Fatma’s story: Empowering future women in tech

Fatma, a manager of data engineering for machine learning, loves a challenge. Throughout her career in tech, she’s created innovative solutions that lead to career successes—including winning awards, presenting at conferences and advocating for diverse voices in tech.  

Now, she’s passing on that knowledge to the next generation of women in tech.

“When I was young, I really wasn’t aware of my full potential,” Fatma said. “Capital One empowers me to do what I love every day and encourages others to achieve their career goals.”

Making a mark at Capital One

Fatma joined Capital One in 2018, working to develop machine learning projects. Initially, she struggled with impostor syndrome, as she joined Capital One from a much smaller company. Her managers recommended she join Women in Tech (WIT), Capital One’s Business Resource Group (BRG) supporting women technologists. There, she found resources, such as small group discussions, and mentorship that assisted her transition to Capital One.

“Women in Tech helped me tremendously,” Fatma said. “Just listening to other women share their thoughts and experiences inspired me.”

Throughout her career at Capital One, Fatma has sought out challenges and worked with her team to create innovative solutions. Her work building machine learning models for early anomalies detection won Capital One’s Circle of Excellence Award in 2020. The award is given quarterly to celebrate remarkable achievements within Capital One.

“The projects I work on serve Capital One associates internally, so it meant we were nominated by colleagues,” Fatma said. “I wasn’t expecting that. It’s not something that I could even dream of, to have my peers celebrate me like that.”

Recognition for Fatma’s work continued. Fatma’s WIT colleagues were impressed with her work migrating machine learning models to the cloud using AWS and asked her to speak about the project and its success at an internal conference.

This experience gave Fatma the confidence and experience to apply to speak at Grace Hopper, the world’s largest gathering of women and non-binary technologists, in 2023. She spoke about the process of hosting machine learning applications from training to inference within a serverless infrastructure in the cloud. 

“The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Some attendees were surprised this solution was even possible,” Fatma said. “It made me realize how innovative and creative our work really is.”

Empowering the next generation

Along with speaking at conferences, Fatma continues to share what she’s learned through mentoring others. She volunteers with WIT and the Capital One Developers Academy (CODA) to guide others as they navigate their own tech careers. She particularly enjoys working with new hires and graduates.

It’s a full-circle moment, as she’s able to help others in the same way she was supported as she joined Capital One.

“Empowerment is the cornerstone of a successful leader in tech,” Fatma said. “Through mentorship, I’m able to help others see their full potential and enable them to be a great asset.”