Katrina Huber-Juma

I’ve always loved creating. I realize now that everything I’ve created has been helping me to discover myself as an engineer.

I started my career after college as a self-taught graphic designer for a tech startup. One thing this taught me was to never keep my work secret out of fear of embarrassment. I learned to share earlier versions of my designs, testing them against the client’s wishes. Later, I would recognize this collaborative and iterative approach in discussions of software development.

Eventually, I decided to transition into web design. I was surprised to discover that I was consistently more interested in development than design. I began diving deeper into JavaScript. I found it extremely pleasing to create websites that “do stuff.” But ultimately, I was not satisfied because the user experience felt so ephemeral. I wanted to make something that would persist changes.

And then I decided to go all in and attend Hackbright Academy to learn full stack. Working on my solo project, I finally started to feel that I was on the right track. I got a lot of joy from imagining users navigating through my application, making use of it and returning to it.

I can, at last, make things that feel meaningful to me. I am eager to find a job that will put my skills to use and that will give me a chance to pick up new skills as needed. In the meantime, I will never stop creating.