My coding experience started in high school solving challenges in C++, and grew stronger with courses in object oriented programming, followed by functional programming and logic at The University of Texas at Austin. I ultimately earned a BS in Advertising as a copywriter in UT’s Texas Creative program. Moved by a passion for serving others, I spent my early career at a non-profit supervising volunteer advocates for children in foster care, specifically focused on the unique challenges facing teenagers “aging out” of the system. Following the 2008 market crash I siezed an opportunity to become an analyst investigating mortgage fraud in the real estate industry where I exercised my problem solving skills and eventually pivoted to residential sales.
While diving deeper into modern strategies for marketing homes, I became frustrated with the commonly available cookie cutter tools for web design. I taught myself the core front-end technologies by dedicating late nights to a combination of coding, hair pulling, reading, more coding, and aha moments. In time I built a custom responsive website to show off my listings which scratched an itch that lingered since my first “Hello World” application at age 16. I fell in love with the notion of fusing logic with design to solve problems for users, plus I really enjoy reading and writing code. Thus, I committed to pursue web development as a career as well as a craft. Looking for a little more structure and teamwork, I completed the Coding Boot Camp at UT Austin MERN stack program which was an excellent hands-on addition to the fundamentals of thinking through code I had picked up in college. I’m focused on the unending project of adding to a valuable skill set in both front and back-end technologies. While my empathy for users and background in marketing places me closer to the front-end side of the blurry spectrum, I am equally interested in API design and integration along with data manipulation and organization. My hands are currently dirty diving deeper into algorithms, testing, and administering a VPS for building and hosting Node.js applications.
I am particularly interesting in joining a team where I can contribute my web development skills and background in real estate.