Frances Coronel
Place Of Birth
Norfolk, VA, USA
Family heritage
United States
Bio
I am a software engineer at Slack with a design background who gets a lot of personal satisfaction out of helping the local tech community through my varied skill set.
Current job
Software Engineer
Why would you recommend exploring careers in science and technology to other Latina girls?
The Bureau of Labor reported in 2016 that women made up only 25 percent of computing-related occupations. And when looking at women of color like myself, the numbers become even more ridiculously dismal with Latinas and Black women holding only 1% and 3% of computing jobs, respectively. So what can one conclude from all this? Well, first, let me provide some context. A unicorn is a startup company valued at over $1 billion. The term was coined because the chances of a startup becoming a unicorn are very statistically rare (about 1.28% likely to happen). This means that according to those standards, I'm quite literally a "unicorn" in the sense that I'm part of the 1% of Latinas that considers herself a die-hard software engineer. Now I became aware of this isolation so long ago and have since developed a strong desire to want to motivate and aid those who want to enter the tech field but may not feel like they'll fit in. But to truly break down this stereotype, we need to have more Latinas pursuing tech careers. We must lead by example and inspire others like us to show them that yes, Latinas can indeed code and lead in the tech industry. In any industry, really.