It all started at age 14 when Ire Aderinokun played an online game and got stuck in the world of pixels and bits. She went on to get a Degree in Experimental Psychology and a Master’s in Law but never forgot her first love.

Aderinokun’s career emphasises the importance of being a self-starter and consistency.  She has succeeded in building a career on the platform of thought leadership and it has gotten even better as she is giving back to the society. Progressing from a mailing list of 1,431 to 2,541 subscribers on her blog, to speaking at the WeAreDevelopers conference in Vienna last year,  Aderinokun has shown us that commitment to consistency is the purest form of handwork.

Currently working as a full-time front-end developer at eye/o, she is dedicating her resources to seeing young women through tech programs online. Proud of her journey, Guardian Life speaks to Aderinokun in this week’s edition. 

What do you find creative and exciting about your career?

I find programming itself incredibly creative and fulfilling. Every day presents a new challenge and a new thing to learn and I love the endless development I get to make.

Did you foresee that you were going to speak at the Fronteers Conference?

When I got the invite to speak at Fronteers, it was pretty much out of the blue. I hadn’t applied to speak and I had also never given a talk at a conference outside Nigeria before. Because it was so new to me, I almost declined, but I knew I had to do it if I wanted to advance my career.

What’s the hardest task you’ve had to work on as a front-end engineer at eye/o?

Working at eye/o has been different because we have a different audience to what I have been used to building for the Nigerian audience. Since the eye/o audience is much larger and more international, I’ve had to deal with building a website that has to work in many different languages and many more different devices. This has been a new and interesting challenge I’m glad to have had the opportunity to work on.

Would you recommend this career path and why?

I would definitely recommend this career path because it is so empowering to be able to build anything you can think of. It feels great to have that control over your own experiences.

What do you think about the importance of mentorship and participation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields?

I think the most important thing is creating a working environment that is welcoming to all sorts of people, and they will come. I don’t think that STEM fields need more encouragement or mentorship than other fields, but we definitely need to show underrepresented groups such as women that this is a valid option for them to take.

How are you supporting more participants in STEM fields?

I recently started a small scholarship program to sponsor Nigerian women to take a Udacity Nanodegree in a technology-related field of their choice. I hope to continue this through the years and build up the technical knowledge of women in technology.