In this week’s episode of the Preparing for the New Year season, we’ll shine a light on 🌟 Steps to Prepare for a Long Break with Marie Ablaza.

Marie is currently a Talent Recruiter at Netflix for their Game Development Studio. She has 8+ years in recruiting and calls herself a Fairy Job Mother, meaning she's a Talent Advisor, Career Strategist, and a Career Confidence Builder — all with the intention to help people discover their authentic selves, reach their potential, and connect them with opportunities where they can be their best. She does this with some magic and fun! She believes in the power of storytelling and helps others to develop their own stories to deliver their message on the values they can bring into any organization.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariebenigno/

marieablaza.me

marieablaza.me/thefairyandtheforce

In this week’s episode of the Preparing for the New Year season, we’ll shine a light on 🌟 Recognizing and Preventing Burnout with Ramona Arora.

Ramona Arora is a South Asian data analyst and product enthusiast, currently based in San Francisco, California. She is a highly curious and impact-driven individual that uses data & empathy to improve decision making. She is also the creator of Solo Wave, a community platform for women solo explorers who are challenging the stigma behind alone time. She values equal representation and actively devotes her time supporting womxn of color and underprivileged communities.

In this week’s episode of the Preparing for the New Year season, we’ll shine a light on 🌟 How Resting Makes Us Human with Grace Kwak.

Grace Kwak is an Electrical Engineering student at UCLA. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, she subconsciously learned that meaning and purpose are equivalent to efficiency and productivity. As she became an adult, she began wondering if there could be another way to see the self and the world. To explore her ideas, she wrote and published a fiction novel called The Glitch (New Degree Press, 2021). The book follows an engineer's journey from a techno-utopia into a chaotic and broken reality. Throughout each chapter, the main character not only transforms her relationship to rest and relaxation, but her understanding of what it means to be human.

Connect with her on Instagram @gracekwak.writes and check out the e-book edition of The Glitch at https://amzn.to/3epmnvz. Paperback available in late January 2022.

In this week’s episode of the Preparing for the New Year season, we’ll shine a light on 🌟 How to Find "Me Time" When You're Busy with Sarah Ahmed.

Sarah is a Technical Writer at Salesforce and is pursuing a Master's in Marketing at Santa Clara University. She is passionate about digital equity, mentorship, inclusivity, and education. Additionally, she's always up to chat about cats, crochet, mechanical keyboards, or anything really.

In this week’s episode of the Kickstart Your Career season, we’ll shine a light on 🌟 Why You Shouldn’t Apply to Jobs with Iris Guo.

Iris is a Product Manager Intern at Microsoft Accessibility, ex-PM Intern at Google X Robotics, and Founder/ Product Lead of a sustainability startup Neutrify. She is passionate about building products with a scalable social impact. You can connect with Iris on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iris-guo, or other socials here: https://linktr.ee/irisguo

In this week’s episode of the Kickstart Your Career season, we’ll shine a light on 🌟 Becoming a Founder with Sandhya Iyer.

After graduating from Syracuse University in 2020, Sandhya Iyer began leading career exploration platform Geek Girl Careers, which empowers women to discover their dream careers in tech. She's also part of the marketing team at Chief, the first private network for women executive leaders. Sandhya is passionate about women empowerment, tech for social good and sustainability. In her spare time, you can find Sandhya reading a good book, experimenting in the kitchen or exploring a new coffee shop.

In this week’s episode of the Kickstart Your Career season, we’ll shine a light on 🌟 Why Productivity is Overrated with Mashiat Mutmainnah.

Mashiat is currently an Innovation Partner at Celo, a mobile -first platform dedicated to make crypto payments available to anyone with a smart phone. She loves looking at the intersection of design, innovation and financial inclusion to pioneer novel use cases of crypto. When she is not conducting pilots, she is running her South Asian magazine JORE, testing her cooking chops or learning new forms of portrait photography.

In this week’s episode of the Kickstart Your Career season, we’ll shine a light on 🌟 Gap Years and Startups with Shobha Dasari.

In this week’s episode of the Student Experiences season, we’ll shine a light on 🌟 Taking a Gap Year with Viruthihaa Baskar.

Viruthihaa is a Software Engineer Intern at Microsoft and a student at Rutgers University, where she is studying cognitive science. She is passionate about the intersection of technology and social good, especially the roles of empathy, education, inclusivity/diversity, and accessibility. Her many interests include UX, product management, mental health, and ethical tech.

In this week’s episode of the Underexposed Student Experiences season, we’ll shine a light on 🌟 Commuting in College with Daniela Balaguera.

Daniela is a recent college grad from Santa Clara University with a B.A. in Communication and a minor in Management Information Systems. She is passionate about immigration, labor rights, educational equity, and helping first-gen and BIPOC high school and college students. In her free time, you can find Daniela dancing or creating content on LinkedIn and Instagram!