Camille Stewart (she/her)

Camille is a cyber and tech attorney who has worked at the intersection of technology, security, law, and policy in the government and private sector. Camille is a Sr. Policy Specialist at Google, a New America Cybersecurity Policy Fellow, A Truman National Security Fellow, a Council on Foreign Relations Term Member & on the Advisory Board of Women of Color Advancing Peace and Security (WCAPS). Camille was appointed the Senior Policy Advisor for Cyber, Infrastructure & Resilience Policy at the Department of Homeland Security in the Obama Administration. More about Camille’s work can be found on her website.

What’s a challenge you’ve faced and how did you get through it?

At 13 I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that changed my life forever. From missing half my senior year of high school to undergoing multiple surgeries and treatments, my health has created an optimism inside me that carries me through every challenge that comes my way. I have gotten through all challenges in my life by anchoring myself in community and faith, looking at issues logically, and leveraging the insight of those I trust.

What’s something you’ve done that you’re really proud of?

Starting a working group that focuses on the impacts of emerging technology and cybersecurity on communities of color, especially women of color, has been an amazing culmination of my professional pursuits and the communities I care for. Not only does this group support the creation of opportunities to expand representation in these spaces; it’s harnessing the expertise of our members to identify and amplify work being done to give voice to women of color. Creating awareness of our needs has been a dream. There’s a lot of work to be done, but I am encouraged by the support we’ve received.

Masheika Allen (she/her)

Masheika Allen began her career as a litigation attorney before deciding to transfer into tech. The transition process was arduous and took several years. During the transition period Masheika worked as an online instructor, middle school teacher, technical writer, personal trainer and e-pub programmer. In 2014, Masheika was laid off from a document review position and faced with a critical choice on how to approach her future. She decided to make a leap, a full commitment to her chosen industry. She moved to the Bay Area sight unseen, relying on an unemployment check and living in hostels while applying for work. The day she received her last unemployment check, she was offered a position at a vendor at Google. Masheika worked as a contractor at several major tech companies over the course of the next 2 years before securing a full-time position at NVIDIA.

1. When did you know that you wanted to work in tech?

I always loved tech, but tech wasn’t a job in the ‘90’s, it was a hobby. My first program was a space game that I programmed on a Commodore 64 in elementary school. It wasn’t until I was much older, working as an international marketing intern for a startup as the capstone to my Masters in International Business degree, that I actually saw that I could make a career out of tech. I ended up getting a position at an epublishing company, but tech work is hard to come by in Florida (at least it was at the time). I understand there are folks working hard to change that at the moment.

2. Who is a role model that you look up to?

I looked up to my grandfather. I still do. He’s more of my chosen grandfather, as his family isn’t blood related to mine, but he’s the only grandfather that I’ve ever had. I learned how to speak to people from him, how to break complex ideas down to their base level so that everyone can understand without feeling patronized, and most importantly, I learned love from him. Not only did I learn this from how he treated me, but from how he treated people who he knew were trying to use him. I’m not religiously committed so I can’t go all the way down the road that he’s chosen, but I respect it and I’ve learned from it. I understand love from his example and I can never thank him enough for that.

3. Where is your hometown?

305 Baby! The MIA.

4. What is a struggle that you’ve faced and how did you handle it?

I can tell you one story with a sad ending and another with a happy one. I had been struggling to live in Florida for nearly a decade, 3 degrees — then 4, with little success. When I was laid off from a document review job in 2014, I was living with my ex and her children. My health was failing from the constant pressure of the 10 years prior, exacerbated by trying to keep a family afloat on a limited budget (that black woman pay gap is felt most acutely by black lesbian couples).

My health had deteriorated to the point where I was honestly afraid that I was getting close to the end, but I’d taken on a parental role for the youngest child, and that still means a lot to me. So the decision to leave Florida pitted my desire for self-preservation against my deep-seated desire to stay in my city with my would-be son. I felt pretty sure that I would not be able to hold onto the one, or return to the other, if I left. That was hard. Much harder that I ever expected. It still hurts to this day, leaving him. Not that he doesn’t have his mother, but I chose to be his parent because that’s what I wanted, so to walk away from that to save my own life… it’s justified, but sometimes it’s hard to justify. I still send presents and letters regularly, but the relationship is lost. That hurts. Some days more than others.

Another story of struggle flowed from that decision. I’d left everything and everyone that I knew to move across the country to a city I’d never even visited. I hadn’t even seen a legitimate representation of it on TV. I thought that San Francisco was full of parks and festivals, so imagine my surprise when I pulled up in the megabus to a landscape of skyscrapers! Insanity. No birds, no grass. I was wholly unprepared. When I came to SF, I had a lead on a doc review job, so my first few weeks were pretty hopeful, but that job never materialized. Money got scarce and things started to get a bit desperate. I had to do my first and only couch surf when I left the nice hostel.

I went through a pretty deep depression. No hope on the horizon, but no path to return to where I came from. It was bad. One day I saw an ad for a job meetup at the SF LGBT center and decided to walk there — from North Beach. 2 hours later, I arrived and the group was gracious and kind. I went back again the next day and they helped me update my resume to tailor it for the tech industry. I papered the entire Bay Area with it that night and got an email from the Google vendor’s recruiter the next day. I was literally at the end of my rope, at the edge of my sanity, and I was thrown a lifeline. The path from contractor to FTE was difficult, fraught with huge disappointments and even bigger wins, but I made it. I made it.

5. What is something that you are immensely proud of?

I’m actually immensely proud of my relationship. I learned love from my grandfather but I had only put the external version of love into practice — being kind to people, grounding my behavior in fairness, being trustworthy — things that affect others. What I didn’t really have was a concept of personal love. I hadn’t internalized the positives that others saw in me. I let the negatives that certain people told me supersede the reality of what I was living. I saw myself through someone else’s lens, and that lens was skewed. I saw myself as a failure and unworthy of life. Because there was no way for me to define myself as successful within the structure that I was viewing my life, I began to question the voices in my head, the terms I used for myself and my situation, and I realized that none of them came from me. They were things I’d been told by people I trusted, which I’d allowed to dictate how I valued myself.

I worked very hard to try to change my view of the world; to determine my own criteria for success or failure, determine my own value. I began to put this in practice in my work life before I left Florida, but I never incorporated it into my personal life. Six months after I moved to California, I met a girl. I had so much PTSD from my toxic, abusive former relationships that I ran, but she just jogged behind me, never threateningly close, but never far away. I told her when I met her that she was a high quality woman, which is part of the reason I didn’t think I deserved her or that I could live up to the responsibility of being her woman, but she let me start by being her friend. Over the course of that friendship, I’ve finally been able to complete my transition. I am my own woman. My relationship is proof of that. It’s open, honest, communicative, and unabashedly loving as hell. I am her little cheesy corn. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

6. What’s something that’s been on your mind a lot lately?

Justice.

7. Favorite food?

Blue Crabs, macaroni & cheese (BAKED! No Kraft. I’m Southern.)

8. Favorite book?

Most influential — Either/Or by Kierkegaard. Favorite read — most things by Steven King or Octavia Butler (except Kindred. That shit hurt.)

9. If you could try another job for a day, what would it be?

Law professor. It’s the job I’ve always wanted and still intend to have (after tech of course).

10. If you could give your 18-year-old self a piece of advice, what would it be?

Breathe. Remember that you are a good person and that life isn’t a video game that cuts off if you don’t reach ‘success’ within a certain time frame. If you work hard, you’ll get there. Just keep falling forward.

Raquel Small (she/her)

Raquel Small (she/her) is a Paralegal at Google on the Litigation team and Head of Community for Women of Silicon Valley. She is also a newly minted Master of Communication Management from the University of Southern California.

Originally from the NYC area, she is the child of a proud Jamaican mother and a Panamanian father, and she believes empowering women and people of color is the only way to make society better.

In her very limited free time, she likes to bake, try new restaurants, and exercise because of all the baking and dismantling of the patriarchy. She currently lives in San Francisco with her husband Eric and her cat Foxy Cleopatra.

1. When did you know that you wanted to work in tech?

I have always been interested in technology. When I was in high school I was big in the Live Journal community and taught myself HTML, PaintShop Pro and a bit of CSS so that I could sell journal templates. I spent an inordinate amount of time on the Internet and always assumed that I’d have a job that was related to it. When I got to college, I took some pre-law classes since I was dead-set on becoming a lawyer at the time. One class in particular, Cyberlaw, completely changed my life. The class was all about the law surrounding the Internet and specifically about how far the law lagged behind. After that class, I knew that I wanted to be an intellectual property lawyer specializing in copyright law on the Internet.

2. Who is a role model that you look up to?

My mother is the most amazing woman I know. She came to America from Jamaica at only 12 years old, completely alone, to live with her aunt and uncle. By age 15, she was completely supporting herself and eventually landed a job at the United Nations where she’s been for almost 40 years.

She worked herself to the bone to put me into the best schools and extracurriculars and taught me to work hard and never take anything in this life for granted. Currently, she is working in Sierra Leone for a few months and has spent several months in the Philippines, Georgia, and Zambia helping to build women’s health centers. She is the most fearless woman I know and always taught me that independence is a woman’s greatest asset.

3. Where is your hometown?

I was born in New York City but grew up in a small town right outside of it called Englewood, New Jersey. Sometimes it’s hard for me to admit that I’m a Jersey girl but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to appreciate it. We have amazing beaches, thousands of malls and the best Taylor Ham, egg and cheeses you’ll ever have. I even got married on the Jersey Shore (not the fist-pumping part).

4. What is a challenge that you’ve faced and how did you handle it?

After studying for the LSATs four times and actually working up the nerve to take the test twice, I applied to law school in 2014. I applied to eight schools, but got rejected from nearly all of my top choices. My whole life, I had been told how smart I was, what a great lawyer I would be, and I truly believed that I had checked all the right boxes and taken all the right steps to achieve that goal. In hindsight, that was an incredible amount of hubris on my part.

Getting rejected from the top schools essentially shattered my dream of being a lawyer, which was something that I’d held on to for over 10 years. I did get into some schools and I could have chosen to go to those, but a small voice inside of me told me “this isn’t right”. I had worked so hard for this moment and I wanted it to be completely perfect. I was unwilling to accept anything less, so I decided to listen to that tiny voice and not go after all. It was immensely scary to give up on something I had put so much of my time and resources into, but I know it was the right move.

At some point, the dream transitioned more into a status symbol than something I actually wanted to do. In my job, I worked with lawyers daily and saw how much they loved their role — which was something that I never felt. In hindsight, I had plenty of signs along the way that law school wasn’t for me, but I chose to ignore them because I thought it was part of my “process”. I struggled for a long time with feeling like I had failed (which was honestly a new sensation for me) but in the end, I know I made the right decision.

5. What is something that you are immensely proud of?

I am immensely proud of receiving my Masters of Communications Management from USC this past May. After the whole law school debacle, I re-grouped and decided to get my Masters in something that felt more familiar to me — Communications. In reflecting on why I chose not to go to law school, I realized that whatever career I chose needed to be something that my personality fit into, not the other way around. While I’m sure I would have been a fine lawyer, I think I would have always felt like a square peg in a round hole.

Getting my Masters while working full-time was one of the most time-consuming, emotional things I’d ever done. Working in litigation, the job is extremely deadline driven and there were times when I would work a 13 hour day only to turn around and have to work on a paper due that night. It pushed me to my mental, emotional, and physical limits at many different points, but somehow, I made it through.

6. What’s something that’s been on your mind a lot lately?

I have been thinking a lot about self-care. It has become such a buzzword lately that it seems like it’s lost a lot of its meaning. I read an article recently that said something to the effect that if you find yourself looking for ways to self-care constantly, maybe it’s time to rethink your life. Self-care is meant to be a momentary relief from a crazy situation, not a way to escape your daily life. I’m trying to look for more ways to have the kind of life that I don’t need self-care from.

7. Favorite food?

Pizza — it’s good even when it’s bad.

8. Favorite book?

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. The protagonist of the story, Francie, always showed such resilience much like the titular tree that grows through concrete. I’ve read it four times and always find some new nuggets of wisdom.

9. If you could try another job for a day, what would it be?

Growing up, my dream was always to be a tornado chaser after I saw the movie Twister. I loved science when I was younger but it fell out of favor for me once I realized how much math was involved. Tornado chasing is incredibly dangerous but there is something about the high-risk, high reward nature of it and being that close to something so deadly that always excited me. I think it’s why I like rollercoasters so much!

10. If you could give your 18-year-old self a piece of advice, what would it be?

Just do it the right way — not the quick way. It’s tempting to want to just get things over with and move on to the next more exciting thing but if I have learned one thing over the years, it’s that the process is the reward. There are so many things that I missed out on because I was just looking to leave the job or hand in the test that I get upset when I think about how I didn’t take advantage of those opportunities to learn and grow. It feels torturous in the moment, but it really does yield better results.