Rehab Jadallah

One of my earliest memories of teaching technology was showing my grandfather how to respond to a Facebook post. It was a rare role reversal: he had always been one of my greatest teachers.

Although his formal education ended in the seventh grade, my grandfather approached the world with endless curiosity. Our conversations wandered from how bridges crossed rivers to what kept airplanes in the sky. He showed me that learning is not limited to a classroom and gave me the confidence to explore questions even when I did not yet know where they would lead.

I took my first programming class at fourteen and loved watching something I had imagined come together on a screen. Even more exciting was realizing that code could be used to solve problems in virtually any field.

Mentorship has remained part of my technical journey ever since. Through the Michigan Council of Women in Technology, I found people who supported my growth while I began mentoring younger students myself. I went from counseling at technology camps and leading Girls Who Code workshops to coordinating programming, game development, and robotics education for more than 600 K–12 students across Metro Detroit.

At the University of Michigan–Dearborn, I studied computer science and mathematics and explored how software can solve real-world, human problems. I built a virtual-reality wheelchair simulation designed to help users better understand accessibility barriers, contributed to surgical-navigation software at Stryker, and helped develop an offline mobile application that uses machine learning to detect structural cracks.

At Atomic, I'm excited to continue the pattern that first brought me into technology: learning from others, building useful things, and sharing what I learn along the way.