M A I N   N E W S

Youngest MCSE female pro
By Prabhjot Singh
Tribune News Service

CHANDIGARH, Feb 7 — At 12, she became the world’s youngest female Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and Internet expert. And today she is one of the successful freelancers in macromedia flash, creating fully flash interactive websites, introductions and high-impact interactive presentations.

She is none other than Gursimran Arora, a student of grade IX at New Delhi’s Modern School. On December 17, 1999, when she passed her last examination successfully within three months of starting her training for MCSE, she earned the rare distinction of being the world’s youngest MCSE+I female professional. She passed all her six examinations with a clean record.

Besides studying, she now also works as a freelancer for top companies like Citilink Info Pvt Ltd, PurpleMatrix Inc, ElixerDesigns and Red Baron Online.

She has her own website — www.gursimran.com — which has been made fully in flash and is an interactive portfolio. “ I like making creative things which attract the eye. My most cherished passion is my love for creating e-greetings with catchy thoughts and appealing pictures. I am working on my own e-greetings portal — www.egreetland.com — which I plan to launch, hopefully, in my summer holidays this year.

“I have been interested from a very young age in reading, creative writing and poetry. My passion for writing short stories and articles is often helpful in talks and debates I participate in at school,” she says. She takes part in most of the inter-school debates.

“Computers are still somewhat more fascinating than writing for me. I like to develop my ideas into animation and graphics people would never tire of. My favourite author is Danielle Steel. Recently — on January 31 — I won for my institution the best school trophy at Economite 2001 at Modern School (Vasant Vihar, New Delhi) for an e-presentation I made fully in flash,’ says Gursimran.

Her best friend is her mentor . With encouragement from her family — her father is a businessman and mother a housewife — she took the plunge and cleared the MCSE examination, in the beginning not with too much of interest, but later with determination which made her a celebrity.

And when she passed the MCSE, examination, her brother gifted Gursimran her own website. “I knew it had to be something as worthwhile as MCSE itself, so I developed myself into a flash designer and converted the ‘under construction’ site into my online portfolio.”

She intends to get into St Stephen’s to do her English honours.

“English has been my favourite language and also I want to take up an advanced course in flash and other advanced multimedia softwares and make people acknowledge and appreciate the name Gursimran in the world of graphics and animation”. All of it, of course, rewinds to a 10-year-old getting a computer on her birthday, being at that time one of the few kids to have her own PC, and developing her creative skills with each passing day.

“I am in the web team of my school and hope to make the school proud of me too,” she says.