Winds of Change - Fall 2017 - 24

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24 WINDS OF CHANGE * FALL 2017

MARRISSA
HELLESEN

CHEROKEE / MICROSOFT / SOFTWARE ENGINEER

S

he's just 28, yet so much has
happened in the last dozen
years that Marrissa Hellesen's
life reads more like a
suspense novel. Hellesen's
story includes her leaving
school in the eighth grade,
earning a GED when
homeschooling didn't work out, and then
nearly failing in college. The main theme in her
life, though, is perseverance. She refused to give
up, and she paid attention to the lessons life
was teaching her along the way.
At one job Hellesen noticed coworkers struggling from paycheck to paycheck and knew she
wanted to do more with her life. But when she
applied to community college she was stunned
to learn her math skills were way beneath the
requirements for her degree. She had to
complete four courses of remedial math before
she could even take her first college algebra class.

"Now I tell the computer what kind of
equations it should solve," Hellesen jokes.
She made it through those first years of
college - and discovered a love for creating
with a keyboard. That talent helped her get into
the highly competitive computer program at
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
There Hellesen continued to struggle, but she
soon found a support system. "When I came to
UI, I got an email from a dean in charge of
minority students," she says. It was a dinner
invitation to discuss reviving the school's
AISES Chapter. "There were six people on the
send line, and 10,000 people in the college of
engineering," she recalls.
There were only three people at the
dinner, including her, but it paid off in several
ways. Hellesen's AISES membership was
subsidized, and she was sent to a Leadership
Summit. "At my first AISES conference, I was
at my lowest point during the struggle to get
my degree," she says. "I felt incredibly alone, like I wasn't going to be
able to continue." But during the
Talking Circle Hellesen was able to
find the support she needed. "I'll
never forget two people giving me a
hug and telling me, 'You have a
family and you're not alone.'"

Knowing that she had
Native people supporting
her was vital. "I had a
community behind me that
I wanted to make proud."

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Winds of Change - Fall 2017

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