Inspiring the Next Generation of Leaders

From the 15th to 17th of January 2019, four students from the ALX Launchpad (a leadership accelerator program) joined BRCK to get a feel of how the company operates.

Each of the students shadowed an employee of BRCK based on their career preferences and they had the following to say during their short stint at the company:

Leila Ali

I have always been fascinated with data. I love numbers. For the three days that I shadowed at BRCK, I got an opportunity to meet really awesome people who not only inspired me but also were willing to share their knowledge in technology. I was placed in the operations department under Brian Birir, the operations data & network supervisor, and he taught me a lot. From data extraction, transformation, and visualization to programming, BRCK is a really cool organization and hopefully after I finish my studies in software development and programming I can come back to work for them.

Samantha Mwenda

I had always admired BRCK from afar, so this week was a true opportunity for me to see the inner workings and how everyone came together to achieve the company’s goal, especially from the design angle. I was lucky enough to be placed with the design team and I was extremely excited! I learned a lot from the brilliant minds at the table and would hope to interact with them more.

Each person that I spoke to was willing to fill me in on what they were doing and how they were going about it, which I really appreciated. From UX to UI and front-end, everyone in the team played their part in making the BRCK brand what it is today. I also really appreciate how everyone in the company made us feel at home and warm. The culture was very tangible unlike other companies I’ve interacted with. Thank you for making that week what it was.

Stacy 1.0 & Stacy 2.0

Our first day at BRCK was all levels of awkward at first, now that I have a superpower of getting comfortable even with awkward silence, and Stacy 1.0 is a typical people person. I took the first hour to just settle in and breathe, not knowing what to expect from the world of technology (that we thought didn’t match our preferences). And that beautiful motto “You can do hard things” made us feel at home instantly because it is the same as our ALX motto.

Before it could all escalate, we had a sit down with the Project Manager. Literally two minutes into the conversation, we learnt so much about what her job entails. We love our project management class so seeing actual Gantt charts and weekly reports made us light up. This experience gave us the confidence to explore what other people in the commercialization team do. We had eye opening conversations about the world of digital marketing and got tips about how to leverage our degrees in the field of marketing and got to understand the vision behind BRCK.

We loved the seamless connection of the different departments to create mind-blowing final products. Shadowing BRCK was a blast and a definite turning point for us. We have been motivated to work in a startup environment and in many ways confident to pursue a career in marketing and communications (or as y’all call it … commercialization). So thank you a lot for this opportunity. And as we continue to ‘Do Hard Things‘, we only hope and pray our paths cross again.