Halima Olapade '16 had an eye toward the quickly growing technology industry and wanted a place to receive a quality education regardless of her eventual path. She moved from Nigeria to Philadelphia for the undecided engineering major at Drexel for a strong foundation, a position at the forefront of the technology world, and Drexel's cooperative education program.
Olipade says co-op is different. Although there's no set schedule, she noticed herself becoming more knowledgeable with each six-month time span. Her first co-op at SAP SE in Germany allowed her to test drive a career and figure out what fits and what doesn't. She worked among a great team while becoming immersed in a new country and continent. She even visited countries such as France, Italy, Switzerland, and Spain!
With some international and software engineering experience under her belt, she sought out bigger turf: Microsoft. The interview was difficult but meant that Olapade discovered the challenge she was looking for. Her main task was to design, architect, and develop a hyper-scale enterprise configuration manager service from start to finish. This was the first project of which she could fully understand the way everything worked.
Halima was able to have the flexibility to explore careers through Drexel Co-op, and in finding her place, she's got big plans for after Drexel. With the preparation of co-op at Microsoft, she will begin working at Google as a software engineer.
Ever wanted to work in a cool place such as Microsoft? Visit the Steinbright Career Development Center to see where else you could work as a Drexel student. If you're interested in engineering at Drexel like Halima Olipade, visit the College of Engineering to learn more.