Can you start by introducing yourself - What were you doing before Le Wagon?
I was living in Montreal, working as a corporate lawyer. I didn’t know anything about tech as I studied and worked in the law field.
I had an opportunity to move to Brussels at one point so I went to live there and started working for a startup, offering softwares dedicated to lawyers.
I discover the tech langage there, as I was often in contact with the company’s CTO and he would often use more technical concepts and terms.
I started to become curious about what the developers were working on and also I felt like I was missing out on things as I couldn’t always understand what they were talking about.
I attended a Rails girls event where I met the Brussels’ campus driver at the time and got to discover Le Wagon, which actually had been recommended to me before. I figured that following such bootcamp was the perfect way for me to dive into that more technical side and discover web development.
Can you tell us more about your experience at Le Wagon?
I actually attended the very first batch of Le Wagon Brussels (batch #7) so I definitely was there at the beginning of Le Wagon in Belgium! The curriculum structure was already well set, with different modules that allow you to discover different side of web development as well as several programming langages. It definitely gave me the tools to keep on learning afterwards and also to be able to communicate with tech people.
And honestly, the best part was just the atmosphere of it! It’s truly an amazing experience to be able to be working alongside your peers, to work with team and to be able to exchange with the other students or teaching team! Speaking of teacher, I remember we had one always dressed in black, so we came up with a Black Thursday in his honor, with everyone dressed in black! We were all very close and that played a huge role.
Can you tell us what you have been doing since graduating from Le Wagon?
I’m working as a teacher at Le Wagon and I also launched my own coding school for children.
Thanks to Le Wagon, I discovered a whole new world: the tech world and it’s a vaste one. It’s a creative world and it inspired me. So, I created
Techies Lab in 2017, an initiative for kids and teenagers between 7 and 17 years old, to discover, experiment, learn and play with technology (robotic, coding classes, gaming, 3D printing).
And we also offer programs of daily activities during school holidays, during which we mix tech activities with workshops such as theater, sport, etc.
Actually, for the next school holidays, we are joining an initiative from
BeCentral (where you can find Le Wagon Brussels campus) dedicated to health care personnel as a way to thank them for their work during the Covid-19 crisis: health care personnel can enroll their children for free for our upcoming school holiday program.
So, we organize many different activities and I’m always having a blast teaching and letting people play with technology.
And you are not only teaching children as you are also a teacher for our web development bootcamp!
Yes, I love teaching and I find it very interesting to be working with people from different age ranges. Le Wagon made me discover this tech world and helped me find my path and voice as a teacher so it feels great to keep teaching there and help change lives!
And I have to say, Le Wagon’s community is really great so you always come back at one point.
How would you sum up Le Wagon?
It’s a life changing experience that will open new doors - it may not be to become a developer but you will learn skills that will always be useful to you. Learning web development is actually like learning a new langage to communicate with people.
So, you don’t have to become a geek to learn web development, it can be very useful just to be able to speak with tech teams in your company or to build a network.
So, give it a try, you won’t regret it!
