I'm Sandra Kuria, an android developer based in Nairobi, Kenya. I am currently pursuing Bachelor of Science in Information Technology at Mount Kenya University. Besides that, I am a GDSC lead alumna and an active Google WTM ambassador.

How did I start doing Android development?

My first experience with android development was when I enrolled in the annual Google Africa Developer Scholarship which is sponsored by Andela, Grow with Google & Pluralsight. Before that, I was a Front end developer specializing in Angular. I learned Front end development at Moringa school during the COVID pandemic. That marked the beginning of my software development journey

Community contributions

My first involvement with tech communities was when I joined the Google Developer Student Clubs during my freshman year. GDSCs are community groups for college and university students interested in Google developer technologies. I met people with similar interests in software development and got to learn a lot from them.

After a few months of being involved in the program, I was selected to be a LEAD! I became the second lead of my campus and I had to steer my GDSC community for a period of 1 year. A few of the things I accomplished are;

• Increased the number of active members in the community

• Started off public speaking by giving a number of sessions and speaking at various events

• Had different teams participate in the annual Google solution challenge. My team emerged in the semi-finals!

• After a few months, I got featured by Built in Africa as a Talent Accelerator! You can read the whole story here;

The article got reposted by the Googledevs account :)

• I got to start my technical writing journey. Two of my articles were selected to be in the Google dev library before it was officially launched ;)

• I also got my community to be a partner in one of the biggest Android developer conferences, droidcon Berlin!

• During the conference, I had an interview with Madona Wambua & Matt McKenna. You can watch it on the official droidcon website here;

I'm grateful & humbled for the things I did from when I took over the role till when my lead term came to an end. But, that's not the end of it. As developers, it is our duty to remain active and participate in the communities to gain from it as well as others.

To get in touch with me, my social icons are at the top of the page. Feel free to reach out!