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How Women in Tech Succeed at Dell Technologies
Nina V. | Senior Product Designer | Brazil
Originally Published: July 14, 2022
Nina is an example of how women in Tech can succeed at Dell Technologies. She is a Senior Product Designer, Team Lead, mentor, and mentee, who started at Dell as an intern just four years ago and has had a great career progression. Nina shares a little bit about her journey so far and gives important advice to women that also want to pursue a career in the tech industry.
How did you get into Dell?
My journey at Dell began in 2018, working as a Design intern at the Dell Research, Development and Innovation Center – Lead, in Fortaleza, a city located in Northeastern Brazil. Since then, I started to build a really cool career in the area! I was quickly hired and in December 2020, I started working as a Senior Product Designer at Dell Technologies in Porto Alegre, in the South of Brazil.
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What is your role at Dell? What does it involve?
Today, I'm still a Senior Product Designer, but I work as a Team Lead. In this role, I work with the Dell Design System, a product that I consider one of the most important in the IT field – it helps to scale quality design and accessible code into digital solutions.
Within this team, I am responsible for what we call Community & Enablement, where I do UX research and develop solutions to enable the design system to connect with users (developers, designers, and product managers), and to be used by more teams within Dell. Our primary goal is to make Dell's unified digital product experience a reality. We want our products, both external and internal, to provide the best possible experience for our users.
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What surprised you the most about Life at Dell after you joined?
What surprises me the most is how global Dell is. It surprises me more and more to see our forums active at different times of the day because of the time zone. I don't think many companies offer this experience of globalization, with different accents with people from different places all over the world. In addition to being global, Dell embraces different regions of Brazil. It's nice to understand and know that we have remote opportunities for different states. From my career, I always say that it's awesome the fact that I literally went from the North to the South of the country working with the same company. And nothing prevents me from dreaming of moving with Dell to another country in the future.
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This photo is from 2018, my first contact with an English presentation with an Austin team that came to Brazil at Dell Lead's Fortaleza Office.
As a woman in the STEM field, do you have any advice you can share with other women who want to get into the field?
I think in general, when we talk about design, there is still a female stereotype of the profession. But when we talk about being a designer within the technology market, most positions are occupied by men: there is a gap here. I think Dell is great on this issue, as it has diversity groups that hold multiple events and are always encouraging the participation of women and contributing to our career growth. As a woman at Dell, I feel I have the space to question and help with that gap. Here I can fight for it without prejudice.
For women who want to start in this field, my advice would be to try, try again and not give up with a no. Trying and not giving up is important because we shouldn't give up the things that we like to do because of the no's that life shows us.
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When did you realize that this was your place?
I think Dell's world is huge, there are many organizations and different roles. You can be a designer in different ways. What I think is nice about the company is that they are always trying to understand what I like and what makes me happy so that I can continue working as a designer here. Dell wants to understand my comfort zone so that I can be happy within it. At this moment, I find myself in the process of identifying my place as a designer within the company. To do that, there are mentoring programs, of which I am a mentor, and I am also mentored, and an exchange of cultures that help. Even if I'm not sure I'm in the position I want, I have the full support of the company, my leaders and colleagues to discover and make this my next step here, after all, there are possibilities for career growth, but also of lateral movements.
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What kind of tools and technologies do you work with as part of your team and how does that translate into a more cohesive career experience?
Figma (it's a must-have), AdobeXD, Miro, Adobe programs... Around here we use a lot of Microsoft products in general. It is important to point out that if you do not know how to use a tool, you will not be judged for it. The most important thing is that you have the willingness and knowledge base to learn how to use it. Here you can ask for help, Dell has access to several learning platforms. We give you the tools and the time to learn them. A tip for anyone who wants to get into the design field is that your portfolio is very important. If you are applying for a product designer position, your portfolio should reflect and contain projects in this area, so build your portfolio based on the requirements of the position you are applying for.
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To learn more about careers at dell, visit jobs.dell.com.
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