Prinkle Lopes said her classes at Mason kept her up to date on industry standards. Photo provided.
More than 500 George Mason University alumni work for Amazon at various locations around the country and the world, many for Amazon Web Services (AWS), a subsidiary that offers cloud computing services and has a major hub in Northern Virginia.
Prinkle Lopes, MS information systems ’18, is a cloud support associate and one of several Mason alumni we will feature in the coming weeks who work for the tech giant.
Those include Jason Paul Pate, a systems analyst, BS information technology ’20; Taylor Cacciotti, information technology '19; Cameron Isaac, an executive design recruiter, BS conflict analysis and resolution ’11; Brandon Mohabir, a network technician, BS applied information technology ’15; and Rao Ahmad Rahil, a cloud support associate, MS telecommunications ’18; and Rajitha Devabhaktuni, a cloud security engineer, MS computer engineering ’16.
If Lopes ever wanted to convince her friends back home in India to study at Mason, she says she would talk about campus diversity, the flexibility to choose course work, and opportunities to work on campus.
“I was very picky about my courses because I wanted to learn about databases and networking, and that’s exactly what I’m doing [at Amazon] right now,” Lopes says. “I think all my courses helped me get into [Amazon Web Services].”
As a cloud support associate, Lopes, who works out of Amazon’s Herndon, Virginia, office, helps clients resolve issues relating to system infrastructures and databases.
She says she sees herself eventually becoming a cloud support engineer and then a solutions architect, someone who helps companies who want to use Amazon Web Services evaluate their needs and build their systems.
“I got more than what I was expecting,” Lopes says of Mason. “My professors took a practical approach. They told us about what was currently happening in the industry, what we need to look out for, what kind of courses we should take. They helped us even though we weren’t asking for it. That’s something I really loved.”