A year ago, Alaa Abuellif was spending 15 hours a week on the bus, travelling from Tokoroa to university and back each day. Now she’s living on campus at the University of Waikato, making her dream of becoming a software engineer a whole lot easier.

Alaa is the recipient of a Spark Scholarship, worth $10,000 and offered to only five New Zealand students each year. The scholarship is designed to foster a more diverse talent pool in the digital technology sector, a cause Alaa is particularly passionate about.

“Software engineering isn’t a common field for females to go into,” Alaa says. “When I was in high school, I’d never even heard of it. Computer subjects didn’t look into coding; they were all about the design and making websites, so I hadn’t considered the technical side of it.”

After finishing school, Alaa started studying medicine. She says it was “really interesting, but it just didn’t click” so she decided to look into engineering instead.

From the first class, Alaa knew software engineering was for her. She likes the practical side of her Bachelor of Engineering (Honours), and has created interactive recipe books, online games, and driving-lesson booking systems as part of her degree.

“When you make something from scratch, it’s an incredible feeling – you want to do it again and again – that’s what drives me.”

Alaa wants other women to consider engineering as a career path too. Next month she’ll head to Texas for the Grace Hopper Celebration Conference, the world’s biggest gathering of women in technology. Alaa won a fully funded scholarship to attend the conference, and she can’t wait to meet other females who share her passion for software engineering.

“It’s really inspiring to learn from women who are making a difference in the digital industry,” Alaa says. “One day, I want to run my own software engineering company.”