RMOUG’s First WIT Scholarship Winner

I’ve been running the Women in Technology, (WIT) at RMOUG, which I first started planning out in 2011, which has grown to include other user groups and even countries as its grown.  The last couple years, I’ve worked to try to add a WIT scholarship to RMOUG’s, but it wasn’t always easy to convince others that we should provide one when you are asking to choose one group over another.  There’s only so much money to go around and so many initiatives that we need to address each year for the Oracle community.

For 2015, we had a unique candidate submitted from our continual education scholarship, referred to as the Stan Yellott scholarship, after the wonderful RMOUG board member and much loved mentor who passed away in 2006.  The candidate, Natalie Kalin is from Pine Creek High School, out of Colorado Springs, which has students that attend our yearly conference, Training Days, each February.  She stood out, as not only had she chosen to major in robotics in College, but she was already in AP Robotics in high school and was then taking this education and providing STEM initiatives to Middle School students in her district.

Due to her technical skills, initiative, stellar transcripts and submission to the scholarship, it was easy for the board of directors at RMOUG to recognize her and award a second scholarship for WIT.  I want to share the announcement from her local school district, along with recognize her accomplishment and thank her for making it so easy for me to create the WIT scholarship this year!

Thank you and congratulations, Natalie!