With a background in peace and conflict, and a resume that includes teaching English on a Fulbright grant, you might not expect her to be an engineering star. But Athena has quickly made a name for herself by solving some of our toughest technical problems.
Right now I do frontend development and I work on our AMS platform.
I also did the frontend work for our Wyndham emails, which go out through Salesforce. I’ve become a little bit of the expert in Salesforce design, much to my chagrin.
In college I studied Middle Eastern Affairs and French. After school I started working in education at a French immersion school.
I had a friend who went through a coding school and she raved about it. Having been through the program she was able to articulate tech in a way I'd never understood it before: logic puzzles, language learning. It was actually a lot of the same things that made me so interested in philosophy.
Looking at my career path and the “next ten years” I realized I could be an asset to the community bringing a blend of humanities skills and humanities skills to the table. So I decided to take the plunge and enroll.
Also, I won’t lie. I want to be a part of the solution of diversifying the industry.
Athena outside the American Embassy in Luxembourg during her Fulbright grant
When I was in my coding program I was the only woman. There was no woman in the class after. This was a really intense bootcamp - 6 days a week, 12 hours a day - and I was the only woman in the room for the entire time. This was a huge shift for me coming from the humanities background which is mostly women.
There were definitely times in the bootcamp program. But I got hired really quickly out of my program and that kind of validated my decision to stick with it.
But honestly, I don’t really know. The projects I’ve been given at iSeatz have allowed me to grow really quickly - working with enterprise architecture, huge problems, high stakes. I also came in at a great time where we were re-envisioning our platform, so I understood the big picture versus getting a really myopic view.
My ability to translate tech-speak into everyday language has been an asset. Again, I credit my philosophy background.
Most of my tech career has been at iSeatz, which has a huge female presence, so I think that has mitigated a lot of the potential challenges.
It is challenging when you attend a conference. There will be hard tech talks but also softer talks about diversity. I want to attend the diversity panel because I’m passionate about it, but I feel like that’s expected and I might fall behind in my career if I don’t go the hard-CompSci route. How can women and under-represented folks do both?
It seems like to be on a level playing field you are expected to sacrifice your softer passions.
I don't know her name but there was a woman I read about when I was making the decision to pivot to tech. She did a coding bootcamp and built an app that helped connecting immigrants with immigration lawyers. That put into perspective the type of things I might be able to accomplish.
Athena promoting social activism.
I think there are a lot of people doing really great work. I love the push I see nowadays to combine traditionally girly things with hard science to pique their interest early.
From what I’ve seen working at schools I think we need to put the extra effort in to make sure that girls aren’t getting steamrolled.
I love the commitment to hiring women and putting women in technical leadership roles. That comes from the top.
I am loving working in React and Redux. We work with these tools in a very unique way and it is exciting to see how flexible these tools are and how creative we can be. I love feeling like I really deeply understand these tools and frameworks.
Of course I also am passionate about the intersection of technology and social justice. We can use tech to change the world!
I like the path I took. I learned a lot and I think they make me a more well-rounded person. I appreciate having that breadth of knowledge. I maybe could have studied it a liiiiittle bit earlier. But I overall love how I got here.