Samantha Dahlby said she “lucked into” discovering a career in software engineering after a high school teacher noticed her affinity for math and science.
Today, she works as the K-12 education coordinator at the New Bohemian Innovation Collaborative, also known as NewBoCo, in Cedar Rapids, where she works with Iowa students and educators to integrate computer sciences into a school’s curriculum.
Dahlby grew up in Waterloo and attended Waterloo East High School, where, she said, computing and technology classes were limited.
“When I was a student, I did not have any computer science classes,” she said. “One of my teachers noticed that I was good at math and science and told me I should check out engineering.”