After many years as a software engineer, including 6 years at Amazon, I decided to take a career break. I have since been volunteering in housing nonprofits, am actively involved with my local elementary school, and have a part time job teaching curling.

Volunteering (Housing & Sustainability)

Between 2022 – 2025, I was a volunteer building tiny homes – temporary and permanent – for people who are experiencing homelessness. It’s been really meaningful and concrete after many years building virtual things in software. I volunteered at two Seattle based housing nonprofits:

• Sound Foundations NW which focuses on building temporary tiny homes for people who are experiencing homelessness, helping to transition over 1000+ people into permanent housing every year. Read about my experiences as a Team Lead for Sound Foundations, and modeling the tiny homes in Sketch Up to create new manuals with 3D images for the tilt up process.
• Facing Homelessness’ BLOCK Project which focuses on building permanent, sustainable accessory dwelling units (ADUs) installed in the backyards of volunteer homeowners to house someone needing a permanent home. (Sadly, Facing Homelessness’ board closed its programs in April 2024.) Read about my experiences as a Super Volunteer for the BLOCK Project.

Public Speaking & Events (Software Engineering)

• GOTO Chicago (May 2017) – two sessions
  Video Transcoding at Scale with Microservices, 45 mins
  ArrestedDevops live podcast, Go Small or Go Home 45 mins
• Hanselminutes Podcast with Scott Hanselman (September 2016)
  Becoming a more Social Developer (30 mins)
• NDC Sydney (August 2016)
  Watch: Video Transcoding at Scale for ABC iview, 60 mins
  Read: my report from NDC Sydney
• CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap (June 2016)
  Open discussion panelist, at Telstra
• YOW! West (May 2016)
  The ABC’s new Video Transcoding Service for iview, 30 mins
• YOW! Nights in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney (April/May 2016)
  The ABC’s new Video Transcoding Service for iview, 60 mins
• ABC Tech talk night (March 2016)
  Introducing Metro: The ABC’s new Video Transcoding Service for iview, 60 mins
• Girl Geek Sydney (August 2013)
  Responsive Web Design

Tutorial and Study Groups (Software Engineering)

• Organiser for over a dozen workshops for Women Who Code Sydney. I also ran a few of my own:
  • Running a ‘Women Who Code’ Workshop (January 2016)
  • Technical Interviews (Decemeber 2015)
  • Tutorial on the Web Audio API (July 2014)
• Organiser of Data Structures & Algorithms, a 6 week study group to cover algorithm fundamentals (January – March 2015)
• Participant at Code Sydney, a 17 week study group learning JavaScript (July – October 2014)

Community Involvement (Software Engineering)

• I was an organiser for Women Who Code Sydney (2014 – 2016), a monthly user group for technical women, with hands-on coding sessions in different languages and technologies such as Arduino, Javascript, Golang, d3, Rx and AWS technologies. We also ran professional development events such as interview practice, presentation skills, and negotiation. I wrote a post about running the user group.
• I like attending various tech groups and events, too 🙂

Hackathons / Startup Weekends Involvement (Software Engineering)

• GovHack (2015) – ABC data mentor as well as coordinating datasets, sponsorship and ABC event participation
• Organising the ABC’s first Digital Network Hackathon (2015)
• SheHacks (2014) at Google in Sydney (we won!)
• Startup Weekend Education (2014)
• GovHack (2014) – a transport visualiser – we won third prize in Best Use Of NSW Data category!
• Tweets on a Map at Mi9 (2013) – winner of best use of data

In 2014 I tried a startup project, and learned a bunch of things

• Lessons on starting up
• Startup team composition – the Hipster, Hacker and Hustler
• And a retrospective on why this project wasn’t for me

Random projects I’ve done include:

• Mapping Sydney train data to show you the fastest commute to the city
• Creating a music matrix with the Web Audio API
• Angry Birds in CSS

I love traveling, and have spent 18 months in various parts of Europe, Asia, North and South America. I’ve lived long term in London for 6 years and Seattle for 10 years, after growing up in Australia.

My baking endeavors have included Australia’s Biggest Cherry Ripe and other treats. There is always time for cake.

If you’d like to get in contact, you can reach me via LinkedIn.