Who am I?
Hi there! My name is Yolanda and I made a career tranisition from COTA (certified occupational therapy assistant) to FULL STACK Software Engineer! My current stack MERN (MongoDB, Express, React, Node) stack.
Most of my life I have been tinkering with tech through playing with different linux OS, being curious about what a computer BIOS is, and learning how to code. After being in the healthcare field for 5+ years, I wanted to make a bigger impact helping people and also give more respresentation for females and POC in the tech field.
In the past I was told that you had to be a genius to make it as a Software Engineer and that steered me away from it. But now that I’ve made it, I want to empower people that you don’t have to be a genius, that consistency and hard work matters more than being ‘smart’. I would love to combine my two passions, as a therapist and a developer, and use tech to help those in need.
A non-linear journey of how I ended up where I am today….
Competed teaching English in Japan
After 2 years teaching English in Japan, I cam back to San Diego.
Graduated as a Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant
Decided to make a career into healthcare as a COTA
Moved to Arizona and worked for school district as a COTA
Moved to Arizona and worked a various schools helping kids from K-12th grade
Came back to San Diego
Missed home and came back to San Diego and continue to work as a COTA
Career Change due to COVID
Lost my hours and decided to dive into tech (my original passion) and decided to self taught and joined a remote bootcamp called 100Devs
First Job as a Developer
After a year of self learning and trying new things, got my first job as a developer
Laid off and staring a new Journey
Got laid off due to structure changes within the org. Starting on another new journey…..
