Naga Vijaya Lakshmi Ijjada took a 12-year break from her career in tech when health issues coincided with a family move from India to the US. However, Naga always intended to return to her career. “I love to work and I love to code, so I couldn’t just give it up,” she says. When she started her job search, Naga soon realized that it would be difficult to find a…
Technical Careers
Success Story: Isabela Quitzau Conceicao
Isabela Quitzau Conceicao worked as a Product Engineer at a foundry in Brazil when she took a career break to support her family’s move to the United States, and to care for her newborn child. When she was ready to return, Isabela found a returnship role at PepsiCo that would be a perfect match for her skills, and jumped on the opportunity. She returned to work as a Process Improvement…
Success Story: Sandy Goodwin
Sandy Goodwin took a 12 year break to spend more time with her children. When she was ready to return to work, Sandy completed a returnship at CDK Global, where she now works full-time as a Design Operations Lead. Sandy talks about her return to work experience, finding work-life balance in her post-break career, and how being a robotics coach for her kids helped boost her own technical skills. What…
Success Story: Ranjany Krishnan
Ranjany Krishnan took a four-year break from her project management career to care for her children after a cross-country move. After deciding to return to the workforce, Ranjany found herself applying to positions she was overqualified for. Then, she saw a returnship opportunity at Campbell that was a perfect fit for her – and applied. She completed her returnship in IT Project Management, and now works at Campbell full-time. Ranjany…
Success Story: Varsha Munishwar
Varsha Munishwar took a three year break from her software engineering career to care for her children and spend more time with her family. When she was ready to return, Varsha learned about Path Forward returnship program. After reading several participant success stories on the Path Forward site, she was inspired to apply. She completed a returnship at VMware, where she now works full-time as a Software Engineer. Varsha talks…
Success Story: Aasavari Gokhale
Aasavari took a three-year break from her career in tech career to care for her family. When she was ready to return, Aasavari found out about Path Forward, and applied for a returnship at Red Ventures, where she now works full-time as a software engineer. She talks about her return to work experience, why she loved the flexibility of a returnship at Red Ventures, and the support she received from…
Success Story: Mei Wong
Mei Wong took a six and a half year break to support family moves to Taiwan, then to Austin, and to care for her children. She always planned to return to work, and when she was ready, Mei upskilled through a bootcamp and applied for a returnship at Momentive. She now works there as a full-time front-end developer, and talks about her returnship experience, and how Momentive supported her remote…
Success Story: Priti Khattar
Priti Khattar took a three year break from her engineering career to care for her daughter. When she was ready to return to work, Priti took the time to refresh her skills before applying for a returnship at Momentive, where she now works full-time as a senior software engineer. She talks about all the ways she prepared for her return to work, her returnship experience, and how Momentive helped her…
Success Story: Fatima Loumaini
“Right now I’m relearning how to be in the workforce again. This returnship is opening the door for me, it’s helping me to be more confident and comfortable in my job. And the thing is, I’m learning every day.” Collective Health interviewed Fatima for a blog article titled, “Meet the Collective: Hi Fatima!“. Read about her successful return-to-work journey and her thoughts on how employers can support women returning to…
Success Story: Wanda Chiu
After a 15-year career break, Wanda Chiu returned to her engineering career with a returnship at Cloudflare in 2016. Several years later, she started a new role at Mux. In this video, Tami Forman, Executive Director of Path Forward, asked Wanda why she encouraged Mux to start a returnship program. In short, Wanda has so enjoyed the supportive culture at Mux that she knows it will make the perfect landing…