"I've always been interested in math and science; they provide the structure or framework for how things in the world around us work. I'm a curious person and have been told I ask a lot of questions. I've also been told that I'm extremely extroverted. I love to meet people and talk to them.

I was born when computers were unobtainable for individuals and I grew up benefitting from the changes in American education that followed the Soviet launch of Sputnik. Entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs reshaped the world I was growing up in, much like pioneers in data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning are today. At times I think I was just blessed to have been born when I was, with an interest and an aptitude for things technology-related.

I had an opportunity to attend college and chose computer science as a field of study. I was working full-time in the evenings, while attending classes during the day. My first job was as a technician on a mainframe computer, supporting scientists who used satellite images in their work. As mind-blowing as that was for me at the time, I took a break to focus on my classes and ended up teaching logic and introduction to computer programming the next summer at a camp for teens. That experience changed my life as I returned to school in the fall and switched my major to education.

Years later I was teaching 1st grade and the school I worked for purchased a class-set of personal computers creating a computer lab. Ten years later, I was hired as the very first Executive Director of Technology at the district I'd graduated from years before. Now, nearly 40 years after I started teaching, I'm still learning new things almost every day, working with technology to help people learn and do more, hoping to make their lives better."