# I Found My Coordinates: Code, Community, and Okta

[Okta](https://yomu.fyi/company/okta) · Vanshika Pandey · Aug 20, 2026

**Type:** Announcement

## Summary

A career progression through community leadership and software engineering led to a new role at Okta. Starting as a campus ambassador and Google Developer Student Clubs lead in India, the author organized hackathons, workshops, and meetups to foster peer learning. To effectively advocate for developers, an internship as a Developer Advocate at Zuplo prompted hands-on engineering experience as a Software Development Engineer at JPMorgan. After mentoring over 10,000 students and growing a technical community to over 600,000 members, the author joined Okta as a Senior Builder Advocate. In this role, advocacy extends beyond traditional coders to support AI builders, low-code creators, and developers utilizing identity and access management tools.

## Context

The author sought to bridge the gap between community building and developer advocacy by gaining hands-on software development experience to better understand developer pain points.

## Approach / What changed

The author founded a Google Developer Student Clubs chapter, interned at Zuplo, worked as a Software Development Engineer at JPMorgan, and subsequently joined Okta as a Senior Builder Advocate.

## Takeaways

- Advocacy requires understanding developer pain points firsthand, leading the author to gain direct engineering experience as a Software Development Engineer at JPMorgan.
- The author served as a pioneer Google Developer Student Clubs Lead at their institution, becoming one of 280 leads across India.
- The Senior Builder Advocate role at Okta addresses not only traditional coders but also AI builders, low-code and no-code builders, and LLM agent developers.

**Tags:** [Authentication](https://yomu.fyi/topic/authentication), [Developer Experience](https://yomu.fyi/topic/developer-experience), [LLMs](https://yomu.fyi/topic/llm)

[Read original post](https://developer.okta.com/blog/2026/08/20/vanshika-intro-blog)