What’s your role at Zego and where do you sit within the organisation?
I am a software engineer in our B2C vertical.
What did you do before you worked at Zego and where do you see yourself in 5 years’ time?
I started out as a ballet dancer for the New York City Ballet before going to college for an economics degree. After I finished school, I worked for two years at Goldman Sachs in business strategy.
Realising that I enjoyed problem-solving, I enrolled in a coding boot camp, after leaving the world of finance. I worked as a frontend developer for a year before moving to London and joining Zego.
In five years, I hope to have continued building my technical skills and moved into more of a leadership role. I enjoy being given a challenge and working together with others to achieve our goal.
What do you love about your job?
I love the people! At Zego, you have the opportunity to pick up a ticket or a project and truly run with it.
In my first job in tech, I worked on a frontend team where you only saw the portion of code that you were responsible for. At Zego, you’re able to find tasks that might be outside your comfort zone. Yet being surrounded by a team of people, who you know you can reach out to and together problem solve and come to a solution.
Who have you learnt the most from at Zego so far? What have you learnt from them?
The culture at Zego is one of teamwork, creativity and inviting questions. These qualities have pushed me and given me the support to continue building my skills both professionally and technically.
What advice would you give to a Zegon on their first day?
Don’t be afraid to ask questions. No question is stupid. It allows you to dive quickly into the company and get to know different people.
How would your 10-year-old self react to what you do now?
I think I would have laughed, and thought there had been some kind of mistake!
At 10, I was focused solely on ballet. The idea of a different career and exclusively dedicating myself to my education had never crossed my mind.
What advice would you give to your younger self?
When I left ballet, I saw my decision as black and white - either I continued to dance professionally or I would go to school and into a career in a completely different industry.
My advice would be that you can find opportunities that marry different pieces of what you are looking for. In my case, it was including ballet as a side hobby to whatever I was doing, or working on a frontend team, which requires both individual technical work and working with others within engineering and broader stakeholders.
Tell us about your typical working day…
I usually log on around 9am and do a combination of looking at code reviews and catching-up on Slack and emails. Our morning stand-up is at 10:15am where we talk through what we’re working on and if we have any blockers.
After stand-up, I dive into whatever I’m currently working on and tend to focus on that for the majority of the day. This is usually broken up by team meetings such as planning, retrospectives, or broader engineering and company meetings. For the most part, though, it’s just me and the code, which I love.
If you could entice one (famous?) person, alive or dead, to work at Zego, who would it be and why?
This might not be as relevant for specifically Zego, but I would have loved to work with George Balanchine, one of the co-founders, and first artistic director of New York City Ballet. He choreographed many of my favourite ballets that are still performed today at New York City Ballet. It would be a dream to have worked with him as he created some of these masterpieces.
If you had unlimited money to start your own business, what would it be?
When I was in college, I loved to tutor. While I haven’t had a chance to do this as much recently, I would love to start a business for tutoring students and work towards levelling out the opportunity for educational success.
What’s your favourite way to spend a day off?
Taking a ballet class and then curling up and getting into a good book.
Where’s the next place on your travel bucket list and why?
Not too specific on the place, but a hike! I went on my first multi-day hike last summer and loved it. I would love to do another one soon.
What was the last thing you read?
The Tenth Song by Naomi Ragen.
If you had to choose a song to personify you, what would it be?
I love to listen to music without lyrics while I code. I find myself frequently listening to the band The Piano Guys who typically take current pop songs and play them on the piano. One of my favourite songs is All of Me. It leaves me feeling happy and free.