Community Spotlight: Maria Fernanda Romano Silva
Celebrating 2023-2024 Fellow Maria Fernanda Romano Silva! Maria was born in Mexico and grew up in Los Angeles. She’s a highly enterprising and dynamic double major in Computer Science & Business at UC Berkeley. She loves music, being outside, and creating community. Maria is passionate about leveraging tech to support immigrant and low income communities. She says, “With CS & Business, I feel empowered to have a bigger impact. Working in my family’s small spice shop, seeing my parents face challenges with changes in tech, motivates me to support small and medium sized business owners with tech systems.”
Maria’s committed to changing the landscape of tech by supporting Latinx women in navigating the industry. She shares, “When I started studying CS, less than 5% of the graduating class were Women of Color; only about 2% were specifically Latinx. That shouldn’t be a single digit number. It’s my personal mission to make the number of Latinx women in CS grow. While the low numbers are discouraging, it’s empowering to have tech & coding skills.” As a leader of CodeBase, UCB’s foremost software development club, she recognizes, “creating connections and building a network for the future is so important.”
Maria’s working for a future where tech offers more possibility, access, and ease for everyone. She says, “When I imagine a racially equitable tech industry, it’s about honoring people’s humanity through data privacy & increasing tech access. This means dismantled language barriers, increased access across age and ability, free & widely available wifi & computers. It’s a world where technological literacy is integrated into early education, elders have support in using tech, and computer access & wifi is available in low income communities.”
Maria encourages prospective Fellows to, “have the audacity to just go for it. Build relationships, send the email, start the conversation. It’s scary, but that means you care. The reward is worth it.” Secondly, “it’s not that serious. There’s room for mistakes. There are so many opportunities. As long as you’re alive, in one piece and healthy, the world is yours, anything is possible.”
Thanks for being part of our community, Maria!