Techtonica’s 2022 H2 cohort is ready for SWE placements!
Our largest cohort of software engineers has spent the last several months learning and building projects. Now they are ready to start working with Techtonica sponsors, including Indeed, Sony, and Cisco Meraki.
You’re welcome to check out the video of their graduation.
Read on to learn about each cohort member and the final projects they’ve built with the PERN stack and a lot of passion.
Alma (she/her/ella)
Bio: Alma is a first-generation Mexican American based in Austin, Texas, who grew up in what most would consider a digitally-divided background. She was in pursuit of an education in health care, with the intent of becoming a bridge between members of her community and health education. The pandemic placed an abrupt pause to her plans, but during quarantine, she was impressed by the tech literacy being spread to all age groups, as digital products reinvented their UI/UX accessibility. This sparked an interest in pursuing technology with an aim to help bridge these gaps for others. She’s had a lot of fun learning these new skills, and wants others to know tech skills are accessible for them too — even if they don’t fit the stereotypes of what an engineer looks like.
Project name: Commanders Keep
Project description: Commanders Keep is a card archiving app for the card game Magic The Gathering where hobbyists can browse the current MTG card archive and, upon registering, catalog their own collection.
Hardest part of building your project: The most challenging part of this project was integrating the functionality of my search bar with the expansive card library. There are thousands of cards featured in this API, including foreign language printings. I had to be very precise when writing my JavaScript logic, so that I could properly filter out any undesired search results. I feel like I grew as a developer as I learned how to implement new logic.
Favorite part of building your project: My favorite part of building this app was developing a framework and mapping out what I affectionately refer to as my project’s “data dance.” Documentation was key to keeping track of where all my data was being passed, posted, and deleted. It’s been surreal watching my project come together as I envisioned it.
Alma was placed at Sony PlayStation.
Angel (they/them)
Bio: Angel was in the field of education, working with students in a military base to prepare them to apply to a community college or the union to obtain an internship in the workforce. While they loved working with students, their interest in the tech world became possible when they found Techtonica in a LinkedIn post while looking to network with different software engineers. Their passion to learn more about the tech community motivated them to commit to Techtonica, which was a step closer to starting their tech career. Angel is excited to continue learning and motivated to contribute to different projects that are awaiting them in the future. In their free time, you can find Angel exploring restaurants.
Project name: SKILLED
Project description: This app helps Orange County students match their trade career interest to their local community college. The app provides a link to a YouTube video for a better explanation of the trade program and the list of community colleges that offer that trade.
Built with: Node, Express, PostgreSQL, React, CSS, Bootstrap
APIs used:Auth0 , ZenQuotes.io
Hardest part of building your project: The hardest part of building my project was the varied types of functionalities. I had to fully understand the different commands that needed to be implemented so I could get data from my database and API. It was a learning process and helped me understand the importance of having a growth mindset.
Favorite part of building your project: My favorite part of my project was learning new things and understanding how everything worked together. I loved seeing the results and comparing them to the first drawing of my project.
Angel was placed at Sony PlayStation.
Berlin (she/her)
Bio: Berlin worked as a bridge operator for 8 years, in Miami, Florida. While working, she was going to a community college to learn how to program. She always wanted to be in tech, but it was hard to get into after high school since she had to work right away after graduating. She has a 10 year-old daughter who is also learning how to code with her, and they enjoy building little projects together. She is passionate about creating human-centric applications and making a positive impact in the world, while also shining a light on urban/immigrant journeys to tech.
Project name: Skin Appeal
Project description: Skin Appeal is a tool to help nursing and medical students be able to identify and see how certain skin conditions/diseases look on black/brown skin to address the lack of reference photos of dermatological conditions on skin of color.
APIs used: Auth0 , Merriam-Webster
Hardest part of building your project: Implementing the dictionary API and creating a single page navigating system were the hardest. Instead of navigating to another page when the client clicked on the link, it would jump to another part of the page. By Googling and asking for help, I was able to accomplish the goal.
Favorite part of building your project: My favorite parts were building the landing page from scratch and creating my database for the reference pictures and the book resources. I realized I enjoy building databases and creating the CRUD functionality to render information to the frontend. My daughter thinks I’m in the Matrix mode when she sees me building the server side with my terminal on the side inserting information into my database table.
Berlin was placed at Sony PlayStation.
Diana (she/her)
Bio: Diana was born in Los Angeles, California, to a Hispanic household of four. Growing up, she loved playing video games and getting to read books. Entering high school, she was determined to become a doctor and went to UCLA as a pre-med student. However, in her time as a university student, she realized she had a greater passion for coding, which she found through a video game development club. Now, she enjoys learning how to create games and explore different game engineering.
Project name: Anime Tracker
Project description: Anime Tracker allows anime fanatics to search for and track the anime they’re watching or have completed.
Hardest part of building your project: There were two great difficulties: the first was saving data from my API into my database. My last difficulty was creating comment sections for anime pages that targeted the anime ID and user ID.
Favorite part of building your project: I loved building the view when users see more information about the anime with comments and the visual trailer.
Diana was placed at Cisco Meraki.
Harneet (she/her)
Bio: Harneet was born and raised in a low-income family in India and grew up with limited opportunities. Her last job in accounting involved supporting a tech startup, and her time there introduced her to the possibilities in tech and inspired her to learn more. Having a chance to learn to code by herself during the pandemic, it was evident to her that this was where her true passion lies. Being a part of Techtonica gave her a chance to make this a reality. She is excited to move forward on this path and inspire others.
Project name: The Great Outdoors
Project description: The Great Outdoors is a responsive web app that allows nature lovers and adventure seekers to explore and save national parks.
Built with: React, Express, Node, PostgreSQL, JavaScript, CSS, HTML
APIs used: National Park Service, Auth0
Hardest part of building your project: Planning out the user flow, structuring pages, and designing were the most challenging as I wanted to cater to the needs of the users and the devices they’re using.
Favorite part of building your project: My favorite part was manipulating and extracting the relevant data from the heavily-nested form that fetched from the NPS’s API. It provided me with great opportunities to get my hands on different data structures in JavaScript. Also, designing react components that are reusable was both challenging and fun.
Harneet was placed at Cisco Meraki.
Janice (she/her)
Bio: Janice was born in Melrose Park, Illinois and raised in Buena Park, California. She graduated from UCLA with a degree in English, published research on game aesthetics at Columbia University, and has harbored a love for poetry and spoken word her whole life. She finds that the creativity she uses to write poetry is not so different from the creativity she uses to write code. Janice deeply believes in the impact of tech and wants to be a part of building and leading thoughtful, groundbreaking, and inclusive projects.
Project name: Vote Ready LA
Project description: Vote Ready is a web app that provides accessible information about current candidates and referendums on the ballot in Los Angeles in a simple, save-able format.
Built with: Node, Express, PostgreSQL, React, CSS, HTML, i18next
APIs used: Auth0, Google Civic Information API
Hardest part of building your project: The most difficult aspect of this project was deployment and ensuring that my project was fully transferred and accessible to the public. This process revealed gaps in my knowledge and new bugs in my code, but it motivated me to think critically and creatively to close these gaps efficiently to make each new deployment count.
Favorite part of building your project: My favorite part about this project was seeing my vision flourish into something better than I imagined. This project took me through a journey of process, teaching me more about setting realistic goals with deadlines and the amount of learning I should be prepared for. I feel more well-equipped to take on larger-scale projects in the future.
Janice was placed at Sony PlayStation.
Joslyn (she/her)
Bio: Joslyn was born and raised in Los Angeles, California by a single mother of two. Her family is from Honduras and Mexico and both her parents immigrated to the United States in order to provide a better life for themselves and future generations. Joslyn moved to Sacramento in 2012 and attended UC Davis where she received a degree in human development and Chicano studies, with a minor in education. She is passionate about helping her community and hopes to make an impact through the use of technology.
Project name: TERA
Project description: TERA is a mental health resources app that educates users about mental health topics while providing support through journaling and motivational quotes.
APIs used: Auth0, YouTube Data, Motivational Quotes API
Hardest part of building your project: The hardest part about building my project was saving data from the API and rendering YouTube videos according to the specific user profile. I am extremely thankful for all the help and guidance I received throughout this process.
Favorite part of building your project: My favorite part of building my project was planning the frontend and being able to implement what I’ve learned to build my vision.
Joslyn was placed at Sony PlayStation.
Kimberly (she/her)
Bio: Kimberly was born and raised in San Diego, CA. She earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in public health before realizing her goals resonated more with tech than healthcare. While learning to code after her day job, she saw how the career allowed her to be creative, become a lifelong learner, and help a greater number of people. Kimberly was interested in Techtonica because they were breaking down barriers to get into tech and were able to help people who looked like her by providing all the right resources. She is excited about her tech career and hopes she can bring all the projects she dreamed of to life.
Project name: Kimberly’s Kollection Store
Project description: Kimberly’s Kollection Store is an e-commerce store app where you can shop for clothing, sort items by price and rating, and purchase items.
APIs used: Fake Store API , Auth0
Hardest part of building your project: Getting the necessary user info from Auth0 to my database and deploying.
Favorite part of building your project: Building a shopping app, creating my database, implementing my CSS styling, and making a purchasing feature.
Kimberly was placed at Sony PlayStation.
Linda (she/her)
Bio: Linda is a first-generation Chinese American born and raised in Los Angeles, California. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in Computational Neuroscience and minoring in Asian Languages at YCKA, Linda realized that she enjoyed and admired the creativity and flexibility of software engineering more because tech encourages her to innovate, collaborate, and take initiative. She believes that a career in software engineering is one of the best environments to grow and challenge yourself, especially as a woman and a person of color. Linda hopes to be able to learn how to be a better worker and leader and increase the ease of access to the tech industry.
Project name: ManGaRage
Project description: ManGaRage (manga + rage or manga garage) is an application for manga readers to test their knowledge, track their progress using a scratchable poster with 48 mangas, and search for, add, and comment on anime.
APIs used: Auth0, MangaDex, AnimePlanet
Hardest part of building your project: The hardest part of building my project was definitely learning how to deploy properly. While everything worked perfectly in the development stage, bugs started showing up once it got to the point where I had to deploy my full-stack project. I am ultimately thankful for the cracks that showed because fixing them honed my debugging skills and my ability to think outside the box for alternative solutions.
Favorite part of building your project: My favorite part of building my project was using the RoughJS package to “sketch” out the user landing page and make it interactive. It was extremely fun to essentially create my home page from scratch and specify the locations of each line and shape with detailed pixel coordinates. I was able to make the landing page look like a garage with each feature as a piece of decor in the room.
Linda was placed at Cisco Meraki.
Melissa (she/her)
Bio: Melissa’s passion for software engineering stems from her love for styling HTML pages in her teen years, as well as her lifelong interests in playing computer games and learning. After working to become a nurse to fulfill her parents’ dreams, Melissa started over to pursue her dream of working in tech. While working in trust & safety at Yelp, she became inspired by software engineering colleagues who assisted her in solving user problems through the power of code. Since entering the Techtonica program, her enthusiasm for the field of software engineering has only grown. In the future, she hopes to continue to pay it forward as a mentor to inspire and encourage other underrepresented folks to pursue software engineering as a career.
Project name: priorityHealth
Project description: priorityHealth (pH) is an app where users with special dietary needs can track and view nutritional info for foods categorized by their tolerance levels, log their wellness journeys, and add recipes to different collections.
APIs used: Auth0, Edamam’s Food Database API, Edamam’s Nutrition Analysis API
Hardest part of building your project: One of the most challenging parts about building this project was scraping ingredients lists from user-input recipes. I needed to parse ingredients lists in two different ways for: (1) displaying them in a user-friendly way in a clean-looking list, and (2) for sending requests to Edamam’s API in the correct format in order to receive nutrition info for the user to view after submitting the recipe. This was especially difficult because most ingredients lists from different recipe websites do not follow a standard format.
Favorite part of building your project: I really enjoyed building the wellness log. On the home page, users can easily log their latest meal, note how it affected them, and pick an emoji that represents how they feel. The entries then get added to the log as uniform cards with background colors that symbolize their health status update. I really enjoyed getting it to look better than I imagined.
Melissa was placed at Sony PlayStation.
Mia (she/her)
Bio: Mia grew up with a love for neuroscience and physics. After high school, she dedicated her time to pursuing the dream of becoming an engineer. She found that she could accomplish this dream through developing technology, with an aim to help those with similar backgrounds. Because of Techtonica, Mia is now on her way to becoming an engineer and developing technology to impact the world.
Project name: Pringle Mingle
Project description: Pringle Mingle is a web application that streamlines creating unique combinations so people can meet as many new people as possible during online events (the inspiration came from Techtonica’s need to introduce volunteers and participants).
Built with: Node, Express, PostgreSQL, JavaScript, React, CSS, Bootstrap
APIs used: Auth0, Clipboard API, EmailJS
Hardest part of building your project: Creating a sorting algorithm that uses an adjacency matrix to keep track of all individuals that have met with each other, while putting them in groups with those whom they’ve met the least.
Favorite part of building your project: The abundance of back-end knowledge learned while developing this web application.
Presh (she/they)
Bio: Presh was born and raised in Delaware to a single parent household. After college, she worked in the hospitality industry happily for over a decade. She loved being of service to others and enjoyed the perks of not working a regular 9–5, but something was missing. With the quest to find a career that was mentally challenging but still of service to others, she landed on learning how to program. Her goal is to continue to be of service by helping others in her community through tech.
Project name: Youtify
Project description: Youtify is a web app where music lovers can see a summary of their activity on Spotify.
Built with: Node, Express, PostgreSQL, oAuth, React, CSS, Bootstrap
APIs used: Spotify Web API, Auth0
Hardest part of building your project: The hardest part of building this project was figuring out how to use the Authorization Flow with the Spotify API to connect to both the client and server side.
Favorite part of building your project: My favorite part of building this project was learning how to use an API of an app that I use almost daily. It was really cool to be able to get a glimpse of the inner workings of technology I love.
Presh was placed at Sony PlayStation.
Ruthie (they/them)
Bio: Ruthie spent ten years bouncing around between English degrees and tech support roles before starting their first year teaching in 2019 (just in time for a world-wide pandemic). They stepped away from the profession after that year to stay home with two young children, and decided to transition into software engineering a few weeks before the deadline for Techtonica. A friend mentioned that the program welcomed gender-expansive, disabled, and neurodivergent talent to apply, and after attending every single study group hosted by the organization over those few weeks, and holding personal study sessions as well, they landed a spot in the second cohort of 2022. They love spiritual practices, dancing, leisure time with family, and exchanging acquired knowledge and understanding with others.
Project name: I Affirm Me
Project description: I Affirm Me supports users with meaningful affirmations.
APIs used: Auth0 , Affirmations API
Hardest part of building your project: Planning, implementing every aspect of the full stack while learning how to use Auth0, and deploying.
Favorite part of building your project: No matter how complicated an aspect of the project seemed when I worked in isolation, an encouraging someone else knew just where to look for the answer. The mentor hours I spent intricately piecing together a simple yet complicated passion project with different professionals, each sharing their strengths and enthusiasm, made me feel secure and at home in this new profession.
Ruthie was placed as a Technical Assistant at Techtonica.
Sophia (she/her)
Bio: A Minneapolis native who now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, Sophia has always been fascinated by understanding how systems work at a fundamental level. What inspires her to code is that everything we see online can be broken down into little pieces and there is always a solution, you just need to think creatively or gain a better understanding of what you’re working on. She’s passionate about enriching the communities that she’s a part of using technology, and helping give passionate people skills that they might not have due to their background. When she’s not coding, learning about nanotechnology or bioengineering, or outside biking or skiing, she will often be found reading a book or cooking a delicious meal.
Project name: Falcon Framework
Project description: Falcon Framework inspires users by visualizing the paths people took in life to end up where they are now.
APIs used: Auth0, Resume Parser, Google Images API
Hardest part of building your project: I had trouble figuring out the data flow from the user input of the resume, to using the resume parser API to break it down into JSON, then extracting the pieces of data I needed from the JSON to send to the nodes. I then called the image API, and sent the data to the database and then fetched the data to render it in the nodes.
Favorite part of building your project: I really enjoyed working with my mentor and reaching out for support at various points in the project. I learned that working in a team is often better than working alone as there are valuable ideas and suggestions that others had that vastly improved my project.
Supriya (she/her)
Bio: Supriya has a master’s in Botany and loved collaborating as a teacher in India. After moving to Seattle, she decided to change her career to technology because of the flexibility and continuous learning tech jobs provide. Through Techtonica, she worked with diverse groups and contributed to the open-source curriculum. Now she is excited to start her new journey in an industry where she can grow, share her thoughts, and learn from others.
Project name: Guruprasad Restaurant menu app
Project description: The Guruprasad restaurant menu app allows restaurants to increase sales by offering online orders.
APIs used: Auth0 , Google Places API, and TheMealDB
Hardest part of building your project: The hardest part of my project was implementing authentication (using Auth0) with React.js and Node.js. I wanted my app to allow editing menus by the admins and have a workflow where only the admin could add new users. It took me a while to figure out how to validate JWT tokens in NodeJS and how to restrict users from signing up. I found it challenging to handle routing to the client side.
Favorite part of building your project: My favorite part was deploying my project with render.com. With each step I felt like my app came to life. I am excited to share my work with family and friends.
Supriya was placed at Sony PlayStation.
Xochitl (she/her)
Bio: Xochitl was born in Los Angeles to immigrant parents and was the first in her close and extended family to graduate from college. She loves to travel and has studied abroad in Spain and India, and traveled post-college to locations in Europe, Mexico, and Costa Rica. Her career has been in local government and public transportation, allowing her to see how programs are implemented for the community. She is interested in the tech field because there are endless possibilities to facilitate technology to address community concerns.
Project name: CycleRoute
Project description: CycleRoute is a website for cycle enthusiasts who would like to find the most direct cycling route.
Built with: Node, Express, PostgreSQL, React, CSS
APIs used: CityBikes, Google Maps Platform (Maps, Places, Directions)
Hardest part of building your project: The most difficult part of this project was using the Google APIs as documentation was not readily available for React. It required a lot of trial and error to get the API working in the manner I envisioned.
Favorite part of building your project: I enjoyed seeing each completed component, it was a visual representation of all the work that went into this project and this program.
Xochitl was placed at Sony PlayStation.
Yolisma (she/her)
Bio: Yolisma is a first generation Latina, born and raised in California. Coming from a low-income background, she was the translator and the one who guided her parents through everything, while being the older sibling and trying to figure out life on her own. Besides the financial hardships, high expectations, and obstacles she faced, Yolisma continued with her education and received her AA degree in Medical Office Administration. However, she quickly realized the medical field was not for her and knew she wanted to get more involved in tech and be able to grow within the industry.
Project name: Java Sweet Cafe
Project description:Java Sweet Cafe is a space for coffee lovers to learn how to make hot and cold coffee drinks at home.
APIs used: Auth0 , Hot Coffee API, Ice Coffee API
Hardest part of building your project: One of the hardest parts of building this project was learning to create branches for specific sections of my code, and trying to keep both my local and GitHub code updated.
Favorite part of building your project: My absolute favorite part is actually getting a component working. It’s those little “it worked!” moments that give one a sense of accomplishment. And of course, working on CSS to make my project more presentable.
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