In the shadow of Google’s sprawling New York City campus, former and current Google and Amazon workers gathered on Tuesday evening to pay tribute to Mai Ubeid, a young woman and software engineer who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza along with her whole family. The workers also took the opportunity to castigate their employers for contracts with the Israeli military.
Ubeid had graduated from a Google-funded coding bootcamp, Gaza Sky Geeks, and later interned at a firm that was part of the Google for Startups accelerator program in 2020. Those who knew her have described her in written tributes and in interviews with the Guardian as a strong and determined visionary. She had muscular dystrophy and, as such, used a wheelchair to get around. Ubeid dreamed of one day developing a platform for people with disabilities to network and connect, according to Kathrine Tinggaard Nicolaisen, a former communications manager at Gaza Sky Geeks based in the West Bank who knew and had met Ubeid.
