Background | Projects | Skills | Experience | Education | Interests

I am an ambitious and energetic student at Makers Academy, Europe's leading coding bootcamp. After 7 years in publishing, I have decided to build upon my strong logical, analytical and creative skills by learning to code and starting a new career as a developer.

I would like to work at a company that encourages me to continue learning and keep pushing myself to become a better developer, while providing an opportunity to do meaningful work in an environment that reflects the coding practices espoused by Makers Academy.

I believe firmly in the importance of clean, well-tested code. I endeavour to ensure that my code is DRY and adheres to good design principles, so as to write code that others can understand and that is easy to change. I use TDD to decrease the likelihood of introducing bugs, make my code easier to refactor, and provide confidence and focus to my development process.

I'm at my best when working in a team or with a pair partner, and have honed my ability to deliver and receive feedback through practice and Makers Academy's emotional intelligence curriculum. I strive to apply XP values when collaborating on code with another person.

I take a proactive approach to learning relevant new technologies for each project by reading the documentation and am diligent and persistent when it comes to acquiring new knowledge and skills.

While working in publishing, I attended international book fairs to meet publishers from all over the world. Pitching books at book fairs or over the phone provided an excellent opportunity to hone my verbal presentation skills and make me a confident and clear communicator. I've been documenting my experience at Makers Academy on Medium.

Database management and royalty tracking software is a fundamental tool in the business of selling rights, and I've long been interested in optimising these tools for maximum efficiency and suitability. To this end, I implemented several new systems at ILA to improve administrative tasks, including the development of a royalty tracking system which succeeded in increasing the speed and efficiency with money is collected from publishers.

I speak Spanish and Russian to degree level. I am also competent in French and Hebrew, for which I attended weekly evening classes between 2013 and 2016.

• Learnt how to learn independently and solve complex problems
• Built simple command line apps and full stack web apps in Ruby and JavaScript
• Focussed on TDD to maintain high code quality
• Employed Agile methodology and XP values to facilitate successful teamwork

Key skills: software craftsmanship, communication and collaboration, problem solving, fast learning

• Sold audio rights for ILA's clients (authors and literary agents based in the UK and USA) to publishers throughout the world
• Grew a new area of ILA’s business by establishing relationships with international audio publishing partners
• Worked on the development of Rights Gallery, a web-based content management system for creating sales materials

Key skills: communication, business development, creativity

• Managed the bookshop and marketplace at Limmud, a five-day conference dedicated to Jewish learning for 3,000 attendees
• Managed the babysitting service for families attending Limmud and supervised around 20 volunteers

Key skills: people management, leadership, organisation

An intensive, 16-week web developer bootcamp, which focuses on:

• Programming best practices - OOP, TDD, MVC, SOLID, DRY
• Software development methodologies - Agile/XP
• Languages - Ruby, JavaScript, HTML/CSS
• Frameworks and libraries - Sinatra, Rails, jQuery, Bootstrap
• Testing suites - RSpec, Capybara, Jasmine
• Databases - PostgreSQL, ActiveRecord, TablePlus
• CI/CD - Travis CI, Heroku
• Version control - Git and GitHub

Modern Languages BA: Spanish and Russian – 2.1

Year abroad spent in Russia and Spain:

• Art history courses at the Russian Museum in St Petersburg and Instituto Superior de Arte in Madrid
• Journalism internships at In Your Pocket (St Petersburg) and InMadrid (Madrid)
• English teacher for employees of Mediterranean Shipping Company in Madrid

I love reading both fiction and non-fiction, hence the first career in publishing, and do so constantly and widely. I make the most of London's theatre scene, and enjoy travelling and being outdoors, whether that involves hiking in the countryside or participating in my local weekly parkrun. I regularly attend tech meetups in London, to meet like-minded people and learn about new ideas and developments.