Welcome

Hi everyone!!

Thank you for reading my reflection, I am so excited to share my experience with you.

Tips + Prep

• I recommend booking your flight and hotel as a package to get a better deal. Many companies give you a big discount on your hotel stay or free flights. I got my flight for free this way :P
• Bring copies of your resume or business cards (10-15 would be sufficient)
• Leave a lot of space in your luggage for merch!!!
• Always check visa requirements when travelling internationally.

Don't be afraid to apply to grants or opportunities like this. I made it my goal in 2025 to involve myself as much as possible in the community through events, hackathons, and opportunities like this. Travelling to attend events had always been a wish of mine and I realized I can make it a reality and you can too! Remember to apply yourself and you can make anything happen.

November 3rd 2025 - Day 1

24 hours until Grace Hopper…

Today I got to go to Chicago!! It was my first time travelling to this city and I had heard so many good things. I love big cities.

My flight was at 8:30 AM so I don't remember much but being half asleep on the way there.

I took this pic at 8:03 AM (airport theory xD)

Arrived in ORD, Chicago at 2:41 PM

Felicia and I had the same flight but had separate seats so we met up after we deboarded the plane. The uber to our hotel was 100$ USD so we decided the 5$ train might not be that bad.

Which it wasn’t!! We did some nice sightseeing, the weather was great, and the train took us a walkable distance to our hotel. We had 2 more WiCS girls joining us later so we checked into the hotel and decided to explore the city.

I made the decision to arrive a day before so that there would be no stress about flight delays or any customs issues. It also gave me time to have a proper rest the day before as badge pickup starts early.

Walking around the city made me feel so motivated to create and build and achieve my dreams. Chicago encapsulates empowerment, growth, strength. Even when burned to the ground, it got rebuilt better than ever.

Once everyone arrived that was flying in that day, we tried out chicago style pizza. It’s definitely an interesting concept but even the small size was too much between the 4 of us. There is so much cheese involved… 6.5/10

That was it for day 1, time to get some rest!

November 4th 2025 - Day 2

1 hour until GHC…

Today was the badge pickup and opening ceremony so we left our hotel early to drop off our luggage at the next hotel and get the badges. We went around 10:30 AM and expected long queues and hours of waiting but we got our badges within 5 minutes.

The talent and expo halls had 2 time slots this year with a colour assigned so the attendees with the designated colour could go and it would not be too crowded. However, a pink badge meant we could go at all times (Yayy). They also let us in a much shorter line to enter.

We took some photos at the GHC signs and went to a cafe before the pre-GHC meetup.

@1:30 PM, we came back to the venue for the pre-GHC meetup which was in one of the restaurants next to it. It was a bit chaotic as there were no signs there and not everyone there seemed to be from the conference. We did see a group of girls sitting down so we asked if they were there for the meetup and if we could join them. This was a great way to connect with some attendees

Most of the girls we met were students from the US and getting to share experiences with them was a great start to GHC. We talked about what brought us here, how we prepared, and the struggle this year to get into the private company events. It seemed to be much more selective this year.

5 minutes until GHC…

At 2:30 PM, it was time to head over to the venue and watch the opening ceremony. It was so exciting to see that many women in tech, in the same room. From the opening ceremony alone I felt a ticket to GHC is worth it. This year's theme was ‘unbound’ and I kept this close to my heart throughout the week.

The speakers were amazing - we heard from Brenda Darden Wilkerson (CEO of AnitaB.org), Adam Cheyer (co-founder of Siri), and Vivian Tu (Your Rich BFF).

The TL;DR from Adam is that AI + humans outperforms anything, as opposed to simply using AI only or humans alone.

After the opening ceremony, we went for dinner. I still needed to check in to my hotel since I was staying alone for the remaining days. I really enjoyed staying with some of the WiCS girls the first night but I was also taking classes this semester and needed a place to focus for homework and studying. (i dont stop talking if im around other people)

Since I wasn’t splitting the cost of the hotel, most of my budget went to the flights and accommodation. I took it as an opportunity to take myself to trader joes and get food for breakfast, lunch, snacks, emergency dinners, etc. I also used the free GHC shuttle nearby my hotel for transportation. My hotel was downtown so I also got amazing views every day combined with the weather. Let’s just say I get the Chicago hype now.

November 5th 2025 - Day 3

The first ‘real’ day of GHC!!

Today started at 9:00 AM and I took the shuttle to the venue and started with the talent hall. Well, I thought started… I spent the whole day in the talent and expo hall. I kept hopping from booth to booth, eager for more conversations and tbh, the long lines also contributed. There’s a lot of sponsors there that don’t often show at events in Vancouver so I was really excited about the opportunity to talk to them.

And then the merch… I thought I left a lot of room in my suitcase but I was already worried after this day LOL

Since this was the first day, everyone was a little scattered as we got adjusted to the flow of GHC. It’s really easy to get overwhelmed, everything is happening at once and you need to pick what you want to do.

• Make a list of workshops/talks you want to attend + time and location
• Prioritize the companies you want to visit most
• Check the shuttle schedule for your hotel if it’s not within a walkable distance to the venue
• Bring snacks so you don’t get too hungry. The most I got in food was sweets like cookies and lollipops from the sponsor booths.

Felicia, Bhakti, and I went to a workday event after day 1 was wrapped up. The event was at Woven & Bound in the Marriott Marquis next to the convention centre. We attempted last year's method of showing up when only one person has an invitation and it wasn’t a problem for this event. We tried going to a MathWorks event as well but they even rejected people who got invitations because they were over capacity - I assume a lot of extra people showed up. We all had great conversations, great food, great energy. ✨

November 6th 2025 - Day 4

I may have woken up a little late today and missed the shuttle to the convention >_<

BUT, no inconvenience could stop me from enjoying another gorgeous sunny day in Chicago!

I took an uber to the convention centre and went straight to the talent hall. I made a list of companies I didn’t get to go to the day before and made a priority list to visit them based on location and queue times.

I signed up for a BrainDate today which was a way for attendees to network with each other about topics or anything they’re interested in. These sessions could be 1-on-1 or with up to 5 people. I was doing a group BrainDate and was meeting the host Andreina Gines, a Software Engineer at CVS Health, and a few other girls that joined us. We decided we were interested in doing a month-long online hackathon called the AI Champion Ship by LiquidMetal AI.

(more on that later)

Spoiler alert… WE WON! 🏆

The BrainDate was a great way to connect with attendees I wouldn’t otherwise really get to talk to! Something I loved about GHC was the opportunity to get connected with women in tech from so many different places. Hearing about the experiences they have in the places they live and getting to share my own, but knowing we all have something in common - our love for technology and that we are at GHC!

At lunch time, the girls and I took some photos at the big GHC sign <3

Visiting the booths and talking to recruiters went a bit smoother today - I actually felt connected with someone. Now, did we mostly bond over us both being Canadian..? Yes. But it did help me feel a bit more like I'm at one of the usual networking events rather than the squid games. Her name is Alex Williams and I met her at the Intuit booth. She let me know that unfortunately, like many others, the opportunities available were for Americans only. However, Intuit does hire in Canada as well so I connected with her on Linkedin to learn more about any events or internships available through there :)

@4:00 PM, we decided to attend an AWS Security JAM!

We were given a few challenges to complete in teams or solo using the AWS console. I teamed up with Felicia & Bhakti and we got some challenges completed using lambda functions and other tools from the console.

They also had people to help out if you got stuck. No one from WiCS won but we had a lot of fun solving challenges together!!

That concludes day 4 in Chicago. Used hotel credits for dinner, finished an assignment, and fell asleep.

The last day of GHC… T_T

Started the day with the closing plenary and a workshop from Uber; “Powering Billions: How Uber Scales Real-Time Financial Transactions”. They discussed how they process the 1.5 billion transactions that occur each day on their platform.

I brought one of my Trader Joe’s concoctions as a quick snack in between, and headed to the talent expo around 1:30 PM. There were still a bunch of companies I didn’t get to go to previously so I tried to quickly get in what I can.

Around 2:30 PM I met up with Andreina again to develop our hackathon ideas further and we decided on our project called ShopGuard!

Since everything closed at 3:00 PM, I headed back to my hotel to drop off my bags and merch :D and to get ready for an architecture boat tour with the WiCS girls. I absolutely loved this experience.

November 8th 2025 - Day 6

Not an official GHC day anymore unfortunately, but I asked for late-checkout at my hotel so I could quickly walk to the bean before my flight.

This snack lowk saved me on my flight back. I got it from the disney booth, so cute!!

Conclusion & After Thoughts

I am so grateful to have received this opportunity from SFU FAS and WiCS, the conference was everything I could have wanted.

As I mentioned, I joined a virtual hackathon with 2957 participants and we ended up getting 2nd place for best AI solution for public good. I may not have gotten an internship out of GHC but this is definitely a great win as well. And who knows, it may open up doors that will lead to an internship. I mean that’s how I got here anyways:

> decided to get involved with WiCS 

> volunteered for events and joined meetings 

> got hired as Director of Sponsorships for WiCS

> awarded GHC grant

> joined AI Championship hackathon with attendees

> won hackathon prize

Did I expect to win anything at all for this hackathon? No. But I decided to continue anyway and make the time to work on it. Clearly, this ended up being worth it. The prize didn't include an interview or something but we got money, credits, and merch so that was still very nice.

You may wonder what my project was about (or not, which is totally fair)

Basically everything for our project was vibe coded / low code as this was the intention of the hackathon. We mainly used raindrop + claude MCP. The project is called ShopGuard - a behavioral wellness platform that prevents impulse purchases through emotional awareness and AI-powered intervention. Our tech stack included the raindrop serverless platform as our backend, Raindrop SmartSQL as our database, 3 AI agents powered by Llama 3.3 70B, Vultr for cloud storage, React + Typescript for frontend, and JWT for authentication.

Anyways, remember to never give up on yourself and that you can make the life you envision come true.

Thanks for reading!!