[Welcome to I Want Her Job's second Women at Microsoft Week! We're celebrating the female force behind the company as we join the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference, happening now in Phoenix. If you're going to be there be sure to tweet us @iwantherjob. Today's article is the third in a series of four that will help you find out what it's like — and how you can — land your dream job at one of the biggest companies changing the face of business.]
Dona Sarkar grew up in downtown Detroit and attended a middle school that she says is now, “a crack den hole in the ground. It doesn’t exist anymore.” But Dona didn’t know of her surroundings at the time. All she knew was that she loved reading; loved it so much she’d often get in trouble for reading too much. And she had another love: a computer class that had one computer. In that class, she was learning to use a keyboard. “Now, looking back, I realize how groundbreaking that really was for that school,” Dona says.
Then, in early high school, both of her parents who were working and attending school while taking care of Dona and her sister, decided to move the family to the Detroit suburb of Novi. “I’m so different from everyone else,” Dona says. “I always have been, and I was determined to be better than that circumstance. My parents did a fantastic job given what they had. I secretly had a huge goal to one day walk into a Macy’s store and buy something without looking at the price tag. I couldn’t wait for an opportunity to grow up and not be bound by downtown Detroit.”
Dona found that opportunity in tech after falling in love with her first computer science class; one she took at a community college while she was a junior in high school. And now, as a principal engineering lead for Microsoft, Dona takes her role as female tech ambassador very seriously. Whenever she’s not working at the tech giant on projects so cool she can’t always talk about them, designing clothing (she makes her own dresses) or writing her next book (set for release next year and titled, You Had Me At Hello, World!). she’s mentoring other women via Skype and answering emails with advice on how they, too, can enter the world of tech. “I realized that tech is the greatest get rich scheme in the world,” Dona says. “You get a four-year degree and you make all this money. You don’t need a master’s or a doctorate. You just start working at a great company.”
Find out how Dona inspires other women, designs the next great thing for Microsoft products and how she didn’t let a failing grade in computer science stop her. But wait, that’s a spoiler alert! Her story is so amazing, we broke it into two parts. Catch part one today to learn how she got into tech, then come back tomorrow to learn why Dona is Microsoft’s hidden threat — and the next greatest female tech rock star.