A native Floridian, I grew up in DeLand, Florida and earned my B.A. at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, Georgia. My career has spanned from research and development on camouflage to architectural drafting to graphic art, marketing and communications, but the jobs I loved the most were with Christian non-profit organizations. Currently, I serve as Communications Coordinator for Global Teams, a mission organization based in Winter Springs, Florida. There, I have the opportunity of helping missionaries around the globe share their stories with their supporters. It’s cool to be able to sit in on a Skype call with people on five continents, even if I just take notes.

The years around the Great Recession were a rollercoaster for me. What do you do when you lose your dream job and you can’t get a job running copies at Office Depot? Cram for the GRE and get your master’s degree. My boyfriend – now my husband – said I should just get a job at Target, but since no one was hiring, and past experiences handling cash led to disaster, I chose the grad school path and earned an M.A. in Digital Media at UCF.

My electives at UCF included an independent study on research on a device that could potentially provide relief to caregivers. In 2013, my Work-In-Progress poster (authored with Si Jung Kim, Ph.D.) was accepted to the CHI (Computer Human Interaction) Conference. The need to get a job overrode any desire to earn an MFA or to do further research.

After a couple of local jobs in Marketing and Communications, I realized that I enjoyed staring at code much more that I enjoyed marketing, and I took online coding classes sporadically for a few years – and finally enrolled in UCF Coding Bootcamp.

When I’m not working or taking classes, I’m going to Disney World with my husband and stepdaughter, visiting my mom and brother in DeLand or trying to keep the house semi-clean.