FULLSTACK FEATURE | TEACHING FELLOWS: KAMILLA, EMMIE, KATIE

Pictured above from left to right: Kamilla Khabibrakhmanova, Katie Peters, and Emmie Salama with Patrick the Fullstack dog.

One of the most important components of the Fullstack educational experience is the instructional staff. From the founders David and Nimit, to the other instructors, like Zeke Nieremberg and Joe Alves, to the teaching fellows. Everyone on the staff is focused on helping students develop as engineers, both personally and professionally, throughout their time in the program and afterwards. We’ve found that teaching fellows in particular are a great help to students as they progress at Fullstack.

The Fullstack Fellowship is a 3-month post-graduate program open to graduating students at Fullstack. Through a thorough evaluation process Fullstack selects students with the strongest combination of a passion for coding education and technical abilities. This March, three out of the six students offered Fellowship spots were women; a first for the school.

Part of Fullstack’s core mission is to help bridge the gender gap in the technology industry and so we’re excited to share the stories of our three new women fellows in today’s post: Kamilla Khabibrakhmanova, Emmie Salama, and Katie Peters. We sat down to discuss a few questions about their time at Fullstack and how it has impacted them.

What were you doing before you attended Fullstack Academy? Where are you from?

Kamilla: Before Fullstack, I spent three years in Austin, TX. I was working at Indeed.com as the Country Manager of Indeed Russia. I enjoyed the job and wanted to stay in the tech field but in a more creative field, so I started looking into coding bootcamps as a way to quickly accelerate to a career development.

Emmie: I was born and raised in Queens, New York and I also went to school in New York. I graduated from NYU with a B.S in Speech Pathology but also took some CS classes on the side. I realized that I really enjoyed programming and decided that Fullstack would be a great place to start my journey into the tech field.

Katie: I left my job as a graphic designer at MongoDB last spring and spent the months leading up to Fullstack freelancing. I grew up in Bangor, ME, but have lived in New York City since 2011.

What influenced you to start coding?

Kamilla: Working at a tech company and getting to interact with a lot of different developers got me interested in learning more about coding. At first, I mostly wanted to automate work tasks and maybe build pretty websites. Once I started learning on my own, I realized that there are infinite things you can accomplish with code, and became determined to get good enough to be able to build something really cool on my own someday.

What was your favorite part of the program here?

Emmie: The best thing about Fullstack is the community and the people you meet. Spending long days somewhere seems overwhelming but at Fullstack the time flies by! The amount of information you learn in the amount of time you spend at Fullstack is crazy.

Why did you choose to pursue the Fullstack Fellowship?

Kamilla: I really enjoyed coming to Fullstack every day and didn’t want that to end. I chose to pursue the Fullstack fellowship because I could really strengthen my foundations through teaching others and using the extra time to learn new frameworks and become better at topics that interest me.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years? What is the ideal setting in which you would you like to be using your Fullstack education?

Emmie: Hopefully in five years, I’ll be working as a developer in a company I love as well as building things I believe in! I hope to also be working seriously on my own projects.

What was the biggest challenge you feel like you faced at Fullstack, and how did you overcome it?

Katie: Working in a group. It can be challenging to synthesize ideas. The best solution I found was to be patient, be a good listener, and be willing to put others first.

Emmie: The biggest challenge I faced personally was not doubting my abilities! You learn so much at such a short time, you start to think that you aren’t actually absorbing everything, but in actuality because Fullstack is set up so well, when you reach the project phase, and are building your own projects, you become astonished at all the things you actually know.

Feature Update: Since this interview and finishing the Fullstack Fellowship, Kamilla, Katie, and Emmie secured positions as full-stack developers at Glamsquad, Prescriptive Data, and Cedrus (respectively)!