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Spartan Women Crack the Code

More alums and students are discovering opportunities in high-tech fields.

By Elizabeth Anderson


Sandra Fujii ‘23 was 8 years old when she attempted to build a private server for the online games she liked playing.

She didn’t yet have the knowledge to be completely successful at it, but she never lost her fascination with computers. Though her dream was to become an artist, it wasn’t difficult to switch to something tech-oriented when she realized the job market wasn’t great for art majors.

“I went with computers because that was most of my life growing up,” she says.

Fujii, a software engineer at American Credit Acceptance, is one of a growing number of USC Upstate women – graduates and students – who are pursuing careers in tech-related fields. Since 2019, the number of women graduates in computer information systems has tripled, from 6% to 18% in 2024. Women make up 20% of cybersecurity graduates, a program which only graduated its first students two years ago. Overall, the number of female graduates in tech-related majors has risen from 13% to 21% over the last five years.

While the tech industry remains overwhelmingly male – only 35% of the workforce is female, according to the Women in Tech Network – the numbers have improved from the early 2000s, when women were just 9% of the workforce. New opportunities in cybersecurity and AI are attracting more women to the field.

Wata Kelleh '21 is a cybersecurity analyst at Milliken & Co.

One of those is Wata Kelleh ’21, a security analyst at Milliken & Co. Cybersecurity wasn’t something she knew much about initially. In middle school, she decided to become an engineer after hearing from a female mechanical engineer on a class field trip to BMW.

But when she got to Greenville Technical College, she started rethinking her goal. Given continued advances in mechanization, Kelleh wasn’t sure she could count on having a job in the future. Cybersecurity, which she learned about from a family friend, seemed like a much better bet.

“It’s going to be something that’s always there,” she remembers the friend telling her. “People always need their device to be protected. You should look into that.”

Kelleh did, and liked what she discovered. “Cybersecurity plays a role in everything, whether you’re doing development, whether you’re doing networking,” she says. “So I love that I chose a field that plays into everything in IT.”

Melissa Davis, director of the USC Upstate Cybersecurity Lab and a cybersecurity instructor, says interest in the program has been growing among women. “I think the first year I might have had two to three females between all my classes,” says Davis, who started teaching at Upstate in 2018. “I have definitely in the past couple of years seen an increase in the number of females that are in the classes, and we have been able to place a lot of them in jobs.” The same holds true for computer science and computer information systems, she adds.

The pathway to tech

Some Upstate women choose a tech-related major because it aligns with their interests. Havva Dokmeci, a senior who’s double majoring in computer science and cybersecurity, became fascinated with cryptography when she took a summer course after her sophomore year of high school. “I really developed a love for ciphers and keys and hacking,” she says. “I was like, this is pretty cool. It’s a whole puzzle.”

She also discovered she was good at coding, and realized she could use that skill to support others in the future. “It’s the Gen Z generation rising, and millennials and people who are older just need a lot more help with technology,” Dokmeci says.

Other students, such as senior Christal Cain, had never considered a tech major until starting college. Cain transferred to Upstate her sophomore year, and decided to major in cybersecurity after doing some research. “Basically, cybersecurity was me just stepping out of my comfort zone and trying something I never thought about trying,” she says.

Cain admits it was “kind of intimidating” at first to be surrounded by students who had learned to code when they were younger. But she has enjoyed learning how to assess cyber threats and system vulnerabilities and how to keep ahead of ever-evolving attacks.

Holding their own

One issue that students and alums say they haven’t encountered frequently is gender bias. While some had classes where they were in the minority, few encountered any problems. “It really doesn’t bother me, because we’re all in here for the same thing,” Cain says.

Fiona Hayes, a senior computer science major, was already used to success in a traditionally male-dominated subject when she got to Upstate. She had excelled in math in high school, and carried that confidence with her as she explored computer science in college. Whenever she compared herself to anyone in high school, she says, it was to the “girls that were smarter than me” rather than any of the boys.

Melissa Davis is the director of the USC Upstate Cybersecurity Lab.

Fujii says her main encounters with sexism have been in the online gaming world, where she has experienced the toxic behavior and misogynistic attacks that female gamers report they are regularly subjected to. She learned at a young age to simply ignore the aggression. “Why do I need to really involve myself in having these feuds, especially when it's not only them that look stupid, it'll make me look really dumb as well,” she says.

Caroline Smith ’22, an HR technology analyst at Milliken, remembers a class at Upstate where she was the only woman and was a team leader for a semester-long project. Several of the male students were friends and would joke around with each other, and Smith didn’t feel she was being heard.

“So at first, until I felt respected, I was very serious, to the point of no jokes, no funny stuff,” she recalls. “I hate that that’s what women have to go through to have their ideas accepted and be taken seriously, but that was how I handled it.”

Still, she says, it was important for her as a student to “keep being loud, keep being opinionated” and not get discouraged by what anyone might say.

Mentors matter

Joey Fowler, senior IT director of technical services at Denny’s, received a version of this advice when she was just starting her career. As an African American woman in IT, Fowler says she was fortunate to have had mentors early on who encouraged her to always speak up for herself. She would remember their words whenever she was being overlooked.

“It’s the old cliche, where you say something, and the man sitting beside you says the exact same thing,” she says. “And now everybody heard it, but they didn't hear it when you said it.”

Sometimes that would cause her to second guess herself and wonder if she could have done something differently. It was helpful then to talk to people who could give her their feedback. When Fowler visits Upstate and other colleges now to talk about her career, she advises students to seek out those individuals with whom they feel safe sharing their thoughts.

“Find those people who are going to be honest, not just the people who are going to tell you what you want to hear,” she says.

Mentors are also important for career guidance, she adds. Her earliest mentor was an African American businesswoman she reached out to while still a student at Converse University. Fowler offered to do free database work for her to gain some experience in the field, and the woman agreed. The relationship played a critical role in Fowler’s professional development.

“I was able to watch her be unapologetically her and be able to garner respect,” Fowler says. “She definitely showed me what was possible, probably without her even really knowing it.”

Leading by example

Having women in leadership roles in the workplace and classroom can often make a difference for those looking to enter the field. Davis, the cybersecurity instructor, got her first job when a woman working for the city of Rock Hill took a chance on her and hired her as a network engineer straight out of college. The two later became good friends while serving as managers of different IT divisions.

Davis notes she never felt intimidated about being a woman in tech, even while she was a student. “I grew up as my daddy’s son he never had,” she says. “I worked on cars, I drove wreckers, I sanded vehicles. So I was put out there to learn that if you need to do it, you can do it.”

Still, she says, it can help female students to have a woman as their teacher, especially one who has experience working in the field.

That was the case for Montyia Cheeseboro ’22, an application service analyst with Milliken & Co., who as a student was inspired by Davis. “Her career background is everything,” Cheeseboro says. “She is a woman who was in cybersecurity, doing stuff in IT, and everything that she’s accomplished, I know I can and will too, because she already did it.”

Space for everyone

Some companies are also finding innovative ways to foster an inclusive environment. At Milliken, employees can choose to join any number of affinity groups, such as the women’s alliance, veterans alliance, or “new kids on the block” for new hires. Kelleh, who is a member of the women’s alliance, says the group not only provides professional development opportunities but offers mentorship as well. She currently meets monthly with a woman who works in shareholder services.

Montyia Cheeseboro '22 is an application service analyst at Milliken & Co.

“What I really like about that is that you’re exposed to a whole bunch of different people in the organization,” she says. “It's really nice to just be able to network and meet people who I probably wouldn't come face to face with or even have a chat with on a daily basis.”

The affinity groups also helped Cheeseboro find connections within a very large company. “It forces you to get out of your comfort zone,” she says. In addition to serving on the steering committees for the women’s alliance and new kids on the block, she enjoys attending events held by Merge, the multicultural group. Now when she walks through different divisions, she’s often greeted by people she’s met at group events.

Denny’s, too, has employee resource groups, including a women’s leadership group open to all female employees. Men in leadership positions have served as sponsors of the group, because it’s important for women to see they have support from men, too, Fowler says. The company also is part of the Women’s Foodservice Forum, and sends women to the conference for networking and development opportunities.

Choosing the right door

While the South Carolina tech industry may be modest compared with states such as California and New York, that also means the sexism that has plagued the industry in those states is less of an issue here. State employers need tech workers, Davis notes, so skills matter more than gender.

“There's such an increase in the number of jobs for cybersecurity or networking or IT that they have to utilize the people who they have at their disposal who are capable of doing the jobs,” she says.

Kelleh says when she speaks on career panels, she reminds young women they don’t have to pretend to be someone they’re not to work in tech. “Be confident, be yourself,” she says. “It sounds cliché, but don’t try to change yourself to fit into an environment.”

Cheeseboro agrees. Her first impulse when she started her job was to be nice and hang back. But her parents reminded her that people needed to know who she was and remember her good work. After that, she says, she grew more confident talking about the projects she was working on and asking for feedback.

“You don’t have to change who you are to go in certain doors,” she says. “If you have to do that, then maybe that's not the door you need to go into.”

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