Chenille Lawrence came back to speak to Digital Scholars in 2025.
For this Where Are They Now? segment, we catch up with former Digital Scholar Chenille Lawrence, who graduated from UIC in May of 2024.
Name: Chenille Lawrence
Current job title: Software engineer, John Deere
Why tech? I always knew I wanted a technical position and that I needed to do something that was hands-on. What intrigued me was the fact that it’s so interdisciplinary. There are so many ways you can make tech your own. I liked the versatility, and I enjoy being able to problem-solve, which is something that is heavily ingrained in tech.
Why DPI? In 2020, the summer before I started as a freshman at UIC, I was introduced to the CHANCE Program by my high school counselor. That summer, the CHANCE Program and DPI were hosting the first iteration of Digital Scholars. I was a Digital Scholar for that inaugural year in 2020, and the following year I was a student coordinator for the second cohort.
Since then, I’ve been pretty active with DPI. I was a part of the Research Scholars program in the fall of 2022. (Editor’s note: Research Scholars was a program that DPI ran each semester from the spring of 2021 through the fall of 2022 that placed students on research and development projects with the DPI Science Teams.)
I’ve come back to speak. Even my younger brother was a part of Digital Scholars.
I’m still involved with DPI just because of the support. Throughout my journey, I’ve been able to maintain relationships with people from DPI: Miss Kay, Mark Harris. They’ve become a big part of my community.
The mission also resonates with me. Even if I didn’t have a personal experience with DPI, it would definitely be something that I would want to champion.
Do you have a non-tech skill or an otherwise unexpected skill or experience that’s helped you the most in your current job? Leadership, honestly. In college, I was president of UIC’s chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers. I tutored; I did other things that allowed me to develop skills that I would correlate to leadership A lot of leadership roles involve uncomfortable situations: reaching out to people you don’t know, giving feedback. You learn to be comfortable in those uncomfortable situations.
Because of that leadership experience, I feel a little bit more empowered to take up space — whether that’s asking questions in meetings in front of people who are more experienced than I am, or reaching out to senior developers and being like, “Hey, I’m not sure what to do here. Can you give me advice?”
What was the most important thing you learned in preparing for this career? Just have faith in the journey. I didn’t start out being a computer science major. I had to navigate some challenges to even see myself as a someone who could pursue a role in tech. I had moments where I had to rely on the people around me or rely on the community that I built.
But I learned that community can help you navigate the journey, and it can also help you see yourself being successful in the field.
Learning to give myself grace was also really helpful: being resilient and knowing that after a low comes a high. There’s still a moment for growth after, and a moment for something better to come.
What do you like most about your job? I like being able to see the value in the work that I’m doing. The applications that I’ m helping to develop have large-scale impact — not just on a specific group of people, but on pretty much everyone. Deere has big reach in terms of agriculture, which impacts the food we eat. It’s empowering to be a part of an organization that has such an important role in everyday life.
And it’s just a great culture. I like the fact that I’m able to feel empowered and suggest different things or suggest new solutions or ideas or just new techniques. People are very supportive, very encouraging of growth. I’ve been able to grow a lot in my role as a dev and just learning what it means to be a good developer.
Where do you see yourself in five years? Hopefully in some kind of technical management, or at least at a point where I’m close enough to get there. I’d like a position that allows me to incorporate other aspects of tech: not just software development, but also data, ML/AI, however that looks at that point.
I see myself having more of a direct connection with organizations, that help create the future generation of developers or people in tech, like Pritzker Tech Talent Labs and Digital Scholars.
On that note, at some point I’d like to work in a teaching capacity. I would love to teach lower-level programming classes.
And finally, I plan to have my master’s in five years.
What advice do you have for high school students considering a tech career? A lot of times when people consider tech, they just think of it as, “I need to be able to write code,” but there are a lot of other things that go into working in tech. Like being able to problem-solve on a higher level, beyond just implementing code.
It’s important to be a good people person. As a software engineer, a lot of the things that you’re developing will have a direct impact on people. And so, you need to think about developing not just from a standpoint of, “This is what we need to do,” but also, within reason, considering how whatever you’re doing is affecting other people.
Also, developing software isn’t something that is done in isolation. It’s something that is done with multiple teams. So don’t just focus on technical skills, but also on how well you communicate, how well you advocate for yourself in instances that you might need to advocate for your solutions, why you think this is the best.
Finally, just be confident in who you are. Everyone in tech doesn’t look the same. Everyone in tech doesn’t have the same experiences. Everyone in tech doesn’t have to work on the same thing. Try to find whatever your niche is, whatever part of the tech industry suits you the best. Don’t feel as though you have to be a software engineer. Don’t be one-track-minded in tech. It’s one of those industries that is rapidly developing; there might be some roles in five years that don’t even exist now. Just be as open as you can and try new things.
Author: Jeanie Chung