Jihan goes from the Classroom to Microsoft Education after her near death experience.

Jihan

Jihan McGlotten is an Afro-Latina single mother from the city of Philadelphia who’s been in the educational sector for thirteen years. Jihan first started her career as a journalism teacher in Washington, DC where she taught the foundations of Journalism to scholars in 9th-12th grades. During her tenure at Richard Wright PCS, she found her calling to be an educator to inner-city youth and to make sure she provided a quality education to her scholars.

In the podcast, you will hear Jihan touch briefly on how she fell into her educational position at Microsoft, but she didn’t go into full details.

After being in an administrator role for four years she fell ill this past August and had to be rushed in for emergency surgery if she would have waited any longer “I would have been dead”. Jihan said, “If it wasn’t for my stressful workplace and emergency surgery, I wouldn’t be in the position at Microsoft”. While in the hospital Jihan reached out to a family friend that works for Microsoft and inquired about the position, while in the hospital she had two interviews and was offered her current position a month later.

Jihan took the position because believes that more minorities need to be seen in the tech field, especially in large corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Twitter Etc.

Over the past eight months, Jihan has made so many connections with support groups, school STEAM Programs and many leaders in the educational system who are centered around technology. “Every Jihan it amazes me how large the tech industry is growing and how many females you see in these positions,” she says. “It’s a hard feeling to describe, and just to like I wanted to go down the road of being a principal but now I’m in the process of creating my own Tech Company.”

While conducting our interview with Jihan we researched articles that touched on minorities in the tech industry. According to an article posted on Brookings.Edu Blacks and Hispanics are underrepresented in the tech industry. This year the EEOCIn 2018 the EEOC released it's statistics on the diversity on hightech companies for the years of 1997 and 2012. According to Forbes.com diversity in tech is "crucial to its continued success."