Asia Sharif

United Kingdom

NatWest / ChainVerse

Asia Sharif is an Award-winning software engineer, who has also won the Globant Rising Star in tech U.K Award 2021, and now is working within the FinTech industry at a leading bank in the U.K, the founder of ChainVerse and TechNewbies, an engineering mentor, public speaker, blogger, role model, and tech influencer.

Asia came from a non-technical background and transitioned into technology in January 2021 with the sole purpose of becoming an inspiration, seeking change, and advocating for women in technology.

Asia’s mission is to build a technology school, provide scholarships for women in tech through ChainVerse and keep mentoring hundreds of women and people from underrepresented backgrounds. Coming from an underprivileged, foster-care background, Asia takes pride in the importance of helping others and is an advocate for self-development. Asia strongly believes in mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional elevation and allocates time to host workshops and tech talks to encourage women to develop a growth mindset.

Asia has worked with and is a member of many vital communities who also share her goal to encourage and elevate more women and people from underrepresented backgrounds into tech, Asia’s communities include Black Girls In Tech, Coding Black Females, Black Valley, Globant, Code First Girls, Baddies In Tech and TechNewbies.

In the last 12 months, I have contributed to women as a role model/influencer via firstly proving that anything you put your mind to is achievable, teaching myself how to code from a non-technical background, no mathematical or CS background, average grades, and that my gender did not mean I am not good enough for this transition. Since completing multiple software boot camps, I have contributed via being an engineering mentor and mentored over 20 people in the last year, became a coding instructor and taught over 30+ women Data and SQL, wrote multiple blog posts which have gone viral on Twitter, and participated in 20+ Tech Talks for Coding Black Females, Black Valley, Mentor Meet, Code First Girls, Girls Into Coding, Lightning Talks, Code Bar io, Globant and so many other amazing companies!
My sole purpose as a role model to women out there is to educate, inspire and encourage them to not only transition into tech, and also inspire them to work on being the best version of themselves.

Furthermore, it is important to keep doing it as it allows women to see that we can also do whatever the 'man' can do. It is important to educate women in tech on the mindset needed and tips on how to dominate within a male-dominated industry, therefore I have spent the last
year focusing my tech talks on overcoming imposter syndrome and building a growth mindset to help aid women's success within the tech industry.

In addition, every day I choose to be somebody, helping 1 person can lead to helping 10, and helping 10 can lead to helping hundreds of amazing people. And that is what I live for. I indeed found my purpose in life which is to inspire, elevate, educate and make an impact in the
world. I believe in encouraging and inspiring everyone that all their dreams are possible; your background, colour, gender, and religion should never stop you from achieving your
dreams.

Remember I am just a University dropout. No handout. Foster kid. Just trying to make a difference in the world, “you are who you are in this world, you’re either somebody or nobody.”

Techfluencer