Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do? After being raised in Saginaw, MI, I graduated from the prestigious Tuskegee University with a BS in Computer Science. I came to the DC area right after college after landing a Government contracting gig. I did a lot of soul-searching those first few years of my career after I realized Government work wasn’t for me. I eventually broke into the startup world which is much more my cup of tea (I like my tattoos and jeans). After some time, a
I sat down with Dara Elass only expecting to discuss life as a Data Engineer at Spotify. As I went on to uncover the amazing person that she is and more about her life journey, I knew that this discussion would go more in-depth than work and her life in tech. We thank you, Dara, for being so brave and welcoming to POCIT and for understanding how important it is to share your story with the communities and individuals you may reach. Tell us about your journey into tech. I
I am a 22-year-old woman in tech currently working as a Junior Data Engineer. Two months ago, I worked in a customer service role, and I was very fortunate to be offered this role as a secondment. I am now almost halfway through my secondment, working with a great team of people. I am learning about programming in Python and SQL and solving problems within Big Data. My life was completely different three months ago, and I am here to share my story with you. My background Just three months
How did you get involved in technology? When I was thirteen years old I was extremely obsessed with documentary films. I ended up watching a documentary about the history of computers. Everything from the first computers in the 40s/50s, to Microsoft and then the internet as it is today. I was like ‘this is so cool I’d like to learn about all this stuff’. So, I just self-taught myself programming from high school, and my interests were in artificial intelligence and machine learning. So, I come in from a sort
Silly question to start off with, but what exactly is a data journalist and how does that differ from a normal journalist? I think that’s a really good question, as I hate it when people take things for granted. A data journalist is one who uses data as much as they possibly can in their work–which I know sounds really really silly, but it means I can write on any subject whatsoever; the only criterion is that data has to be available.Some of the pieces we write are about how
