HerTechStory: From Public Administration to Product Design

HerTechStory highlights inspiring tales of women in tech.

For today, we will be having Ayomide Adekoya. A graduate of Public Administration who bagged 2 roles in less than 1 year after beginning her design journey.

Let’s dive in…

Tell us about yourself.

Ayomide: My name is Ayomide Adekoya Elizabeth. A graduate of Public Administration from Kwara State University. I am currently a product designer at Orchestra and Design Community Lead at HerTechTrail.

Public Administration? That’s wow. How did your design journey start? What was the motivation?

Ayomide: It started last year while serving. I was reading up the statistics of unemployed youth in Nigeria after my youth service and decide to give myself an edge by learning a tech skill to improve my chances of getting a job.

You made a smart decision. Why design, though?

Ayomide: I wanted a no code skill and design was what suited me, but the problem now was where to learn design itself.

My younger sister sent me the link to register for one of the design tracks in HerTechTrail Academy. I did not take it seriously at first because I thought it was scam. My mindset had a 360 shift after seeing alumni testimonials, and attending the onboarding.

That was how I began by design journey by joining Cohort 4 in July 2022.

Your sister is so sweet. I hope you’ve bought her shawarma since then. 

It’s almost a year since you started, how would you say your journey has been?

Ayomide: She is a total baby girl and hates shawarma.

 I would say my design journey was easy with HerTechTrail in it. 

Learning with HerTechTrail was the best decision I made starting out because it made navigating through research easy based on the roadmap, classes, reviews on my assignments and capstone project.

All these things prepared me for where I work. It didn’t make me seem like a newbie and no one at my work place believes I am not up to a year in the design space. I complete my tasks when due and have a good time working with teams.

Who hates shawarma? By the way, your design journey is incredible. You’re now a Design Community Lead with HerTechTrail. How’s that going?

Ayomide: The only thing that comes to my mind is interesting. 

I get to work alongside beautiful minds and also communicate with designers like myself. I can only say it’s helping me communicate better because I have always loved keeping to myself and speaking less but now I have to speak to people and show the right emotions to energize the community.

I’m so proud of how far you’ve come, Ayomide. What advice do you have  for someone starting out their design journey?

Ayomide: I would say consistency is important as well as building true friendships. These two helped my design journey real big.