Community Champions: The leading lights of Andela

Everyone needs a little support as they embark on their career path. The sort of guidance that you receive from a mentor can empower you to achieve your goals. And as you progress further along on your career journey, you’ll have inherited the skills to pay it forward and inspire others in the same way.

At Andela, we believe that by supporting your peers you directly contribute to the success of the community as a whole. We’re committed to finding leaders who will engage with other technologists, share their knowledge freely and encourage them to succeed. And that’s why our Community team founded our Community Champion program!

Our Community Champions are volunteers, who kindly contribute their free time to creating new and innovative ways to connect with their peers and help build a vibrant, supportive community of other technologists.

They’re passionate and enthusiastic about Andela and the wider technologist community. From organizing meet-ups, to creating collaborative projects and representing Andela at events, Community Champion’s are builders of an amazing culture within our community – and embody what it truly means to be an ‘Andelan’. They reach out to our wider network on our social channels, and spearhead new campaigns and initiatives.

Andela supports our Community Champions in their endeavours by offering financial assistance to organize community meet-ups and events, or by brainstorming new ideas on how to engage with their community groups.

We asked some of Andela’s Community Champions to tell us about the most fulfilling aspects of their role:

Olla Ashour

“It’s definitely the networking; meeting amazing techies and generally people who you wouldn’t meet elsewhere! Truly they’re the best people and it’s rewarding to help them connect with similar people, and not feel isolated; it’s about how to integrate and be part of Andela and that Andela is way, way more than just Talent Matching. It can help you grow as an individual and you can be supported through Andela by the community and the support team to do your best. And generally, being a community champion is just about spreading the love and how proud I am to be an Andelan through it all; the good and any obstacles.”

Akinsola Akinwale

I volunteered to be a Community Champion for skill-devops because I believe in the power of community. Just take a look at the open source communities; we have such a diverse group of people coming together to bring about continuous change. There is a lot of great talent and innovation that keeps emerging as a result of a philosophy behind them. I sum it up as simply ‘to be human’. Some call it Ubuntu and I believe it’s the very nature of God in us. Humans are gregarious by nature. We tend to do well in groups, as a community, especially when we’re given the freedom to be creative. I gain fulfilment from helping others. I sometimes watch out for others’ questions in the community and help them to create a solution or insights to solve the problem. My mantra is, “there is no self-made software engineer, only community Made software engineers ” I believe it is with the help of communities directly and indirectly that many of us have become great engineers, I myself have been in communities like Linux Professional Institute in Nigeria, Fedora Project and many more.

I organised an event called cross-stack with the help of Rosa in August, cross-stack is an event that showcases hacks, experiences with several DevOps tools, personal open-source tools built for Ops and Devs e.t.c, another one should happen in the first quarter of 2022 and I really want to leverage on the great talents we have in Andela. My experience so far has given me the opportunities of connecting with many talented engineers in Andela, it has also helped me in building interpersonal skills, daily learning and in driving growth in others, I have also exposed some others to the DevOps culture and tools.

To become a Community Champion, you first need to be part of the Andela Talent Network! Join today to get one step closer to finding your next role, advancing your career, and connecting with other talented engineers in our community!

Maria Ríos

I’m a Community Champion for Argentina and for me, being part of the community and connecting with my colleagues has been an incredible experience. Being able to organize meetings so we can all meet each other and help make our work environment a friendly place to be is something that really makes me feel useful!

Jesse Johnson

I just started my journey, so there hasn’t been much we’ve done. However, the chance to help stir change in the tech community in Ghana, and impact individuals positively is one I cherish. There’s a lot we hope to achieve in 2022! –

Editor note: Jesse is organising a meet up in December!

Rafael Henrique Tibaes

For me there are two main reasons to enjoy being the Brazilian Community Champion: The first one is organizing e-meetings with my local community, which requires being in touch with other champions as well. I am having a lot of fun and making new friends from all around the globe.

Jeffrey Ogah

The most fulfilling part of becoming a community champion is simply being able to connect so many unique individuals together. Being able to kick back and de-stress while building relationships is very exciting!

Thanks to all our community champions for their unique stories!

If you found this blog useful, check out our other blog posts for more essential insights!

Are you a developer interested in growing your software engineering career? Apply to join the Andela Talent Network today.