My name is Maricar Angeles, and I’m 24 years old. I moved here 7 years ago with my family from the Philippines. At first, school didn’t cross my mind when I got here. I started to work the first two weeks of moving here. I worked for a lot of companies and went to school to become a Nurse Aide. Being a Nurse was the career that I really wanted to do since I was younger but that changed. As of now, I work with machines that processes credit cards. I have been working there as a clerk for more than two years now. I like the environment that I’m dealing with, and sometimes that I had to work with our IT department. That’s when Cybersecurity crossed my mind, it’s fascinating and this is the career that I see myself in the future.

Taking Cybersecurity as a major is not easy, especially coming from a country that doesn’t have as much technology like we have here. Taking some courses about technology helps a lot. It gave me ideas of how to do research about technology and different ways of how to protect sensitive information from unauthorized access and cyberattacks. Technology has become an important aspect in our lives, and it is imperative that we continue learn and practice ways to better secure our personal data and information.

My goal is to finish this major and be able to apply to some companies as a cybersecurity analyst and get more experience on how to protect data and network and to be able to identify the risks and have a better plan to prevent it from happening. I also want to be able to share ideas about technology with the group of people that I’m going to work with in the future.