Lilian Kasem

Lilian fell in love with computers in college, where she enjoyed the problem solving and the creativity that came from coding. More than just the physical aspect of coding, she really enjoyed helping people find solutions and seeing them use the tools she built. In fact, math was never her favorite subject in school, and she really had to push herself to be better at the fundamentals of coding. In CSE, Lilian now enjoys working with a diverse set of customers to develop creative solutions to their problems. She loves that the job allows her to work with many different people while still using her technical knowledge in a creative way.

Lilian sent an application to Microsoft in 2015 on a whim. She never thought they would hire her. When they offered her an evangelist position, it really stood out from her other job offers because it was something more than spending her time only developing code. She would get to travel and meet with customers. After speaking to one of her mentors, she accepted the position as a Technical Evangelist in the UK before eventually moving to America to become a Software Engineer. The technical evangelist role represented a new challenge because she was not naturally a big conversationalist and unlike her peers who had years of experience, Lilian had only recently graduated from college.

To overcome her fear of speaking to large groups, she spent hours and hours practicing her public speaking. Today, she is a frequent speaker and panelist at national and international software development conferences and meetups.

One of her favorite projects was working with Disney to help save the purple martins Lilian and her team created an IoT solution that helped track the birds as well as an AR app that helped teach park visitors about the birds and why conservation is important. Lilian has worked on several projects in the last year, finding new ways to leverage blockchain to tackle customer problems; given how new the technology is, she believes there is still a lot to learn around common patterns and best practices in that area.