{"id":25039,"date":"2022-02-16T11:55:17","date_gmt":"2022-02-16T19:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tynker.com\/blog\/?p=25039"},"modified":"2023-08-06T12:44:34","modified_gmt":"2023-08-06T19:44:34","slug":"women-in-stem-cierra-mcdonald","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tynker.com\/blog\/women-in-stem-cierra-mcdonald\/","title":{"rendered":"Women in STEM: Cierra McDonald"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Talk about cool careers! Cierra McDonald is a Principal Programming Manager Lead at Microsoft where she\u2019s a game developer for Xbox, designing the features for Xbox Live Achievements &amp; Gamerscore systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Considering young coders at Tynker are making games of their own, we were super-impressed with Cierra and wanted to learn more about her journey in tech. So, we\u2019re very excited to feature her in our Women in STEM series, our first one of the new year!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Speaking to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theroot.com\/yes-we-innovate-these-8-engineers-and-scientists-are-1790856358\">The Root<\/a>, Cierra told them:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><strong><em>\u201cThere are innumerable opportunities for STEM folks to bring their know-how in areas such as Big Data, AR, VR and HCI to bear in the world of video games.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/cierramcdonald\/\">Cierra<\/a> started at Microsoft as a Software Development Engineer developing scripts and other code to fix bugs. There\u2019s that magic word, <em>code!&nbsp;<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From there she moved on to programming and technical management roles working in areas such as fitness, privacy, and marketplace before moving into the gaming industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Games it is, but it\u2019s clear she takes this role seriously as well. In an interview with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.essence.com\/news\/money-career\/black-women-working-in-tech\/\">Essence<\/a>, Cierra, who they named one of their <em>Future 10<\/em> black women In tech, said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><strong><em>\u201cFor those whose passion is in art but who are still interested in pursuing a career in tech, games are a great place to make meaningful contributions to a larger vision.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cierra earned a Bachelor\u2019s of Science in Computer Science (Engineering) from the University of Illinois where she was a member of the National Society of Black Engineers, Society of Women Engineers, and Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eight years later she went back to school at the University of Washington to get a Certificate in Game Design and she was on her way. . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Speaking to <a href=\"https:\/\/afrotech.com\/xboxs-cierra-mcdonald-proves-young-black-girls-can-see-themselves-within-the-gaming-industry\">AfroTech<\/a>, a wealth-building platform for the Black community focusing on the technology sector, Cierra said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><strong><em>\u201cSTEM is a major and standard part of society now; it\u2019s built-in at the root of our daily lives. If you\u2019re young and have an interest in science and math, society needs you to come work in STEM to help push us all forward.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cierra promotes diversity in the tech world, introducing the possibilities of a STEM career to the black community, part of which is her role as an organizer of a <em>Blacks in Gaming<\/em> event that brings together black tech innovators from around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Truly an inspiration, we can\u2019t wait to see what Cierra does next!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">* Photo Credit: Cierra McDonald and Xbox<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">&nbsp;<a class=\"sf-button large accent standard \" href=\"https:\/\/www.tynker.com\" target=\"_blank\"><span class=\"text\">GET STARTED FOR FREE<\/span><\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Talk about cool careers! Cierra McDonald is a Principal Programming Manager Lead at Microsoft where she\u2019s a game developer for Xbox, designing the features for Xbox Live Achievements &amp; Gamerscore systems. Considering young coders at Tynker are making games of their own, we were super-impressed with Cierra and wanted to learn more about her journey in tech. So, we\u2019re very [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25044,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[510,7,106],"tags":[92,112],"class_list":["post-25039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-block-coding","category-tynker","category-women-in-stem","tag-stem","tag-women-in-stem"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Women in STEM: Cierra McDonald - Tynker Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Read about Cierra McDonald and her inspiring journey as a woman in STEM, breaking barriers and making a difference.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tynker.com\/blog\/women-in-stem-cierra-mcdonald\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Women in STEM: Cierra McDonald - 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