The One Where We Geek Out on Empowering Women with Mariana Carvalho

Update: 2025-03-11

Description

About our guest:
Mariana Carvalho is a writer and career mentor. She was awarded as one of the El Mundo Boston Latino 30 Under 30 in 2022 for her efforts in Diversity and Inclusion in Brazil and Massachusetts and Mentor of the Year by WomenTech Network in 2023. In 2024, she co-authored the book “Women in Technology - How Diversity and Inclusion Will Change the Game in Organizations and Society”. She is the co-founder of Brazilians in Tech, a non-profit for women in Technology in Brazil. Mariana has 12 years of professional experience, the last seven in corporate America. Over the last six years, Mariana has mentored more than 200+ people from Brazil, USA, India, France, and Ireland. Mariana holds a Bachelor’s in Marketing, an MBA, and a Master of Science in Computer Science.

Find our guest on:

Find us on:

All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingout
All of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillela

Show notes:

Additional notes:

Aicha Laafia on Geeking Out (podcast & YouTube)
Adriana's article on Medium based on her KCD Porto talk

Transcript:
ADRIANA:
Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery DevOps, observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela. Coming to you from Toronto, Canada. Geeking out with me today, I have Mariana Carvalho. Welcome, Mariana!

MARIANA:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

ADRIANA:
I am super excited to have you, and always excited to have another Brazilian on the podcast.

MARIANA:
Yay.

ADRIANA:
It’s a treat. Being able to, like, connect with my culture. I think it's really important. I, I've, I've found in the last several years, the importance of reconnecting to your cultural roots, because I lived in such isolation from my cultural roots for a long time here in Canada. So it's been kind of nice to have that. So I love it when I meet other Brazilians.

MARIANA:
I me too. I mean, we can speak a little Portuguese too, but, you know, even though we speaking English, it's like we can see the culture in the way we talk to each other. You know, it it shows. So I love it.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, absolutely. And where are you calling from today?

MARIANA:
I'm calling from Boston, Massachusetts. So it's very cold here too.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. We are, we are definitely cold buddies. I think we both, both our cities have received a lot of snow as of the time of this recording. I think, Toronto about half a meter in, in like five days, which is a lot.

MARIANA:
Yeah. Same here. I was in D.C. last week, and it was also super windy and, many flights got canceled. I almost didn't come home. I know. It was awful, but we were safe and sound. And now it's so funny because I've been talking with my parents, and for them it's like almost 40°C. So the discrepancy is just so frightening.

MARIANA:
I don't know. Ai. It's frightening.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. It's wild like I, I'm originally from Rio de Janeiro, and I have family there who said right now, and we're recording this February 18th. So it's in the middle of summer in, in Brazil, 50 degrees and in Rio... 50 Celsius.

MARIANA:
Wow. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
I don’t, I can't even, I like I'm okay with 40. You know I it is my South American blood is okay with that. I'm not okay with -15. I'm okay with 40, but I can't even imagine 50. Like, that's scary.

MARIANA:
Yeah. It's changing so much and so quickly it feels that doesn't change quickly. But then all of a sudden then the extremes are the ones that I think it's wild to see. Yeah. Here and there. Right.

ADRIANA:
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And you know and it's something I'll, I'll probably dig into a little bit later because I know like I connected you with, with a writer recently on your Medium publication and she does a lot of writing on sustainability actually. And she's also been a past guest on Geeking Out, so I, I would love to talk about that in a little bit. But first we have our icebreaker questions. Okay. Are you ready?

MARIANA:
Let's do it. Yes.

ADRIANA:
First question. Are you a lefty or already.

MARIANA:
Righty.

ADRIANA:
Okay. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?

MARIANA:
iPhone.

ADRIANA:
Me too. Yes, iPhone. All the way. Here's my iPhone.

MARIANA:
At home I have two iPads. I have a MacBook.

ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah. Same. Same full. Fully integrated. Next question. I think I know your answer now. Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?

MARIANA:
Mac. Yeah.

ADRIANA:
Okay. Next one. Do you have a favorite programing language?

MARIANA:
Oh my gosh. I think Python, but that's so funny because I didn't learn Python. Doing my master's degree. Oh, sorry. That. Should I just answer and not explain why?

ADRIANA:
Please. Please. No. Go ahead, go ahead. I love it. Okay. I always tell people you can go as deep or not as deep as. Because I think it's okay to get to know a guest. So go ahead.

MARIANA:
Yeah I remember learning Python during during my master's degree. My ex-boyfriend at the time, he taught me how to like how to program in Python. Like using Kaggle is a website I think was acquired by Google. It was so fun to sort out some of the data sets there. And I was like, okay, this is so. Not easy. But it was just so natural to do it, you know, to sort out and I don't know, just to just to really code. I think I had the most fun coding Python, but then after I finished school and up and then when I started working in corporate, I never used it any more. So it is kind of rusty right now.

Yeah, but I remember it being very, very fun. I remember I created a little game that was I think the name of the game is 2048. It’s a game that, you know, so I remember that. It's so addictive. And I remember I made like I created this little game just in a sandbox. And I was like, okay, how can I, you know, try to use my technical skills in fun things.

And I remember using Python for the data set on Kaggle that was sorting out numbers, of the female Nobel Prize winners. You know, I was like, if I want to learn something using a technical skill, I better use that on something that I have fun with. So and that's usually something that I recommend to people. It's like if you want to create a portfolio or if you want to do something using a programing language, or maybe like some people are like learning how to deploy on different infrastructure as a service, right?

So like, how can you do that? Having fun? Just try just do that through a game or through something that you're going to enjoy. So y