Alexa’s motto is “Why not?”

“I never saw myself working in the tech space,” says the iPhone Operating System (iOS) developer at CIBC, who recently earned a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in Software Engineering at McGill University. She codes new features for the bank's mobile app and is part of a team that’s a mix of male and female developers. "It’s encouraging to work in an environment that’s becoming more balanced," she says. "I feel lucky to be part of that change."

‘Why not?’ is the reason Alexa made the fateful decision to take a computer studies course in Grade 9. Her initial interest soon blossomed into a deep passion for coding. “I thought coding was a big, scary thing at first,” she says. “But as I got into it, I slowly fell in love with it.”

And that’s why Alexa has claimed her place on the Alum Donor Wall, a highly visible installation in iCAST celebrating generous alums. Shaped in a five-foot-tall BH, 300 alum names will greet visitors as they enter from the overpass connecting the Athletics & Wellness Centre (AWC) to iCAST. 

“Branksome opened my eyes to the possibilities, and from there, everything just clicked,” she says. “Both the Arts and STEM are core parts of who I am, so it felt natural to extend my impact to a facility like iCAST which is explicitly designed to nurture these disciplines and give women greater opportunities in these fields.”

Looking back on how Branksome shaped her life journey, a central moment was in Grade 10 in her Computer Engineering class. Along with fellow student Adele CRETE-LAURENCE'20, the team became one of 10 out of more than 5,000 competitors worldwide to win the European Space Agency’s Astro Pi Mission Space Lab Challenge—not to mention the only Canadian and all-female team. The path to victory took more than a year and involved an experiment investigating how light pollution visible from space is impacted by energy sources and rates of energy consumption. Read the full story here.

It was a surreal moment, as she calls it, that would change her path forever. “I didn’t have a lot of expectations going in,” Alexa admits. “But when we won, it made me realize that I could actually exist in the STEM space. It was the turning point where I thought, ‘Why not consider this for my future?'”

That moment, she says, sparked her commitment to both arts and innovation—and to giving back to Branksome Hall. “In my final year at Branksome, I became the Arts and Innovation Prefect, and it felt like a natural extension of who I am. With my place on the Alum Wall, I wanted to create more opportunities for other students to explore these fields.”

For Alexa, coding has proven to be a creative outlet she never saw coming. “I didn’t realize it before, but coding is incredibly creative. It’s like solving puzzles every day, and I love it,” she says.

Entering the male-dominated field of computer science wasn’t without its challenges, but Alexa never let that stand in her way. “Yes, it’s a male-dominated space, and yes, I noticed that when I walked into my computer science classes,” she says. “But I never saw it as a barrier.”
 

Alexa’s advice to current students? “Try it. Just try it. Don’t put pressure on yourself to be perfect or have it all figured out. Just ask yourself, 'Why not?'”