About Lisa

In the summer of 2016, I swam around Key West Island, a 12.5-mile swim that took me 8 hours and 15 minutes to complete. You may think this has nothing to do with my ability to fill the position of Full Stack Software Engineer at your company, but this accomplishment actually says quite a lot about that. The first is that I’m the kind of person who achieves the goals I set for myself. While perhaps my parents were prone to call it something closer to “unbridled stubbornness” growing up, what I call determination is a defining characteristic of who I am. I am not an athlete. I didn’t grow up doing team sports. I was never on a swim team and never had a coach for any sort of athletic endeavor. But I decided I wanted to do something, and I don’t give up on the things that I want. That year it was swimming around an island. So into the brutal winds and chop of an approaching tropical storm, just 6 months after major elbow surgery, with perhaps the worst self-taught swimming form any person could have, I made my attempt. And the spirit of determination that has defined my entire life brought me to the finish line.

But there’s more to this story. I need you to know it wasn’t just sheer willpower that fueled me through that swim. My success was also because of another important personal value: responsibility and preparedness. I am not the kind of person to bite off more than I can chew and accomplish my goals blindly by brute force no matter the cost to myself or others. Not only will I accomplish the goals I set for myself, I will do so by putting in the work necessary to get there the right way. When it came to Key West, I showed up, faithfully, for my long swims each weekend at my local YMCA pool. I’d line the wall of my lane with six or seven water bottles, a handful of energy gels and protein bars, and spend my Saturday morning swimming back and forth, staring at the bottom of the pool for hours on end. I wasn’t willing to injure myself or cause needless risk to first responders on race day in order to reach my goal. But I was willing to put in the long, arduous hours necessary to build the fitness I needed and train for my swim. I know I am relatively new to the world of tech,, but I also know that when I choose to pursue a path, I can and will do what it takes to arrive at my goal. My attitude of determination and my commitment to preparedness will follow me into any software engineering job I have, and you won’t regret taking a chance on me. I’m experienced in full stack development (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and React on the front end and Node, Express, Ruby on Rails on the backend), and the things you need me to know that I don’t yet, I will learn.

What else should you know about me? I spent 11 years as a weekly volunteer reading friend at a neighborhood elementary school, while also spending one weekend a month volunteering as an on-call hospital advocate for survivors of sexual assault in the ER. I’ve taught ACT boot camps to a gym-full of 200 kids in America and basic computer skills and music to survivors of human trafficking in Greece. I got paid to go to college and have never made a B in my life. I’ve been published in over 15 textbooks. I’ve paraglided in the French Alps and gone spelunking in Mammoth Cave, the world's longest known cave system, because I’m committed to making the most out of every opportunity that comes my way. My first love is foreign language but as a long-time math tutor I plan to be a part of the last generation of girls stifled in their careers because they were raised to believe math and STEM were only for boys. I’m surprisingly risk averse for someone who’s had close encounters with sting rays, manta rays, monk seals, dolphins, turtles, sharks, and alligators but strive to push myself out of my comfort zone and grow every day. I humbly ask you to take a chance on me and let me prove to you that I have what it takes. I am a fast learner, a dedicated worker, a collaborative and creative teammate, and I want to work for your company. And when there’s something I want, I go after it.