Originally reading Philosophy BA, Human Rights MA, and later Law; I took a career break when my children were born. I was a stay at home mum for 4 years, volunteering 1 day per week at my local law centre, originally with the intention of training as a barrister. During this time, however, I started to reassess my career plans.
Attracted by the flexibility of a digital career, and realising that a lot of my skills were transferable, I contacted a number of individuals in Tech via twitter. I sought out opportunities to learn more about programming, turning to organisations such as codebar.io for support. I then enrolled onto a Makers Academy coding bootcamp and upon graduation I joined comparethemarket.com, one of few tech companies willing to hire Software Engineers part-time.
Having taken an unconventional path into tech, I felt compelled to support others and make tech as accessible as possible. Acting as D&I Ambassador for our Peterborough office, I have raised awareness of the importance of using gender neutral adverts, and spearheaded the creation of local code clubs and a codebar.io Peterborough chapter.
Keen to celebrate the contributions of women in Tech, I organised an Offsite to facilitate discussions and workshops around the challenges faced by women and provide a platform for cross-site networking, coaching and mentoring opportunities.
I have given talks on topics such as effective pairing with Junior Engineers; driven initiatives to better support those starting out in tech, including those on our Tech Graduate scheme; and, with a view to resolving conflict over pair programming, devised a solution which I then developed into a Tech Talk, which I recently delivered at the DDDEA 2018 conference. I have subsequently been asked to join the conference committee in order to help them drive representation and diversity.