What is it like being a girl in a room of many boys?

Posted March 26, 2018 by Soniya Shah, Information Developer

Data Gals
This blog post was authored by Crystal Farley (North).

I volunteered to be the Chairperson for the virtual chapter of DataGals because I think connecting women across the world is a great way to continue to #PushforProgress. Why not bridge the gap and create a community where we encourage diversity and inclusion of everyone that wants to ensure progress is made for gender equality?! The other reason I jumped at the opportunity, was because I get to learn about incredible journeys of the extraordinary women that I am surrounded by day in and day out.

The Micro Focus DataGals hosted Nga Tran, Senior Manager of the Core Database Server team, for Vertica for a Women in Tech Talk in honor of Women’s History Month. As a PhD student, Nga worked on the pre-Vertica, C-Store research paper in 2004 & 2005. With the great results that came from the C-Store paper, Vertica was founded. Today, Nga now manages the most important team of 30 core server developers.

I was very excited that Nga offered to share her store with the greater Micro Focus group, as I cannot tell you how inspirational it is. She shared about her family that includes her very athletic and competitive daughter, as well as how she married her college sweetheart! Nga went on to describe challenges she encountered as a female starting in college throughout her journey to technical manager. Did you know?

Being 1 of only 3 females in her college class, Nga proved herself through academic excellence and wasn’t 100% sure that the males in her class actually realized that they were harassing/embarrassing the females. Nga ignored them and eventually, through her hard work, gained their respect and wouldn’t have been able to graduate summa cum laude without them.

Nga’s response to being the only woman in the room was powerful. Deliver results, demand respect. “Do not wait for people to ask you to do something.” Do it anyway.



Let’s continue to share more stories like Nga’s so that we can continue to #PushforProgress.