Imagine: you’ve earned a highly coveted college degree in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) field, basically guaranteeing you a great job in Silicon Valley’s tech industry. Now imagine that you’ve decided to leverage those skills in the public sector to make your city a better place!
It takes a pretty special individual to make that choice. This month, to celebrate Women’s History Month, Microsoft is happy to highlight two incredible women in San José who are STEM superstars *and* dedicated public officials, Michelle Thong and Erica Garaffo. The city is lucky to have them, and we’re thrilled to share their stories!
As a female leader in Bay Area’s civic tech scene, what empowers you?
I’m empowered by the conviction that thoughtful application of technology in government will yield tremendous public benefits.
Over the past decade, the tech sector has embraced user-centered design, data-driven decision-making and iterative development to deliver excellent services to customers. Adopting these practices in the public sector will make a huge difference to how our residents and businesses experience government. There are definitely big challenges—budget shortfalls, scarce technical staff, and burdensome procurement processes, to name a few—but I find it energizing to know there’s so much work to be done. The opportunities to make a difference—to work on stuff that matters—are plentiful.
I’m also empowered by the excitement I see in the community around the idea of civic tech. With Code for San Jose, a lot of our initial value has been creating a banner under which people interested in this space can find each other, whether they are residents, nonprofit groups or government staff. Now we all have to work together to realize that potential.
Can you recall the “moment” when you decided to pursue a career in technology?
I do recall the moment, and thanks to the The Wayback Machine, you can still see it in all it’s goofy glory. That’s because my moment is actually a website, the first one I ever made.
It was 1996, the early days of the World Wide Web. I was 16 and I got a summer job creating a career exploration website for the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology, with the goal of inspiring girls to go into STEM careers. I didn’t expect it would change my career plans —I thought I wanted to be a lawyer.
Over the course of the summer, I interviewed half a dozen smart, fascinating women about their jobs, learned some HTML, enlisted a friend to do graphics, and put it all together in the WYSIWYG editor, FrontPage. By the end of it, I had so much fun I realized I wanted to stay involved in tech myself. A year later I enrolled as a freshman at Stanford, with a double major in Electrical Engineering and Feminist Studies.
So, that’s my story. I built a website about women in STEM that convinced myself to become a women in STEM. Pretty meta, eh? (ICYMI: I’m Canadian.)
Michelle Thong started her career as a circuit design engineer for Synaptics and eventually found her way to urban placemaking and public service in San Jose’s Office of Economic Development. She is co-founder of Code for San Jose, a local Code for America Brigade, and the proud mother of a highly empowered nine-month old girl named Camille.
