I am a believer in effective altruism, which is the idea of trying to use evidence and reason to figure out the best ways to improve the world. When I was younger, I thought this meant skipping out on college and moving to Mexico to start an orphanage; being as close to the issues I wanted to solve as possible. My parents convinced me that I would be more effective at starting and running an orphanage effectively if I had the skills and leverage a college education endows. They may have been slightly biased, but I know they were right. Since then, my altruistic goals have changed, but I have been consistently committed to strategically improving myself, with the goal of achieving the most positive impact on the world that I have in me. 

Recently, this led me to make the difficult decision to leave a career I loved – providing immigration and social support case management to refugees – to pursue Software Engineering. I knew that I had more to offer, and that big picture I can do more good with specialized skills in a more innovative environment.

After several months of studying Python, C, data structures, algorithms, and computer science basics on my own, I decided to complete a coding bootcamp at Le Wagon Berlin. Over the past ten weeks I have spent more than 12 hours a day learning programming principles and software design through Ruby on Rails and JavaScript. While I knew I enjoyed solving problems through code, this experience has shown me that software engineering is something I excel at. I have had the opportunity to help my fellow students with coding challenges throughout the bootcamp, and have been frequently told by teachers and students that my skills are advanced. I am thrilled by each new concept I am able to master and find myself constantly seeking more knowledge and more opportunities to code. I am especially interested in the backend side of software engineering: developing new technical solutions through logic and code.