Starting Out Strong in Unstable Times
“I am Deshawna Henry, a PowHERful scholar from the West Indies. In 2019, I earned my bachelor’s degree at Southern University and A&M College in Computer Science and Information Systems. Before graduation, I participated in the first IBM Blue Hackathon in Atlanta, GA, a 48-hour team building and software development competition for HBCUs. In 2020, I was recruited for an internship at IBM following the success of the Hackathon. Post graduation, I have been a software developer and DevOps professional at IBM for 3 years.
“The first 6 months of my time working in the office were exciting to me while I settled into my new role, home state, and life direction. Moving to North Carolina was not a big issue to me, as I have moved around a lot and had a number of places to call home. The hardest thing for me was finding how I will identify in the world now as a working professional. There was a term widely mentioned called “imposter syndrome,” which initially made me feel like I did not belong. I was looking around at my peers in the office and they all seemed to have a resume that felt I had to compete or compare well with. In truth, the reality is that the term “imposter syndrome” never applied to me. My issue was that I needed to have more confidence in myself and the work I produced.
“Fast forward a bit, Covid-19 has taken the world by storm and forced most people out of their jobs, homes, and workplaces. All at the same time, the US was faced with social and political injustices where I was stuck in my apartment in North Carolina reeling from the events impacting me at the same time. Fortunately, I had a kickboxing gym membership that gave me a sense of community as we tried to safely adjust to what was happening. I knew I needed to stay in good health and find some sense of community.
“As the new year came, there was still no end in sight to Covid-19. I began to worry about whether our company would be impacted to where I would have no job security. Furthermore, questioning if I still held value in those spaces as #blacklivesmatter posts kept me anxious about how or if the world valued me. This was the year 2020, and I couldn’t be more isolated while being afraid of a virus that no one understood how to fight yet.”
—Deshawna Henry, Scholar
Deshawna's profile on LinkedIn