ColorStack’s biannual Stacked Up Summit offers Black and Latinx computer science students an unparalleled opportunity to attend talks, career fairs, skill building workshops, and networking events aimed at ensuring they have everything they need to pursue careers in the tech industry. With ColorStack’s fall summit happening this week, we’re taking a moment to reflect and recap on some past summit highlights. 

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If you’re interested in attending sessions like these alongside some of the brightest minds in the industry, be sure to register ASAP! You won't want to miss this exciting opportunity happening Aug 17 - 18.
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Keynote with Amanda Seales

At the Fall ‘22 Stacked Up Summit, ColorStack was thrilled to welcome Amanda Seales to the virtual stage. Best known for her role as Tiffany DuBois on HBO’s Insecure and her comedy special I Be Knowin, Seales brought insight, career savvy, and humor to the Summit’s keynote address.  In her interactive Q&A, Seales discussed pivoting from the hip hop space to comedy and how to look to other people’s careers, not as points of comparison, but as case studies for how to advance your career. Seals placed an emphasis on taking thoughtful risks and leaving paths that don’t fulfill you behind. “I encourage everybody in their path to try things and to do so with a level of commitment to the effort but without a level of preciousness to the outcome,” she said.  Watch this recording of Seales’ keynote address on career journeys, show business, how technology has transformed our consumption of art, and more:

Fireside Chat with Managing Director of Y Combinator: Technology and Entrepreneurship

At last Spring’s summit, Y Combinator Managing Director Michael Seibel and ColorStack Founder and CEO sat down for an honest conversation about how to secure a startup position, approaches to founding, graduating in the midst of an economic downturn, how to secure a stable job, and whether stability is really what everyone should be optimizing for. "Various industries and people can really change the world in various different times and this is the time for software developers,” says Seibel. “Software engineers change the world more than any other group of people now.” As a computer science student, you can change the world. Watch this recording of the fireside chat for concrete advice on entering today’s job market and a healthy dose of inspiration:

Managing Recruiting Timelines, Deadlines, & Exploding Offers
At last spring’s summit, Jane Street Campus Tech Recruiter Grace Heisenbottle shared helpful tips for getting organized before the fall recruiting cycle. During the session, she walked through the nuts and bolts of making a recruiting plan, strategically scheduling interviews to optimize success, and what you can do to advocate for yourself when presented with an “exploding offer” that forces you to respond to a recruiter before other companies have gotten back to you.  “You have the power to decide what companies you apply to, what interviews you want to schedule, when those interviews are scheduled and when you make decisions on next steps and offers,” said Heisenbottle. “You’re in the driver’s seat for your campus recruiting process and don’t you forget it.” Be sure to check out this Spring ‘23 Stacked Up summit session for a smooth transition into the August recruiting cycle.

Pushing P: People, Purpose, and Passion with Wells Fargo Technology Leader for Shared Services Troy Wise

Some of the most successful career paths aren’t always linear. Wells Fargo Technology Leader for Shared Services Troy Wise took the stage at ColorStack’s Fall ‘22 summit and shared his professional journey from running a cleaning service by night to pay for school to climbing the ranks at startups and major corporations. In the session, Wise said, “it’s a test… every time I took a new role or went to another company before Wells, every six months I reevaluated what I was doing, how I felt about the role, if it aligned with me from a values perspective, and whether it was  giving me the things I needed to get to the next level.” Watch the recording of Wise’s career advice session centered around people, purpose, and passion: