Welcome! I’m happy you’re here. You can call me Niesha. I grew up in Aruba for a few years and then lived in Washington Heights. After graduating from Georgia Institute of Technology, I went on to become a professional basketball player, but always had a separate passion for technology. This platform will help me share my knowledge and experiences that I hope will bring inspiration to everyone. This is my blog and I would like to talk about anything that is happening in my life that hopefully will bring a significant difference to yours.
How is the New Norm?
Looking back from two years ago, on the first week of March 2020, Governor Brian Kemp, Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH) Commissioner Kathleen Toomey, M.D., and state officials confirmed Georgia’s first cases of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). We were all so taken aback that we were left speechless when we considered all of our goals for the year. Life goes on, and we assumed it would fade away like the other infectious diseases. After a few months, 2021 has shown to be the complete opposite of what we all imagined.
COVID19 pandemic affected the entire world — disruptions in transportation, increasing numbers of unemployed, closing of macro and micro businesses and have put a lot of our personal and professional priorities on hold.
But I realized in the past few months, I can still say that COVID19 taught us a lot of lessons. First, to take care of our health and well-being because life is short and we can never tell when our time is up. Second, always be grateful. Gratitude promotes optimism and helps us to develop a more positive outlook. It lets us pause for a moment to reflect on something we have in our life right now instead of always striving for more.
What are you up to now?
I am building a nonprofit organization called Ballin Technology for several months now. The objective of this organization is to introduce S.T.E.A.M activities and coding to kids to build their confidence and creativity which is our goal to increase the number of minority people in STEM professions. This organization helps children in Atlanta, Minnesota, and New York City.
Wanting to help young people get ahead in this ever-growing digital world, I encourage kids to be inventors and to create a digital product, whether that’s creating an app, or a physical robot of their own to solve a problem. When states began to shut down due to growing Coronavirus (COVID-19) cases, I recognized that the students would need the organization’s program more than ever before. I went to my donators and said that we need to raise money to offer these kids access to any kind of technology and extracurricular activities. Parents were scrambling about what to do for their kids, so I felt an extra added responsibility to do my part. Sometimes my mom would tell me ”when you’re really feeling down, the best thing is to help somebody else,” and I felt like this program was, in fact, helping somebody else and helping the kids.