Dorothea was there when XML, a language for formatting documents, came out and into the mainstream. However, she wasn’t working as a computer scientist or programmer; she was typesetting for university presses and journal publishers. A unique career has led her to teaching Computer and Information Science classes at the University of Wisconsin as a distinguished faculty associate, all stemming from a beginning that had its roots in librarianship.

Sitting around the dinner table with a family in Ecuador and absorbing a language that was not his own, one may never have assumed that Graham would become a front-end software developer later in life. History, culture and languages surrounded him from an early age, only to become even stronger passions as he moved through early adulthood.

As a female “sports junky” and fitness entrepreneur, Patience doesn’t fit the prevalent stereotypes about who you should be as a computer scientist. Patience Ankunda is 24 years old and has grown up in Uganda. Upon completing secondary school, she felt strongly that she should pursue architecture as a career path. She joined a bachelor of architecture in 2016 and worked through it for 2 years until realizing it wasn’t for her.

While teaching Scottish dancing classes, Terry would set goals, prepare lessons, move around the classroom and focus on delivering the same lesson in multiple ways. He would later realise, with much excitement, that these same principles carried over to the teaching of computer science to college students.