Hello! I’m India. Having recently graduated from the Makers Software Development Bootcamp, I’m looking for a role where I can solve problems, build awesome things and continue to learn and grow.
Before Makers, I started my own fashion label. It was a lesson in constantly working outside of my comfort zone, learning and adapting extremely quickly and being determined to overcome setbacks to reach goals. Being highly self-motivated it was an exciting challenge and incredibly eye-opening.
While working in marketing I learnt the value of strict time management to manage multiple workloads. Communication became the top priority to ensure happy stakeholders and teams working smoothly together. Although now, having completed several emotional intelligence workshops at Makers, I feel even better prepared with improved communication skills, including empathy and giving receiving feedback of all types.
With more than 10 years of design and 4 years of customer marketing experience, I’m obsessed with innovating new ways of creating amazing solutions that are ridiculously useful and effective. In the future I’d like to use these skills to mentor other women in tech.
| Project name | Description | Technologies | Why its special |
|---|---|---|---|
| Theresa | A walking app to store and find walks according to how far you want to travel | APIs, Rails, React, CircleCI, Heroku | Group final project for Makers, most complete app with largest range of skills used. |
| Bank tech test | Creating a bank account using the terminal as UI | Ruby, RSpec | Cleanest code I've written alone |
| Notes app | An app to store and view your notes | JavaScript, HTML, CSS | Wrote our own testing framework, website is lots of fun to use |
Throughout Makers we're encouraged to learn through building and designing apps. Which means constant problem solving. From considering how to log a perfect game in the bowling challenge correctly, to working out how on earth to use Rails (the first framework we were introduced to), how to attach a database and what happens when you use the scaffold command in Acebook. And even how to work with a team when things aren't going to plan - which I touched upon in my blog on what I learnt about myself at Makers.
At OVO, I worked with UX designers, developers and external partners to fix our broken customer communications. I led a multi-departmental mini-project team to:
- identify and redesign problematic logic behind automated sends
- discover gaps in the customer journey messages, then fill them
- make messages comprehensible to a wider audience
The project brought a 15% reduction in comms-related complaints, and cut 1/3 off printing costs, helping with company goals and savings.
At OVO I became confident interacting with all levels of stakeholders up to the CEO. I also learnt the value of adapting your method of delivery, and tone across different audiences from busy directors, to customers and customer services teams.
Throughout my career I've worked in customer facing roles. Dealing with angry customers face to face at Pearl or over the phone at Groupon, I'm now well practiced in dispute resolution and managing expectations effectively.
During Makers, regularly giving and receiving constructive feedback has been an invaluable new communication tool. We also got to practice pair programming every afternoon for 2+ months.
My task-oriented nature kept me afloat while starting a business solo in 2018. Documenting and learning was important for a scalable model, while attending self-employment classes, researching eco-friendly practices and fulfilling orders.
Managing an ongoing workload aside part time agile project work at OVO I learnt kanban boards, the pomodoro technique and how to prioritise my workload effectively around constantly changing needs.
I've become adept at keeping others on track as well, which was complimented by a teammate in the Acebook project at Makers.
FaceFace Clothing (July 2018 to February 2020)
Founder
- Started a sustainable fashion brand from scratch, working alone to create custom, colourful pieces to deadline, and research sustainable and eco-friendly practices. Showing motivation, curiosity, autonomy and determination.
OVO Energy (June 2014 to June 2018)
Marketing Manager
- Worked closely with UX designer to design a new app and improve customer experience on existing app, providing copy for messages, testing flow, ensuring easy to use experience for a mixed ability audience.
- Became the subject matter expert for Pay As You Go (PAYG) customer processes and communications, going beyond the standard marketing role to provide advice to stakeholders.
- Worked in agile project teams to improve customer-facing processes, and led my own interdepartmental teams to upgrade communications. Combined forces with developers to fix broken logic and uncover underlying issues of rogue comms. Appropriate stakeholder management and pragmatic problem solving used to deliver results in tight timeframes. Reduced comms based complaints by 15%, and saved ⅓ on printing costs in the process.
- Through consistently impressive review results was 1 of 15 people across the company awarded a place on the 8-month training course to improve career opportunities.
- Collaborated with other marketing managers to design and deliver informative campaigns.
Learning industry standard best practices of object oriented design through building our own apps over 16 weeks. Main learning points:
- BDD and TDD, using Jasmine, RSpec, Capybara, Jest
- CI / CD using CircleCI and Heroku
- How to be language agnostic, starting with Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, React, HTML5, CSS3
- Suitably interrogating client briefs, adding planning with IO table & writing user stories
- UML, CRC & wireframes used to plan/document domain models and process models
- Full stack software development including databases using PostgreSQL, SQL
- Code quality and test coverage checks using rubocop, eslint and simplecov
- Regular code reviews, pairing and feedback
- Blogging, reflecting and goal setting to solidify and track learning
Computer Animation & Visualisation BSc, 2:1. A computer sciences degree specialising in animation. My final project was in desktop augmented reality. I built an educational program about our solar system, with the pièce de résistance of 2 animated models of the solar system and the separate planets coming out of cardboard markers when they were in view of the webcam. Key course learning points:
- Object Oriented Systems & Data Structures
- Computer Architecture & Operating Systems
- 3D & 2D modelling & animation
- Web design, User Interface design
- Intro to programming in Visual Basic, C++, Python, Actionscript, HTML, CSS
- Travelling: Locally and worldwide. Exploring and adventures in the mountains or getting to know the locals are the best bits of travelling for me. I’m a big fan of hiking. Working on my card games too.
- Dressmaking: I’ve been sewing for quite a while now and love having a wardrobe of many handmade clothes and costumes. It’s great getting others involved too, most recently I ran a tie-dye afternoon for my housemates and neighbours which was ace.
- Making other things: From practical things like stairs to fun things like a 2m paper & wire light up octopus; I love making things. At the moment I’m researching how to make a headdress with dancing robots who react to the audio around them.
- Climbing: Last year I started bouldering on an indoor wall. Next summer I aim to climb some real rocks outdoors, ideally in some warm locations!