Notes

Kathyleen Beveridge - Senior Director of Commercial Excellence

  • BA from Santa Clara U in Finance
  • MBA from USC
  • Wells Fargo (Investment banker) => HP (Cost accountant) => Qualcomm (Sr. Demand Planning Analyst) => ThermoFisher (Senior Director of Commercial Excellence)
  • “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style” - Maya Angelou
  • Mission Statements
    • HP
      • Create technology that makes life better for everyone, everywhere
    • Qualcomm
      • Inventing the tech the world loves
    • Thermo Fisher Scientific
      • Enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner, and safer
  • Similarities
    • Using tech to better the world
    • Innovation

Kris Porter - Software Engineer, SRE, DevOps, Infrastructure Engineer

  • Bachelors from UCLA in Electrical engineering
  • Master’s from Cal State Los Angeles
    • Communications systems and computer engineering
  • Conducted research at the Center for Embedded Networked Sensors
    • Networked Infomechanical systems (NIMS)
    • Intro to Linux OS, software development cycle
  • Timeline
    • Graduated - 2008
    • Systems engineer at start up (GPM) - 2010
    • Streaming Media Infrastructure (NBC Universal) - 2012
    • Intro to DevOps (Qualcomm) - 2014
    • Software engineer (Twitter) - 2021
      • Worked on GraphQL
  • Continued learning throughout his life
    • CCNA training
    • Machine learning and deep learning (Qualcomm)
    • Python (Udemy)
    • Data structures, algorithms, and systems design for interviews
    • Twitter onboarding

Reflection

From the computer science and technical business panel, I learned a few things. The first thing that I learned is that when pursuing a job in the technology field, it is not needed to have a degree in software engineering, computer science, or other computer related degrees. We can see this from Mrs. Beveridge. She pursued a degree in finance and an MBA, but was able to pursue a job in the technology sector. I also learned that there are many paths to having a job in the big tech companies. From Mr. Porter, we saw that he went from being unemployed to working at a startup, then a job where tech isn’t the product/service being sold, to working for a big tech firm. Mrs. Beveridge and Mr. Porter have encouraged me to pursue a degree in computer science ans combine it with a degree in finance, as there are many opportunities in both worlds. I love working with numbers and that is what draws me to finance; I also love programming which is what drew me to computer science. As I was applying to colleges, I was worried that I would only be able to pursue one of my passions, but listening to this panel and hearing their paths to tech jobs, I am more confident that I will be able to find a job in a tech sector regardless of my background and I will be able to use both of my passions in my job.