I get asked about my work and background frequently.  To that end, I’ll answer the most commonly asked questions here.

1. Where do you live now? Where are you from?
   • 🚤 Moved to Minnesota to be closer to my family in 2019
   • 🌾 Grew up in West Fargo, ND, yes, like the movie
   • 🌎 From 2007-2019 traveled globally, most years more than 50%
2. What do you do? What is your job?
   • 💁‍♀️ Independent Cloud Architect, Developer & Educator since 2011
     • Doing contract work for clients in the US, UK, EU, SA and AU
     • Client contracts can run as little as 1 day or as long as 1 year
   • 👩‍🎓25-50% of my time is non-billable (learning & volunteering)
     • I wrote about this -> “Learn | Build | Teach”
     • I contribute to Open Source -> on GitHub
   • 👼 In 2021 I added ‘Angel Investor’ to my resume – at Groove Capital
     • Invested in TurnSignl, Proserva, Sarcio, Quiptu & Vocxi Heath
     • Advisor for ethTrust & Socian
3. Who do you work for? Who do you work with?
   • 👩‍💻 Run my own company.  I work for my customers, rather than for any big company
   • 👩‍👧‍👦 Many people have asked to work with me, I’ve written about my process here
     • About hiring interns -> “Intern with Me”
     • About interviewing -> “Tech Anti-Interviewing”
     • About collaborating -> “Does Pair Programming Work?”
4. Do you work at AWS, Google, Linked In, etc…? How many people have watched your courses?
   • 🏆 Hold partner awards due to my public ed work- NOT employed by these companies.
     • AWS (Community Hero) ; Google (Cloud Expert) ; Microsoft (Regional Director)
   • 🗣 Am a contractor for LinkedIn Learning
     • Created 30 courses on cloud topics, viewership = 5 million+
     • Courses on LinkedIn Learning & YouTube
5. What is your educational background?
   • 🙇‍♀️ Started college at age 15 (graduated at 19) from MN State (Moorhead)
     • Have a degree in German Language/Linguistics
     • Studied in Ingolstadt, West Germany as part of my degree program
   • 📝 Am a life-long learner and learn new languages & concepts continually
     • Led an online bookclub for ‘Programming Quantum Computers’ – playlist here
     • In 2016 a good friend got cancer, in response I taught myself and…
       • I have been working with bioinformaticians…
       • building efficient, usable cloud data analysis pipelines…
       • for personalized cancer, COVID (and other disease) treatment research.
6. What advice do you have for me? I am starting a consulting business.
   • 👷‍♀️ Understand work (you get paid) vs. activity (you are doing something)
   • 💵 Ask clients to pay you market rate or better
   • ✍🏻 Work only with written contracts
   • ⏳ Start with very short feedback cycles, one week long deliverables is recommended
7. What advice do you have for me? I am a career changer.
   • 📚 Stop watching TV – use that time to learn
   • 🙇‍♀️ Work with college students on projects for non-profits
   • 📝 Work on projects you care about.  I’ve volunteered on tech projects for…
     • Global Education – MONA Foundation
     • Electronic Medical Records (EMR) – SmartCare in Lusaka, Zambia
     • Technical Education – TKP Java (open source port of Logo library to Java) for middle & high school teachers
     • Genomic Research – optimization of the VariantSpark (ultra-high dimensional data analysis) open source library – CSIRO Bioinformatics in Sydney, Australia
8. Which emerging technologies am I learning now?
   • 🧠 Ethical AI – machine learning, chatbots and more. Start here.
   • ⚛️ Quantum programming patterns and languages. Start here.
   • 📔 Cloud DataMesh – what comes after a Data Lake?… Start here.