Oluwatoyin Yetunde Sanni is a Nigerian software developer, engineer and blogger with a passion to leverage technology to tackle challenges in Nigeria and the rest of the world.
She is the co-founder of Tech-in-Pink, an initiative dedicated to diversifying the tech workforce and making university-aged women successful in programming through mentoring and support of women who want to get into technology. She also co-organizes the Lagos Women in Machine Learning and Data Science events to get more women into the AI field.
She has a B.sc in computer science from the University of Illorin, Nigeria along with certificates from Udacity in Machine Learning Engineering (Artificial Intelligence) and from Coursera in Neural Networks and Deep Learning. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics from the Sapienza Università di Roma.
Following her interest in computers as a child, Yetunde took up programming as a way to solve traffic related issues in Nigeria, specifically in Lagos. She previously worked as a fullstack developer with Andela where her duties involved building software solutions for different Andela partners across the globe.
In 2016, she won the Toptal STEM scholarship for Women and in 2017, Innov8tiv listed her as one of the 50 visionary women in tech to watch in 2017.
Yetunde has extensive experience as developer and programmer, having worked for several notable tech companies throughout her professional career. From 2012 to 2015, she worked with Landmark University in Omu-Aran, Kwara State, as an IT support and Technologist. She was a full stack developer at Hooch, New-York from Oct. 2015- Jan. 2016. She went on to work as a full stack developer at 500px, Canada from March 2016-April 2016. Yetunde joined Awasu Design, a design and strategy team based in San Francisco, as a full stack developer in July 2016. She has also had jobs as a sotware engineer and a ruby on rails developer. She co-founded Tech in Pink in 2016 with fellow Andela programmer, Gertrude Nyenyeshi to help share and teach young people, particularly girls, how to build and solve problems through code/technology.
She was part of the team that built ‘Ayewa’ — an application aimed at solving accommodation problems for students within a geographical region, which she calls her favorite.
Why TechHer Loves Her:
Yetunde believes in the necessity of a diverse and tech workforce. She believes that the industry at large will only benefit as more and more women enter the tech industry. Through her work with Tech in Pink and other volunteer organisations, she is working to ensure that this diversity becomes a reality.
She says, “If you’re a woman and you want to work in tech, I wouldn’t let stories about a “brogrammer” culture deter you. Instead, focus on your craft, because your skills will speak louder than your gender.”
Kehinde Oni is a world class full stacker developer and computer programmer with exceptional skill in JavaScript and Ruby on Rails. Her resume includes work with some of the biggest tech companies in the world, including Microsoft and Atlas.
She is a graduate of the University of Ilorin with a degree in Mathematics.
In 2010, Kehinde was an Exchange Programme Intern at AIESEC Ghana where she volunteered for a period of 1 month. She was part of a team that organized a workshop themed, "Project YES (Young Entrepreneurs)" was aimed at empowering undergraduates in tertiary institutions.
In April 2015, she worked with other team members to develop a Civic Graph, an open source, crowdsourced knowledge base and data visualization project. It aims to map the civic tech community players and connections -- their types, locations and levels of influence in an interactive, intuitive, and modern way.
In July 2015, she worked on a project called Executer. Executer is a mobile App that uses scheduled information from your Google Calendar to figure out where you are and where you need to be at any point in time. It then helps you to schedule an Uber pick up with enough time for you to make it to your next appointment just in time.
From August 2015-Dec 2016, Kehinde served as the Vice President for SheLovesCode. SheLovesCode is an initiative of the female developers working at Andela. It was born out of the apparent gender gap in Andela and the tech world generally.
She is a member of AIESEC. Kehinde eagerly desires to launch her start up with the intent to empower Nigerian children to follow career paths of their own choosing.
She currently works as a Software Developer at Andela.
Why TechHer Loves Her:
Kehinde is smart, intelligent and self- motivated. Thriving in technology can sometimes be a bit difficult for women in Africa but she has made a name for herself in the tech space.
Once ranked no. 4 on Github’s list of best programmers in the country, Olubukola Makinwa - self-taught programmer and developer extraordinaire - is in a class of her own.
Formerly a technical team lead & lead facilitator at Andela, Olubukola is a programmer/full stack developer fascinated about the web and its technologies. She wrote her first programming language (Java) as an undergraduate.
She graduated with a first class degree from the University of Babcock. She is a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist and also has certifications from the Neuroscience of Learning and the App Evolution with Swift.
From 2016-2018, Olubukola worked with Andela as the Lead Facilitator and Technical Team Lead. Before that, she was the lead developer at Swap Space in 2015, a company that delivers IT solutions and services. She has also worked as a technical support for GigaLayer.com and was a Web Developer at ConnectNigeria.com. She worked on projects like Online Digital Library, CNV Framework, Converg (Beta Version) a web-based platform that helps coders connect, support and learn from each other in real time.
Some of her awards include Best Graduating Student, Department of Computer Science with the Highest CGPA and also from the School of Computing and Engineering Science.
She currently works as a software engineer at Contentful, a German based company.
Why TechHerLoves Her
Olubukola is a self-taught programmer who rose to become one of the best in the country. Her brilliance, passion for the science of learning and her conviction that one can learn anything motivates us to take on challenges.
Blessing Ebowe graduated in 2013 from the University of Benin with a degree in Electrical engineering. She loves to watch movies, play Mortal Kombat and be photographed.
Blessing was a Mathematics Tutor during her one year of National Service to her country, Nigeria. She taught students at the Junior and Senior Secondary school level on Mathematics.
She also has various certifications in Front-end java script frameworks, HTML, CSS and JavaScript, real time web with Node.js and The shape of JavaScript. These she obtained from Coursera; an e-learning platform and Code school.
Her Work:
Blessing Ebowe is a Software developer at Andela. Her interests is on utilising the creative power of programming to optimize human efforts in everyday life. Blessing has worked with Ruby on Rails to build web applications, APIs, and command-line gems at Andela. Ruby on Rails is a server-side web application framework written in Ruby programming language.
She has created a web application that helps event organizers to manage promotions, ticket sales, email notifications and website sub-domains for their events, more easily.
She has also worked with the PEAN stack to implement new features on a web application used within Andela. The application helps to record, track, and analyse performance assessments of developers conducted by the developers themselves, their peers, and their trainers.
Blessing Ebowe is currently leading a team at Andela that is contributing to Free Code Camp. The Free Code Camp is an open source project that helps users learn how to code, connect with other developers in their local community, and build technology solutions for non-profits. She is also currently part of The Releaf Group team working as Quality Assurance engineers, ensuring software products are standard.
Blessing Ebowe was among the soft ware developers that Facebook Founder, Mark Zukerberg met during his visit to Nigeria in August 2016. Her discussions with Mark include how she got into Andela, how Andela has improved her not just as a developer but also as an individual and most importantly the challenges of being a software developer in Nigeria.
Why We Love Her:
Blessing believes in the power of focus and consistency. She is a goal getter whose eyes are always on the price. Even though her first application to Andela was unsuccessful, Blessing never gave up until she got the YES.
Every woman should aspire to have same zeal in every space they find themselves. You can't tell what you can achieve when you push to make your dreams come true. Be like Blessing Ebowe.
Maya Horgan Famodu is a Nigerian - American, who is the founder and Ecosystem Architect of Ingressive which is an investment and mentorship platform for African founders. She attended Pomona College after completing the Cornell University Prelaw Program, and worked within the banking sector of JPMorgan Chase. She also conducted extensive emerging market economic research in the Caribbean, Central American, and Sub-Saharan Africa, and West African before starting Ingressive. In her spare time, Maya loves to exercise, ride her motorcycle, and travel. She also dances, choreographs, and regularly contributes to the Huffington Post. She speaks Yoruba and Spanish.
Her Work:
She founded ingressive which provides legal, auditing, financial services to facilitate loans, equity and fund contributions for start up. Ingressive hosts 10,000 entrepreneurs and 2500 Africa- based investors.
At ingressive, they have a semi-annual Tour of Tech trips to the continent where tech investors and successful founders come to meet, mentor, and learn from local ecosystem leaders. The annual Tour of Tech trip for 2016 will take place in Lagos on the 15 – 20 November.
Ms. Horgan-Famodu regularly organizes Influencers Salons around the world, convening Africa's startup elite to do business with global investors and tech companies looking to expand to the continent. Some Influencers Salons clients include Orange Telecom, Andela, and will feature GitHub and New Relic this fall.
In 2013 - 2015, she worked at the Hufftington post as a blogger and was awarded her own column in 2014 by Arianna Hufftington.
Why TechHer Loves Her:
Miss Maya is hardworking and puts the needs of others before hers. She provides a platform for entrepreneurs to meet investors who provide funds for their businesses.
