Tech Leader Spotlight: Jessica Goulding
Jessica Goulding is a marketer turned developer who currently does software development downtown at ParkiFi. Code Talent was lucky enough to sit down over a Thai lunch with Jessica this past week, and discuss her involvement in the tech industry and the new conference she co-organized that took place on Friday, June 24, Dinosaur JS.
What is your involvement in the tech community?
I’m currently a software developer at ParkiFi on a team with eight other developers. I am an organizer for Go Code Colorado and Dinosaur JS. I also just love going to other meetups and being a part of this awesome community.
How did you get into tech/development?
I was in marketing for a while and I felt like sometimes what I was doing just wasn’t enough. I wanted to do more analytics and interpreting data. So I started getting more and more into e-commerce, SEO and pay-per-click. I liked that I could create a story from data.
Then I started working in Boulder, because I thought I should be around more startups to move into a technical marketing role, or something of that nature.
And in Boulder, I ended up meeting with a software developer, and he suggested I check out Rails. I was reluctant at first. I didn’t think coding was something I could get into unless I had been doing it my whole life.
But he pushed me to check it out, so I did. I found the tutorial on Rails really appealing, I liked that it allowed you to optimize processes, and turn something that used to be 10 hours of work into just two minutes. That really started my journey. I started doing freelance stuff, I got an internship, and I was building Wordpress sites. But I still didn’t feel like I was quite where I wanted to be as far as my skill level went.
Towards the end of my internship, I met Jeff, who runs Turing. At the time, he was just getting it started. I thought it was a big commitment, the time, money and everything he was asking for. I would have to quit my job and pay how much for a seven month program? But I took the leap of faith and ended up being in the first class at Turing…
Read the full interview HERE on the Code Talent blog!
