When I left high school, I had two paths in mind: MLB or medical school. I had played baseball my entire life, and I was raised in a family that was deeply ingrained in healthcare, so those seemed like my natural path forward.
In my first semester, I had knee surgery due to a genetic condition and failed my first biology class. After moving back home, I realized that both paths had vanished. I enrolled in some general community college classes and took a job at an optometry office, but the question remained: What is my path now?
I knew I still wanted to make an impact in the medical field, but I wasn’t sure how. One night, my stepdad sent me a Reddit post from a developer named Leon Noel sharing the start of a web development bootcamp. Without a clear path to follow, I decided to take a chance.
I started my self-taught web development journey in January 2022. I joined the 100Devs community, recreated websites in my free time, and even spent my lunches at the optometry office experimenting with code. As I started to get my head wrapped around the frontend, I started to make an effort to put my name out in the space; applying to roles, connecting with experienced devs for coffee chats, and staying active in the community. Only 5 months after the start of my tech journey, I received an offer for my first role in tech at an agency supporting medical professionals with their branding and marketing.
I started in an entry-level support role and quickly realized that this role expanded my skill set significantly. Along with frontend development, I was introduced to design: palette choices, typography, design systems, and more. Within my first three months, I was promoted to the full developer role, along with leading development efforts for enterprise-level clients such as MINT Dentistry, USMD, GI Alliance, and more.
This experience gave me a new and unique mindset when it came to creating applications. I started overlaying design and frontend development to create better experiences on the web, while also expanding to explore backend architecture on my own; from APIs, to DevOps, to data and databases, and much more. At that same time, my college classes started to take a focus on cybersecurity, giving me a broader perspective on how systems should be built and protected. Through this layering, I gained a holistic mindset to development; not just isolated features, but considering the entire ecosystem of an application.
Soon, I got an opportunity to use this new mindset in a full-stack position, building applications that help doctors through the arbitration process. Early on, I was able to improve workflows and automate processes, helping the team reduce manual work by over 30%. Alongside my work, I’ve become more active in the developer community: sharing my experiences, mentoring junior developers, and speaking at conferences about web performance, efficiency, and best practices.
From healthcare to healthtech, my journey spans design, frontend, backend, security, and performance. Each new challenge is an opportunity to approach development holistically, understanding the full ecosystem, optimizing experiences, and building meaningful tools for the people who are using them.
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