Chisom Nwokwu (fondly called TechQueen) is a renowned Software Engineer based in Lagos, Nigeria working with the Sustainability Team at Microsoft, she joined Microsoft as a new graduate shortly after rounding up an internship with the Bank of America, where she worked as a Technology analyst.
She is highly involved in helping product teams build more sustainable systems with proven data engineering skills on big data platforms.
As a woman in tech passionate about helping others, Chisom is an author of a popular book titled “A Techie’s Guide into Big Tech Companies” which acts as a complete roadmap for landing jobs at international tech firms.
Aside from engineering, Chisom has a growing YouTube Channel dedicated to tech, career-related topics and her life as a Software Engineer.
She believes in rising by lifting others, Chisom is keen on supporting individuals in the tech ecosystem, dedicating her social media channel to posting tech job opportunities and being a person of value and inspiration.
When she isn’t doing anything technical she loves doing 2 amazing things, trying out new recipes in the kitchen and playing the violin.
1. How do you ensure that your personal values align with your career choices and actions?
The way I ensure my personal values align perfectly with my career choices is first of all understanding the things I deem important in life and also look for ways I can connect it to the career choices I’m making. I also understand that moving forward this is going to evolve and it’s also an on-going process.
2. Morning podcast, news app, or zen meditation? How do you catch up?
I think social media has evolved so much that you can literally see anything that’s trending in the country or anything that’s happening in the country.
Twitter is one of them, how I stay updated is checking what’s trending on twitter, checking news apps and social media outlets
3. What’s your preferred method for seeking feedback and continuous improvement in your role?
My preferred method for seeking feedback and continuous improvement in my role, is specifying the field in my life that I want to seek feedback from and also making sure that I’m picking the right person I want to seek that feedback from. So this helps me in my software engineering career, my content creation career and it also helps me as a new author in the industry
4. Describe your morning routine using only emojis
I would describe my morning routine with the smiley emoji with hearts on the face—very self loving.
5. How do you handle work-related stress and prevent burnout in your fast-paced career?
How I handle work related stress in a fast paced career is, I try to understand my priorities and I also try to understand the impact the work I’m doing has in my organisation. So I’m very good at time management and I’m also very good at scheduling activities as they come, so this helps me become very organised in a day, and also have time to balance my work life with my personal life as well