GirlCoder Profile: Fadzayi Chiwandire Moyo

GirlCode has a chance to interview Fadzayi and her journey as a woman in the technology industry.

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Explain your current role and its impact?
I am a front-end developer at Onepointfour Consulting which is a software development consultancy and I am also the founder of Founder at DIV:A initiative, a non-profit organisation dedicated to empowering young girls between the ages of 8 and 18 years from disadvantaged communities with coding skills, in order to protect their futures and address the industry’s gender imbalance.
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How did you get to where you are?
My journey has been a bit of a ride, it’s not your usual linear stories. It all started at my public school, Chinhoyi High School where I went up until form 4 (O’level). You see I did not like school and wasn’t confident that I had done well in my exams so I opted to enrol into college to study Graphic Design and New Media. This all happened before I even received my exam results, in the end I had done well enough in my exams to have passed.

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That led me to studying 2 years at the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts and I graduated with a Diploma in Graphic Design and Vigital Arts, at the same time my peers were writing their final A’level exams.

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I describe herself as the illegitimate love-child of binary and creativity. I started off as a Graphic Designer when I was 19, and later developed an interest in code and have been writing code for more than a decade.

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“I don’t fit in a box, I never have. I have worn and still wear many hats, as a result I can never be defined using a single title but rather a skill set. Over the years I acquired skills that now allow me to bridge the gap between clients, developers, designers and project managers.” – Fadzayi Chiwandire Moyo

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Before graduating from college I started working at Cyberplex Africa as an intern, and was given me a permanent position as a junior graphic designer after graduating. My plans after graduation were to study 3D Animation and Visual Effects in Vancouver Canada, but funds did not permit to follow this dream, so I worked at Cyberplex as a designer for about 8 months before deciding to move to South Africa.

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In my first month in South Africa I got my first job as web designer at one of South Africa’s digital houses called Interface Media – which was a combination of EasyInfo and Webmail – I would work for EasyInfo.

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I had done web design in college (HTML and CSS) but my focus during that time was 3D animation, therefore my knowledge in this was limited.
When I got this job as a web designer I had no clue how I would even build a webpage but I had 2 weeks to figure it out before I started the job. In the two weeks I googled everything “googlable” and joined online forums. I did everything I could to make sure I could design a website in Photoshop slice it, export slices into Dreamweaver and write basic HTML and inline styling.

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My effort paid off because when I started the job my then bosses thought I had been doing this for years. Within 2 years I had been promoted to senior designer, a year later I was promoted to head of the department and I was responsible for 2 teams, both EasyInfo and Webmail.

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I was 21.
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I worked at Interface media for about 5 years, and it was during these 5 years that I developed an interest in programming, all along I had just been a web designer writing HTML and CSS but I wasn’t a programmer. So I started experimenting with PHP. After 5 years I had reached the ceiling at Interface Media and I decided it was time to move.

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I got another job, as a web designer at Artwise designer, it felt like I was moving 10 steps back considering I was coming from a managerial position to just being a, well a designer again. I worked as a designer for a year then one day went into the MD’s office and told her, I was tired of designing I wanted to code, like really code stuff and she agreed, (she recently told me that when I made this request, I was going crazy).

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I moved from being a designer to junior developer, coding in PHP, Again google was my friend. One of the guys who was heading this department took me under his wing and helped me learn PHP and MySQL, he taught me how to write my own custom made WordPress templates I became quite a pro at this, but it wasn’t a walk in the park because he refused to baby me. He once told me that he had to break me before the industry did if I was going to become a good developer.
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3 years later the company re-branded to CREACHA and I was promoted Head Developer. In the 4th year, I felt the need to learn something new, so I did an Agile Specialization. In year 5, our department broke out of the company to be its own company, Onepointfour Consulting, I was then asked to lead the team at Onepointfour as the lead developer, and this is currently where I am.

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I have worked mainly with large retail chains and major banks, coding both web and mobile applications. Helping them solve their problems using technology.
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In 2018, I felt the need to do something, not learn, but something bigger than me. So I started an initiative called DIV:A where I would teach young girls between the ages of 8–18yrs how to code, from disadvantaged communities. I had no resources, so I asked my bosses if they could help and they have been sponsoring DIV:A since.

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“As women, we need to make sure that software solutions that are meant for us, reflect women’s ideas and interest, considering the fact that software is fast becoming global and pervasive.” – Fadzayi Chiwandire Moyo

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DIV:A Initiative is a registered NPO dedicated to teaching young girls how to code after identifying the need to protect their futures and address the industry’s gender imbalance. Our aim is to give young girls truly useful and relevant skills to fall back on in the event that they’re not able to receive a tertiary-level education. The idea is that no DIV:A student should find themselves in the kind of vulnerable position where marrying young is their only prospect after leaving school. The initiative also aims to ensure that women are better represented in the development industry by empowering our girls to go out and correct the gender imbalance themselves.
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At DIV:A we enjoy teaching young girls how to solve problems through code, speaking about the importance of digital literacy and empowering women in tech by giving them platforms to lead in solving problems that affect women.

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“To raise the quality of life in our communities, we need to support the growth and empowerment of women and girls. This is because when we allow women to lead, they do not only lead and fight for their own growth, but they fight for their children and for their communities. They give voice to issues that are important for everyone’s collective future.” – Fadzayi Chiwandire Moyo.

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What challenges did you face?
I have always had to prove myself and work 10 times harder just to avoid being overlooked and be considered as a capable being. I am also very insecure about not having that much education under my belt. In this statement I am referring to a university degree. This made me feel unworthy and inadequate.

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When I worked in Zim, being the youngest was my biggest challenge I always felt like I needed to prove myself, I started working when I was 18. Then when I moved to SA I had to and still am fighting 3 biases, being a BLACK ZIMBABWEAN WOMAN in the industry. Many times I have walked into meetings as the only woman present and everyone immediately thinks you there to take down the minutes, or one classic moment when I sat at a meeting with about 15 developers all men, and their team lead would shoosh everyone else in the room so he could explain to me in laymen terms.

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Another challenge was not having other women to look up to as mentors in the industry, this was huge to me because it felt lonely. Having to figure this out on my own from a woman’s perspective was tough.
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What advice do you have to girls seeking a career path in tech?
DO YOUR THING, DO IT EVERY DAY, DO IT WELL!