My Background
Since childhood, I have held a strong passion and curiosity for technology. It started with my childhood obsession with video games. I could not get enough Nintendo!..or Number Crunchers, Oregon Trail on the elementary school's Macintosh. As a teenager, it was evident in my desire to mix and match electric guitar pedals/amps and learn various recording software to achieve the 'optimal guitar tone.' Eventually, I started basic HTML writing for social mediate websites like Xanga and Myspace. Ultimately, it would progress to hardware repair and actual software development. Toward the end of high school, I considered pursuing a career in Computer Science. I opted to pursue a career in music education instead, primarily due to the positive influence of my high school choir director. Throughout college, however, I stayed connected to technology. Such as working for my University's IT department and starting a small business repairing software and hardware.
After college, it seemed like no matter the industry I found myself in, I gravitated towards optimizing aspects of my job performance by learning and using various technologies. During my time in the water utility industry, I implemented many of Google's maps/places features to reduce friction in locating water meters and valves by systematically cataloging the geolocation data of each valve. This single effort allowed a water operator to immediately know where to find a shut-off valve during late-night emergencies. My work caught the attention of the CEO, who then tasked me with developing a new department for the company; an electronic meter reading department. Besides the responsibility of recruiting a team, managing the department, and coordinating district read schedules, I also served as a liaison to a software developer contractor. I would provide feedback on the UX/UI design and find ways to improve it for the field. I also reported bugs and eventually ran essential Quality assurance on version changes. By the initial beta release of the software, our four-person department increased the efficiency of our company's meter reading tenfold. It was a fulfilling experience and an early glimpse into software development. As an elementary music teacher, I tried to enhance my curriculum with technology any chance I could. Kindergartens learned about instruments on Ipads, 3rd graders took VR field trips to Broadway, and 4th and 5th graders composed electronic music using virtual instruments. As a result of the use of technology in my classroom, the district's lead technology coordinator recruited me to co-teach a technology seminar for other district teachers. My passion for technology and development didn't just stop in the classroom. To maximize the efficiency and safety of our student dismissal system at the school-wide level, I designed and implemented a basic solution composed of Google Docs and Google Sheets. With cell linking, conditional formatting based on boolean logic, and cloud sharing, I linked multiple teachers and stations with student information, streamlining how car riders were queued and accounted for during the dismissal phases. I consider this to be my first proper programming solution developed. I worked on the prototype after school hours, then on the sales pitch to convince the school administration of the idea. Once they were on board, I was tasked with convincing and training other teachers to run a simulation and training the rest of the faculty to assist when we went live. Some were skeptical, but it only took a single day of watching what once took close to 2 hours go down to 30 minutes before everyone was on board. The first version was just bare bones, so it was long before teachers, although grateful for the time saved, had a list of suggestions and feature requests. The collaborative and iterative process of taking their feedback and updating the solution's UI and enhancements to optimize usability for everyone involved gave me a glimpse of what it would be like to release software.
After nearly a decade of successful work in multiple industries, I began learning programming languages. In my last years of teaching, I started learning Javascript through an app called Grass Hopper before eventually deciding to immerse myself at App Academy, a 10,000+ hour coding boot camp.
Nearly four years after leaving education and fully immersing myself in programming, I have developed a Full Stack application used by the US Navy and assisted in developing a social exploration app using VR technologies.
