guatemala, but now I live in Northern Virginia. I am a computer science professional looking for a place as a Data Engineer and Data Scientist in this country full of opportunities. I worked for many years in Central America. Guatemala is a small country, so many big companies have business in the region; thus, I had the opportunity to travel extensively. I’ve been involved in software since I was fifteen years old, and I’ve been working since I was seventeen in this field, which is pretty amazing; my mother had to cash my checks because I didn’t have a proper ID yet. When I was twenty-two, I was already making software for big corporations in Guatemala. By the age of twenty-eight, I had already traveled to all of Central America implementing an ERP(Enterprise Resource Planning) software that I helped design. Along the way, I had many teachers and mentors, and to them, I owe most of the good things that I have done. I owe to my first boss the way that I make code, with order and simplicity. To my second boss, I owe a sense of responsibility. To my third boss, well, we are at peace now, and I owe to him the lots of fun that I got working with him (“for him” as he would say), frenemies have fun plotting each other’s demise, and mutual respect always (most of the time) existed (I hope). My fourth boss taught me loyalty to his peers; he would move heaven and earth to defend his team’s people. I have to say that all my bosses are brilliant –they are still alive and well, and I did learn a lot from them without exception, and they gave me opportunities that otherwise I wouldn’t possibly have had, so I will always be grateful. I also met many good people who were willing to sit with me and explain everything that I ask. The constant questions on the tip of my tongue are “Why?” and “How?” The why and how of everything is my quest. Why do you do this in this way, how did you do it, or how do you reach that conclusion. It amazes me the workings of the mind and the incredible amount of knowledge that one person can possess. The human mind is the most intriguing piece of technology in the universe.
My Choice
I do like what I do. However, it was not my first choice of career. If I could have had the opportunity to choose, I would have been a writer. My father was a poet, a writer, and a graphic artist, but unfortunately, in a country like Guatemala, you cannot make do with this kind of skills, so he was also a lawyer: a company man by day and artist by night. Sometimes we heard him typing something in the middle of the night, and he called us, then he read to us, usually a short story depicting amusing characters. He taught me how to write. When I got an idea, I usually wrote thru the night; once the idea was born in my head, it needed to get out, like a burst of energy looking for its own space. Writing is a craft, like painting or drawing; you need to practice and practice to get better and better. Like my father, I had to choose. Fortunately enough, I was also good at math and sciences, and at fourteen, I decided to become a software programmer, which is how the writer in me got lost in the past. Even though my career was not my first choice, it is definitely something that I enjoy doing, and this career gave me much more than I could have expected: friends, travels, respect, knowledge, lots and lots of fun, and many headaches of course, but that it is just part of life. In Guatemala, being a woman with an engineering background at that time was a pretty exciting and convoluted journey. But that journey deserves its own space; maybe someday I will write about it.
A Reflection
As a final thought, If I had to compare myself with a historical character, I would choose the Night Witches. The Night Witches were an all-women Russian pilot squadron that bombarded German forces in WWII. The Germans gave them their name because they flew at a low altitude and with U2’s primitive planes that made a humming noise approaching their targets, scaring everybody. This squadron was the first all-female squadron in world history to fight in a war; they were pioneers; they flew with little resources. The central command gave them overfitted man uniforms and a bag with rudimentary equipment to navigate at night. That is how I felt many times when I started my career, like one of the first ones, a pioneer, and along with my girlfriends, engineers as well, surrounded by many that distrusted our professionalism. Maybe the comparison is pretentious, we didn’t risk our lives, and we weren’t at war, but it depicts pretty well a specific point in time in our personal history and the history of many like us. These girls were in their twenties as we were. Men mocked them as we were mocked. But also, men gave them the opportunities to fly as many of our bosses gave us the same opportunities to excel. The Night Witches were the most decorated squadron in Russia; we didn’t earn any medal of honor, but we gained our peers’ respect, which was a great satisfaction. Today any girl who wants to work on STEM in Guatemala can do it without even thinking about their gender. Change is teamwork, not only women, not only men; it is an act of humanity’s will. There is still a humongous gender gap due to poverty and lack of opportunities, but that is another fight. So, this is me, and here is where I will tell my stories, and maybe I can finally combine my love for writing with the career that made everything possible in my life, even bring back the writer in me, and maybe someone along the way will call me a Data Witch.
Contact
Location
Washington, DC
Northern Virginia, USA