Fighting Human Trafficking in Virtual Reality
B.S., Computer Science, 2020
Zahnae got involved with the CCI through her involvement in another Cal Poly organization, Poly Reps. Student Marco Zuniga was a Poly Rep, a CCI employee, and a personal friend of Zahnae’s who let her know about the CCI’s need for a student to work on virtual reality programming.
During her time at the CCI, Zahnae worked on many virtual reality and augmented reality (VR/AR) projects, but her biggest accomplishment at the CCI was the success of the initial project she was hired for: a virtual reality environment that trains law enforcement officers to recognize signs of human trafficking. The environment is an illicit massage parlor being used for human trafficking for the law enforcement community. The CCI has an in-person training facility depicting the same concept but Zahnae was able to take that valuable training and make it more accessible to those outside of the Central Coast area.
The CCI “gave me a project and a lot of autonomy to achieve that project.”
This project gave Zahnae the opportunity to gain product development skills and hone her VR programming skills. It also gave her relevance in both the AR/VR and anti-human trafficking realms. Zahnae even gave a TEDx Talk about the project.
This project was Zahnae’s main focus until the pandemic hit when she was tasked with other VR projects as organizations transitioned to more reliance on virtual spaces. She contributed to the CCI’s California Cyber Innovation Challenge 2020, the Cal Poly Chemistry Department’s transition to online learning, and DEFCON’s Virtual Medical Device Village. Zahnae is currently working for Salesforce, as a program coordinator for customer relationship management software. In this role, she optimizes pipelines for certifications and manages projects. She cites the CCI as having opened the door for her to enter into the workforce because she was able to practice learning on the job, project management, working independently and with a team, delegation, navigating the software development life cycle, and wearing different hats. As we said goodbye, she gave a piece of parting advice: “The CCI experience is what you make of it, use those different projects and skills and grow from the role as much as you can.”