My Story — Marco Lamina
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Marco Lamina
Born and raised in a small town near Berlin, Germany, I got fascinated with technology and computers as I grew up during the dawn of the internet. Disassembling my parents’ old computers and teaching myself various programming languages, I’ve developed a mindset of continuous learning early on in my life. After high school, studying computer science was the natural progression. I enrolled at Hasso-Plattner-Institute in Potsdam near Berlin in 2009, where I graduated with a Bachelor’s in IT-Systems Engineering in 2011. During that time, I had already started gathering real-life work experience as a software engineer: First as an Android developer for an app agency, followed by contract-based work as an independent freelancer.

After I graduated, I left Germany for a 1-year internship at SAP in Silicon Valley, where I met some of the incredible people I am now lucky to call family. Living in the beautiful state of California left an imprint on me that would shape the coming years of my life. I moved back to Berlin, where I studied for two more years at HPI and graduated with a Master’s degree in IT-Systems Engineering in 2015. During that time, I helped bootstrap multiple startups in the Berlin area. Working in these small-team, high-energy environments lead me to diversify my skill set and taught me many lessons that benefit my personal and professional life to this day.

A master’s degree and a solid amount of work experience under my belt, I was ready to leave home for good and start a new life in California, where I accepted a full-time position at SAP in 2016 and moved to San Francisco. Since then, living here has not only propelled my career, but has given me countless opportunities for personal growth. I have become interested in spiritual meditation practices, studied different kinds of martial arts and built my own music studio where I find work-life balance and means of self-expression.

I continue to follow these paths passionately and am grateful for the the people and institutions that allowed me to become who I am today. I am working towards a life that prioritizes balance, self-expression and being of service to others, looking for ways to use my professional skills in ways that benefit society and to give back some of the immense love and compassion I have received from my communities in and around San Francisco.