Maria Contreras has a paid software engineering internship under her belt. And she’s still a high school student in Austin.

Contreras is a graduate of Code2College – an afterschool program that’s working to create more diversity in the tech sector.

WorkingNation sat down with Contreras at SXSW EDU.

She participated in Code2College her sophomore and junior years of high school and then landed a paid internship with Indeed. Contreras says the internship was intimidating, at first. Other interns were from elite universities.

But she learned to ask questions and has decided to be a computer science major in college. Big news – Contreras was just accepted at Rice University!

She says Code2College has been an essential part of her journey. “Learning how to code through them and seeing people that looked like me – female and a woman of color – in the technology field really made me realize that working in the software developing industry was something that I could do.”

Learn more about Code2College.
Learn more about Indeed.