Begoña Guereca is a double Bruin with a B.A. in Political Science and a Master of Public Policy (MPP) from UCLA. During her MPP program she focused on issues of disparities in child welfare and the social determinants of health, poverty and inequality.

During her fellowship she worked on child sex trafficking issues for the Los Angeles Commission on Human Relations strategizing the policy and programmatic changes LAC needed to effectively reintegrate 3,000 LAC commercially sex exploited children (CSEC).

Before switching to tech, she worked as a Research and Policy Analyst for the California Child Care Resource and Referral Network. There she worked doing research on the state of child care quality and access in California and drove lobbying support for CA A.B. 273 which ensured that eligible families are able to access child care while they take ESL or GED classes. During her time at the Network she learned python while building GIS maps, she saw the tremendous value of programming and decided to pursue a career in tech.

Begoña currently works as Software Engineer at Microsoft where she builds software that  assists internal Microsoft teams solve DevOps problems at scale. She volunteers helping teach children from lower income areas in Seattle how to code and hopes to one day bring her skillset back to the public sector.

Please visit Begoña’s LinkedIn to learn more about their professional experience.