Experience

Synergis

Contract Curriculum Writer

Curriculum writer for Synergis, on assignment at Google

  • Creating curriculum about GenAI for Google.org's Tech Education team

Google

Senior Software Engineer

Google Broadcast Player, Workstream Lead (3.5 yrs.)

  • Helped create an in-house video-on-demand platform for >130,000 employees w/ Angular, Dart, SCSS, Bazel
  • Managed testing and releases, participated in oncall rotation
  • Ran standups, sprint planning, retros, and organized teamwide lunch-n-learns
  • Co-managed an Engineering Resident who was hired on full-time post-residency

Google Video Conferencing, Platform Team (2 yrs.)

  • Maintained and then deprecated in-house linux-based videoconference system
  • Awarded bonus for completing project ahead of schedule and with zero incidents
  • Completed solo project to maintain video hardware fleet in ~6 months, saving Google ~$1.6M/year
  • Team lead for two >100k LOC Py2→Py3 migration efforts that landed on time

Howard University

Adjunct Lecturer, Google in Residence

Rotation through Google in Residence program (5 mos.)

  • Designed curriculum and taught Intro to Computer Science virtually to 135 students
  • Managed 4 student TAs and 4 Googler TAs
  • Positive student feedback (4.5/5 class score) with 72% pass rate (met goals)
  • At least six of my students were offered Google STEP internships + one at Microsoft

Managed by Q

Software Engineer

Internal Tools Team (9 mos.)

  • Led payroll system migration under tight deadline using Django & Node
  • Contributed to team culture with lunch-n-learns, D&D nights, and Slack emoji tooling

Infrastructure Team (6 mos.)

  • Worked with AWS to set up queueing service for invoicing which powered core business
  • Independently investigated AWS spend and recommended savings to CTO

CodeCraft School

Lead Instructor

  • Lead instructor of full-time 12 week full-stack JS course teaching React, and later, Vue
  • Created curriculum, led classes, and managed up to three assistants at a time
  • Graduated over 100 students and provided followup career support and interview prep

SNAP! Interactive

Software Engineer

  • Engineering lead on dating app The Grade for Android using Titanium JS → Android transpiler
  • Used PHP & JavaScript to do full stack development for dating app AYI

Etsy, Inc.

Software Engineer

  • Worked with a team to handle shipping label generation & address validation
  • Developed flow for determining shipping configurations based on postal codes using PHP & JavaScript

Pre-2013 Internships

Aspire Public Schools | Summer 2012

Bracket Labs | Summer 2011

Renewable Choice Energy | Summer 2010

Placeways | Summer 2009

The Aerospace Corporation | Summer 2008 & Winter 2009

Purecode Computing | Occasional freelance since 2009

Education

Recurse Center

Student

Batch

Attended 12-week “writers workshop for programmers” (yet so much more!) in NYC

Wrote rollback netcode, worked on a finances tracker in React, competed in a bot-making competition, etc.

Lawrence University

Undergraduate Degree

Grad.

Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics/Computer Science. Final Project: PHP blogging platform

Bachelor’s Degree in English. Final Project: Creative Writing Portfolio

Boards

Meadville-Lombard School of Theology

→ Present

Board member of Chicago-based Unitarian Universalist seminary

Helping set direction of ~120 student college with $12M+ endowment

Exclamation Foundation

→ Present

Member of organizing board for !!Con and !!Con West

Other Work

!!Con

Co-Organizer

“Radically inclusive” technology conference about the joy, surprise and excitement of computing

Volunteer organizer for ~250 person conference with roles including emcee, treasurer, and social media content writer

Volunteer Teaching

Technical Mentor & Interview Practice Provider at Pursuit code bootcamp -

Teacher at School for Human Rights through TEALSk12 -

NaNoWriMo

Novelist

, ,

Wrote 50k words in one month to complete National Novel Writing Month

2008: YA fantasy, 2016: Sci-fi/magical realism, 2018: Data structures textbook

Ludum Dare

Game Developer

, , ,

Worked with teams to create videogames for 72-hour online game jam Ludum Dare

Also

  • Stained glass art hobby (@solidarityglassworks on Insta)
  • I play electric bass, guitar, drums, and various other instruments
  • I've written (useful!) code in Haskell
  • Founded a video, board, and tabletop gaming club at Lawrence Uni., worked as RA for club's 23-bed student house