International Women’s Day (March 8) is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. Today we are honoring Victoria Ogino, Program Coordinator at Tech Core. 

A native of Peoria, Arizona, both of her parents are Japanese and she is a fourth-generation American. Victoria became interested in technology from a very early age when she first used her family’s computer and opened up every program one-by-one to try them out and discover what they did. Her favorites were Microsoft Paint, Solitaire, and Microsoft Excel. She received her master’s degree in Information Science from the University of Arizona and a bachelor’s degree in Art History and Museum Studies from Arizona State University.

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What is your role at Tech Core?

I’m the Program Coordinator which means I work with our Director, Ash Black, to build structure, develop strategic goals, and create identity/branding for our program. Our program is only 3 years old now and this transition to Eller has been a fantastic opportunity to expand our goals and reinvent our brand without compromising our identity as an innovative, experiential learning team of idealistic technologists (teaser: our name will be changing soon…). Day-to-day I act as a project manager, administrative assistant, and marketing manager. I organize meeting with current and potential clients and make sure our student coders are on assignment. I’m also coordinating the Tech Garage, which is an initiative for entrepreneurial-spirited students with new venture ideas to work with our team to prototype those ideas and learn the technology skills needed to take those ideas to market. 

What advice would you give to young women aspiring to be in Tech?

Don’t wait for opportunities or rely on other people to teach you things. If you have a computer, access to the internet, and an idea then you have everything you need to code. Remember that everyone starts out by printing “Hello World” onto a blank html page. Your individual journey starts when you discover how to change the font, change the colors, or add images until your “Hello World” page looks like no one else’s. Technology is just an endless cycle of tinkering and it’s driven by your point-of-view. Ideas don’t have to be big to be worth building. Start learning SQL by building a database of your music collection, don’t worry if it has utility or relevance to anyone else because it’s your journey, your exploration, and it should be personal. And lastly don’t compare yourself to other people or let yourself be intimidated  by things you don’t understand. The tech industry is full of big ideas and even bigger egos. Stay humble and remember that for every little thing that you do know, there are a million things you don’t. It’s in this vast realm of the unknown where the greatest innovations and ideas are born.

Bonus Fact: 

Victoria traveled with the NVD honors students to Hermosillo, Mexico and took all the incredible photos!

About Tech Core

Tech Core is a 100% Engagement opportunity for dedicated students who want to earn income and prepare for today's tech-driven, internationalized economy. Students learn FULL STACK skills like MVC, HTML5, C# and SQL, embark on a transformational Study Abroad experiences and build cutting-edge technologies that support University of Arizona research faculty and administration.

Tech.Global is a unique professional development experience that prepares students for successful careers in the tech industry by providing robust on-the-job training, while simultaneously advancing the University of Arizona’s positions in emerging technologies such as VR, AR and 360 media.