Freelance developer and jazz-musician, merging passions for coding and music.

I grew up in Silicon Valley but was, ironically, completely uninterested in learning to code while I lived there. Most of my background is in the humanities. I graduated from Yale University in 2016, where I studied History with a focus on the Soviet Union. I wrote my thesis on the history of jazz in the Soviet Union and led a student movement to start a jazz program at Yale.

After graduating, I moved to New York and worked as a professional jazz pianist/singer and as a music manager. I still do both of these things and perform professionally in Berlin now. During this time, I released the solo album (Portraits Drawn Without You), and I am hoping to record a new project soon. In 2017, I spent a year working at an international women’s rights law firm in London and am still deeply passionate about working to impact society.

I didn’t know how to code per se. At Yale, I had done some work relating to computer music, including building a synthesizer for Central Asian throat singing that was featured on NPR. In 2018, I was fortunate to meet a professor at CCRMA, the computer music research center at Stanford University. This meeting exposed me to the powerful connection between coding and music, and I began informally attending classes at CCRMA and working increasingly with technology in music performance and research. 

At first, I decided to do a coding bootcamp and started researching my options. The price differential, as well as the difference in pedagogical styles, was huge. I calculated that I could do an American Coding Bootcamp in Silicon Valley and stay with my parents, or I could fly myself to Berlin, rent a flat, and do Le Wagon and I’d still come out ahead.
I liked that Le Wagon wasn’t focused on testing people out or breaking people down and had a more collaborative, creative environment. I also found out that a friend of a friend from Yale taught for Le Wagon in Shanghai, and she was incredibly helpful in guiding me to make the right decision.

I would say the biggest challenge is also social. During the project weeks, you work incredibly intensely in a small group environment without a firm idea of how to organize yourselves. It’s probably quite accurate as a concentrated experience of launching a startup. I honestly think this interpersonal element is an important part of the learning experience Le Wagon offers.

I graduated from Le Wagon in September 2018 and  earlier this year, I moved back to Berlin and have now gotten a freelance visa to Germany in both coding and music. I’m working on several exciting projects at the moment as a full-stack developer, from an eco-friendly housing development to a contemporary art agency, and I love that I get to make my own hours and work on multiple projects at once. I feel that I finally have a positive work/music balance.

I’ve been fortunate to work with Toni Panacek and Martin de Frutos, both of whom are Le Wagon alumni from different batches. We’ve started a freelance collective together called Co/Obst where we focus on building creatively-designed and technically-responsive products for our clients. We take both the design process and back-end development seriously and work with ideas from their inception. It’s been fun working with a dedicated team of other freelancers and to have a community because freelancing can sometimes be isolating. I’ve also enjoyed working on creative and intellectually demanding projects.

My biggest piece of advice if you want to find a job after the bootcamp would be to find and maintain a community of peers, mentors, and mentees. I can't stress this enough. It's key to be part of and to support a community.