Sharmila Kumar graduated from India’s Prist University in 2012 with a Masters degree in Computer Science. She is the first person in her family to go to university.
Sharmila loves computer programming and teaching. She worked in IT for about 2 years and taught computer science in India before moving to Australia in 2014.
It was back then, nearly 6 years ago, that she first started volunteering at St Kilda Mums. She has an 8 year old and a 2 year old.
She completed Cert IV in Cyber Security in 2021 and Cert IV in Web Technologies in 2015 in Australia. She estimates that she applied for 70 IT jobs in 2021, and did not even make the short lists. Without local experience her resume never made it to the top of the pile.
Sharmila has done internships whilst raising her kids but never got a full-time role. She did projects in Food Sutra and Beekay Enterprises and a part-time job at a childcare centre to gain local experience, but she had no way of getting back into IT full time in Australia.
She joined Blaze in June 2021 to gain valuable work experience. After joining us, she concentrated on learning all she could, and joined our daily morning classes contributing to many pro-bono projects along the way. This gave her confidence and valuable job-readiness skills and motivated her to keep up her momentum.
Finally Sharmila was shortlisted for a role. And that shortlist turned into a job offer. Sharmila is now a Security Analyst Associate in the Security Team for QBE Insurance.
She is delighted and thanked the team at Blaze for all the support. She is planning to contribute to Blaze and non-profit organisations as much as she can.
Sharmila's favourite quote comes from Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, Former Indian President and Aerospace scientist and it says: “A dream is not something that you see while sleeping, it is something that does not let you sleep.”
Congratulations Sharmila - we are all so happy for you.
