Hannah Reiss, FCRH ‘16, makes strides in representing women in male-dominated domains. Samuel Joseph/The Fordham Ram
By Shannon Marcoux
Hannah Reiss, FCRH ’16, has spent her past two years at Fordham making a positive impact everywhere from club sports to computer science. A native of the Philadelphia area and a sister to four brothers, Hannah pays little mind to naysayers and obstacles standing in her way.
On choosing to pursue her degree in the male-dominated area of computer science, Hannah said, “I was put into an intro course my freshman year having no idea what CS was and something about my brain loved how logical and self-directed it could be. I also started seeing these articles about how high in demand girls in computer science are because they’re so underrepresented, and I think that made it a lot more exciting to me… Whenever I do well in those classes I get excited like I’m six years old again and my brothers finally let me play wiffleball with them.” She is currently on the executive board of Computing Students Society.
Hannah brings this enthusiasm to other parts of her life as well. Hannah, along with co-founder Casey Harrison, GSB ’16, started the women’s club squash team. She explains that, “With the help of the men’s coach, Bryan Patterson, we practiced regularly, played friendly matches with other schools and even drove ourselves to a tournament in Virginia, where we called ourselves the “Bronx Rebels” since we couldn’t use the Fordham name.”
Hannah explains why she decided to start the team, which finally received club sports status this fall: “I knew that there had been a men’s varsity team around for a while (my dad played on it) so I was confused and frustrated as to why there wasn’t a more organized opportunity for girls to play.”
With many accomplishments already, Hannah is looking forward to new experiences this upcoming school year. “I’m studying abroad in Shanghai, China next semester, so I’m stoked for that because I’m a Mandarin minor and I’m obsessed with learning Chinese and Chinese philosophy. And China. And Chinese food.”
Hannah has a lot to look forward to for the fall as well, including working in promotions for WFUV and leading a Christian Life Community. She also plans to pick up violin again after a six-year hiatus. She said, “I’m super excited to have another creative outlet and play pretty sounds. I say ‘sounds’ because I’m positive it won’t sound anything like music when I first pick it up again.”
Looking back on her Fordham career so far, Hannah says, “There’s a lot of ridiculous, hilarious and meaningful things that happened to me here, but I think the ones that will stick with me the most are the simpler things about this place, like how good it felt to read under a tree on Eddie’s over the summer or how seriously unbelievable Tino’s paninis taste.”
As far as career plans go, Hannah is not sure whether she wants to go into software engineering or cyber security, but she is sure of one thing: “All I know is I want to use my skills for something that the world actually needs. And, while the narcissist in all of us would love another soul-sucking social media app, that’s not it.
