Hi, my name is Kayla. I am a front-end app developer with a background in videogame design. Here is my story.
Art has always been my greatest inspiration; videogames my avocation. I decided to combine the two together in university and earned a BFA in Computer Game Design from George Mason University with an emphasis on 3D modeling. I then set off to travel to the Far East in pursuit of discovering a new world beyond the digital realm. I spent two years living in Tokyo, Japan to teach English via the JET Program and lose myself in this mecca of technology. After returning to the USA, my interests shifted from design to web app development. A newfound love of coding was born after I randomly decided to buy a JavaScript textbook off of Amazon one day. It started off as a challenge to myself to see if I could not only design interactive media, but code it as well. I quickly became engrossed and spent the next two years teaching myself anything and everything to do with web development with online resources, such as Treehouse and Udemy, until I landed my first real developer job.
Since then, I’ve spent 2.5 years working in the industry at 3 different jobs, where I am currently employed at Blue Raster as a React app developer. During that time, I have completed Udacity’s Mobile Web Specialist Nanodegree thanks to the Grow with Google Developer Scholarship Program I was selected as a recipient for. Moreover, I was invited by Google in Washington, DC to celebrate International Women’s Day with them for 2019 (Picture of me at the event shown above!)
Besides studying and learning new technologies and skillsets, I like to go beyond the computer screen and attend developer conferences in person for inspiration. I have applied and received two scholarships so far to do just that. In 2018, I was selected by JSConf as an Opportunity Scholarship recipient to attend their JSConf USA in Carlsbad, CA for free. I was also selected in 2019 as a Diversity & Inclusion Scholarship recipient by O’Reilly Media to attend the first-ever Tensorflow World, a conference dedicated to Google’s Tensorflow machine learning language, in Santa Clara, CA.
My current interests at the moment are machine learning (Tensorflow.js) and 3D graphics in the browser (three.js). I have also recently gotten into open-source projects on GitHub thanks to Hacktoberfest (Yes, I did earn the shirt for 2019!) and am looking to continue to stay involved.
I am available to discuss new work opportunities or collaborate on a project, whether that be code or design-related, so feel free to get in contact about anything you think I can help you with! My story is ever-evolving, so come be a part of it!
