I was born in Walla Walla, Washington. I grew up in Southern California and both Eastern and Western Washington. When I was six years old, we moved to Redmond, and spent the rest of my childhood and adolescence moving around the Eastside of the Seattle area, near Microsoft, where I was exposed to science and technology. I tinkered with electronics and computers, constructed science experiments, read encyclopedias and science fiction, played online video games, and taught myself to code.
A promising youth ended in my dropping out of Juanita High School, where I was a running start dual-enrollment student, on Dance and Gymnastics teams, and an AP and Honors student. I had moved out my junior year after many tumulutuous years in my homelife and was struggling to make ends meet. My life had been hard and I had no support system. I became a single mother soon afterward and wondered if I could code for a job. As it turned out, I could.
From 2006 through 2011, I programmed primarily as a freelancer and worked full-time jobs in food service, moving around the country. I tried to go to college several times: for biotechnology, meteorology, environmental science, web design, web development, photography, and architecture. I had gotten high SAT scores and was accepted into every school I applied to, but nothing was sticking. Finally, I enrolled at the University of Missouri in St. Louis and declared an Astrophysics major. I was hooked. I tried desperately to make it work, but attended only a handful of classes before I stopped attending altogether. I loved it, but working two and three minimum wage jobs and taking care of a toddler left no room for my education. I scored a 99 on the ASVAB and seriously considered joining the Air Force for the financial stability.
I was barely surviving and facing eviction when a USA Today Digital Products recruiter reached out in the fall of 2011. Weeks later my life changed completely and my daughter and I moved to Northern Virginia, near DC, and my successful software career began.
From 2011 to 2023, I worked as a software engineer for big companies like Activision Blizzard, Starbucks, and Apple, and a few startups here and there. I spoke at conferences, contributed to open source software development, and mentored other women in tech. I became a fierce advocate for change and championed internal change and even legislation that protected workers and fostered equitible, inclusive policies and fair pay. In 2023, I worked with the ACLU of Washinton to strengthen the state's protections of health-related data extrapolated from AI algorithms to be in line with HIPAA protections. I used my Twitter platform to hold corporations and powerful people in technology accountable for the ways women are devalued and pushed out of the industry.
In 2023, I began freelancing as I was pushed out of the industry after holding Apple accountable with the federal government in public. By becoming a whistleblower, I changed many laws in Washington state and assisted with a federal law. I got a literary agent and an offer for a book deal to write my memoir. But I was hiding something and couldn't write my way around it. I fled life-threatening domestic violence and graduated from the Personal Empowerment Program in 2023.
Since then, I enrolled in community college and I've maintained a 4.0-GPA with Honors as a physics, astronomy, and mathematics major. While in community college, I worked at the Orange Coast College Planetarium, had research internships at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institution of Technology, and was a Teaching Assistant at Earthscope Consortium.
My goal is to complete my associate's degree in science and to transfer to obtain a bachelor's of science degree in Astrophysics and Earth and Planetary Science. I ultimately plan to pursue a graduate doctoral degree. My hope is to do research with NASA, NOAA, and academic institutions to explore and understand the universe and our place in it, to help drive societal and environmental stewardship... and continue communicating to the public about science.