I love information. I love the power that comes with using code to solve problems. The ability to address, quantify and evaluate large amounts of data and transform it to useful information is what excites me most about coding.

Increasing my ability to build and design systems to visualize, query, modify and arrange information is my primary career and educational goal. And as my breadth of knowledge grows, I'm learning more about how similar problems are solved and conceptualized across languages, frameworks, architectures, and systems. For me, technological competency has become more about asking more interesting questions and making better requests than finding answers.

My professional skills and interests are a snapshot of the tools I've used to ask questions these questions and to build systems to gain and utilize insights. I'm currently most curious about relational databases and database management systems, messaging systems and related patterns and architectures, web scraping and crawling for automating data ingestion and state-driven front end libraries including react, vue and event-driven systems. The personal projects I've included in this portfolio are generally experiments to help me explore and solidify these concepts.

Before I loved information and databases, I loved libraries. The amount of stories, of worlds, of possibilities stored neatly in the stacks thrilled me from the time I was a kid. When I began to ask questions about the world I discovered encyclopedias, dictionaries, the indexing and reference systems in reference books and nonfiction texts. I loved how all of these things were like gateways to more information about the world, more stories, more insights about people and more graphs, charts and pictures.

By the time I got to high school, I knew I liked research better than writing and was volunteering to help my peers do research and write papers. I thought I'd like to become an academic librarian. My interest in library science and desire to earn a MLS was my introduction to databases and programming. I've always been a database-first thinker and my natrual intuition in problem solving is data-driven.

I've got to read. It feels like I always have my headphones on with audible audiobooks or podcasts playing. I'm usually listening to nonfiction titles about economics, philosophy, history and tech. I like visiting and volunteering at the library and collecting books, especially cookbooks and books about art, drawing, animation and learning. I also enjoy short stories, poetry and essays.

I like to make music with guitar, cello, singing and recently the ukelele. I like to draw and animate and have dabbled with claymation. I also love cooking and pilates.