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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>Def Method - Profiles</title>
</head>
<!-- Via Abreu -->
<div id='via-info'>
<div class='hometown-location-education'>
<strong>Hometown</strong>: Paterson, NJ<br>
<strong>Current Location</strong>: Paterson, NJ <br>
<strong>Education</strong> Rutgers University, Bachelor's Degree in Human Resource Management and Bachelor's Degree in Women and Gender Studies <br>
</div>
<div class='github-linkedin-twitter'>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/vianiris-abreu/" target="_blank">LinkedIn Profile</a> <br>
</div>
<div class='background'>
<p> Vianiris "Via" Abreu is a graduate of Rutgers University. She has a Bachelor's Degree in Human Resource Management as well as a Bachelor's in Women and Gender Studies. Via joined Def Method after some time in a large Advertising holding company and some time in the Diversity Recruiting space. She has experience working across all aspects of the HR space with a special focus on Diversity Hiring.
Via is passionate about creating a fairer more just world both in and out of her work. She pursues this passion through her work at Def Method by creating and implementing programs to keep employees learning and engaged. Via enjoys all forms of story-telling and considers herself an "employee ally".
<br>
</p>
</div>
<div class='work-in-tech'>
<p><strong>When did you know that you wanted to work in tech?</strong> "I sort of fell into working for Tech I should say. After spending some time working for a technical startup, I realized the benefits of working for creative hardworking people!"
</p>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Katie Cladis -->
<div id='katie-info'>
<div class='hometown-location-education'>
<strong>Hometown</strong>: Austin, TX <br>
<strong>Current Location</strong>: Brooklyn, NY <br>
<strong>Education</strong>: Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Mathematics, Vassar College; MBA from Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado, Boulder<br>
</div>
<div class='github-linkedin-twitter'>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-cladis-bb658317/" target="_blank">LinkedIn Profile</a> <br>
</div>
<div class='background'>
<p>Katie is an experienced product leader with a passion for using data, analytics and empathy to connect with customers. When she was young, this blend of analytical and creative thinking was reflected in her love of playing the piano (creating melodies from musical structures on paper), studying the overlap between Art and Physics (think Dali’s melting clocks and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity), and writing poetry about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (isn't it poetic that our bodies are comprised of electrons in uncertain locations?). Now, as an adult, she pursues this passion by merging storytelling and technology to execute products, flexing her creative and analytical muscles as needed to be the hub between different types of talents, working together to ultimately drive customer satisfaction. </p>
</div>
<div class='developer'>
<p><strong>When did you know that you wanted to work in tech?</strong> "My first "real" job was working at a small educational center in Brooklyn, where kids in Kindergarten through 8th grade came to improve their math, reading and writing skills. While the academic instructors were of course pivotal to students' successes, equally important was the role technology played: assessing student strengths and weaknesses, serving up customized lesson recommendations, and adapting skills to each student individually as they progressed through the curriculum. Technology then became a means by which we could help our kids more effectively and connect more deeply with parents. It became clear to me that understanding technology was a critical component in reaching larger goals and in making a more meaningful impact." </p>
</div>
<div>
<p><strong>ON THE JOB</strong></p>
<p><strong>Balanced multiple users’ needs to launch a digital campaign management platform</strong></p>
<p>Katie joined a team working on a new digital campaign management platform, which had a wide user base, competing goals and priorities across different stakeholders, and a tight timeline until launch. When Katie joined, the team was trying to make too many people happy at once, and in the process making no one happy (especially themselves!). With the launch date already set, Katie worked expeditiously with cross functional teams to cut through the noise to understand and create alignment around the key problems for which the product was trying to solve. With a more focused set of goals in mind for the near term, and a clear vision for the long term, Katie was able to work with her team of engineers and designers to prioritize needs and features and launch the platform on time. As a result, the productivity of media traders - the prioritized users - increased by 60%. This win propelled the team to proudly move forward on future priorities and features.</p>
<p><strong>Launched a new learning management system to better meet the needs of a rapidly growing student body</strong></p>
<p>Katie led a strategic initiative to onboard a new online learning tool for students looking to launch new careers in technology. The existing online tool would not be able to successfully handle the amount of growth projected in the next year. Katie used the “jobs to be done” framework to deeply understand the needs of a diverse set of students and stakeholders in order to evaluate new systems. Instead of blindly incorporating old features into the new learning management system, this framework provided a fresh perspective on how we were addressing pain points by focusing on the job that the old feature was doing, rather than the feature itself. This created space for the cross functional team to quickly prioritize needs rather than features, in order to imagine a completely new student experience.</p>
<p><strong>Saved on operational costs by 30% while creating a better customer experience</strong></p>
<p>When working with a pre-college test prep company, Katie led an operational initiative to lower the costs of students taking free proctored SAT and ACT practice tests at testing centers, while reducing the amount of time to provide students with their practice test results and feedback. The existing process relied on proctors collecting test grids, sending them to the company’s home office where another team scanned the tests and emailed the results to students and parents. This took too long and was too resource intensive. Further, the longer the student had to wait for results (sometimes up to 10 days with this existing process!), the less likely they were to purchase a test prep program. In order to solve this problem, Katie worked with a team of engineers and subject matter experts to design a webgrid - a mobile responsive web application for students to enter their test answers into in order to get immediate results. The results were impressive: a significant reduction in operational costs while simultaneously creating a better student experience and business results.
</div>
<p><strong>HIGHLIGHTED SKILL ACROSS THE PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE</strong></p>
<strong>Creation</strong>
<ul>
<li>Starts with the end in mind to understand the why - why are we building this product in the first place?</li>
<li>Rapidly gleans insights from the market and customers regarding their pain points through user and market research</li>
<li>Obsesses about the most important problem to be solved, and works with myriad stakeholders to determine what a lean minimum viable product looks like to address said problem</li>
<li>Cuts through the noise to identify the must-have features to be shipped quickly, in order to kick of the process of learning from the working software as soon as possible</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Iteration</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Prototypes, tests and experiments to validate hypotheses and proposed solutions </li>
<li>Identifies the highest value opportunities to pursue next based on insights from user interviews, usage patterns, and customer feedback</li>
<li>Aligns the roadmap on business strategy and higher level company objectives </li>
<li>Grows new users by prioritizing features that solve a wider range of problems across different types of users </li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Maintenance</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Laser focused on customer satisfaction to drive the overall health of the product and the business</li>
<li>Uses data and customer feedback to increase customer retention and battle churn</li>
<li>Assesses the product’s value proposition to support continued product-market fit</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>KEY STRENGTHS</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Creates an inclusive environment where all team members’ opinions, feedback and ideas are listened to and valued</li>
<li>Achieves results by gracefully aligning cross functional teams to reach a shared vision</li>
<li>Strong facilitator: can get a group of individuals on the same page efficiently, getting them to make important decisions together</li>
<li>Keeps a meticulously organized backlog where stories are clearly connected to user and business value</li>
<li>Approach to product is focused on learning and validating functionality early and often, which minimizes the chance of engineers building something that does not resonate with users</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>SKILLS</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Product management software: Jira, Trello</li>
<li>UX software: Balsamiq</li>
<li>Languages: SQL, R, Python</li>
<li>Stakeholder management</li>
<li>User research</li>
<li>Product strategy</li>
<li>Agile methodologies</li>
<li>Product roadmapping</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>FIELDS OF EXPERIENCE</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Advertising technology</li>
<li>Marketing technology</li>
<li>Online education</li>
<li>eCommerce</li>
<li>Automobile industry</li>
</ul>>
</div>
<!-- Terrance Rose -->
<div id='terrance-info'>
<div class='hometown-location-education'>
<strong>Hometown</strong>: Harlem, NY <br>
<strong>Current Location</strong>: Harlem, NY <br>
<strong>Education</strong>: Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science, Hobart and William Smith, and the Flatiron School<br>
</div>
<div class='github-linkedin-twitter'>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/terrancerosejr/" target="_blank">LinkedIn Profile</a> <br>
<a href="https://github.com/trose618" target="_blank">GitHub Profile</a> <br>
</div>
<div class='background'>
<p>Terrance was born and raised in Harlem, NY. He gained his B.A. in Computer Science from Hobart and William Smith in 2018, and graduated from the Flatiron School in February 2019. He loves to play squash, dance, and write code. </p>
</div>
<div class='developer'>
<p><strong>When did you know that you wanted to work in tech?</strong> "I knew around the end of high school that I wanted to work in tech. It started with me wanting to build video games, which caused me to pursue a BA in Computer Science. While studying my major, I realized the vast influence programming has had and continues to have in our lives. From then, I knew I wanted to make a bigger impact than just creating something fun and entertaining. After getting my BA in Computer Science I attended the Flatiron School for Web/Software Development where I learned the skills needed to build those impactful services." </p>
</div>
<div class='languages-technologies'>
<p><strong>Languages & Technologies</strong> <Ruby> <Ruby on Rails> <PostgreSQL> <JavaScript>
<React> <Redux> <HTML5/CSS3> <Swift> <Java></p>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Jennifer Imamura -->
<div id='jennifer-info'>
<div class='hometown-location-education'>
<strong>Hometown</strong>: Los Angeles <br>
<strong>Current Location</strong>: Los Angeles <br>
<strong>Education</strong>: Bachelor of Science in Business, with a focus on Management and Human Resources from Cal Poly Pomona University. Master degree in Business Administration from University of Phoenix<br>
</div>
<div class='github-linkedin-twitter'>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-imamura/" target="_blank">LinkedIn Profile</a> <br>
</div>
<div class='background'>
<p>Jenn worked for 10+ years in the business services division at a large ITS organization where she managed enterprise accounts around the globe. It was here that she found her passion in business operations, account management, and client partnerships, but she decided to take a deeper dive into the tech industry. Jenn was previously at a Chicago-based software firm where she fell in love with software design and development. At Def Method, Jenn is excited to fulfill her truest passion in helping people find solutions that strategically improve their businesses through the use of software engineering, product management, and technology.</p>
</div>
<div class='developer'>
<p><strong>When did you know that you wanted to work in tech?</strong> "It was right after I had my son that I realized how much I enjoy working with my clients and being able to improve their businesses. However, it was after having my daughter that I realized the impact technology was having not just on children, but adults as well. Clearly, there's a convenience factor that technology brings to us all but it's an important means to improve our everyday workflow in personal and business related tasks."</p>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Alexa Maniaci -->
<div id='Alexa-info'>
<div class='hometown-location-education'>
<strong>Hometown</strong>: Allendale, NJ <br>
<strong>Current Location</strong>: Brooklyn, NY <br>
<strong>Education</strong>: Bachelor of Arts in International Economics and Development, GWU <br>
</div>
<div class='github-linkedin-twitter'>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexamaniaci/" target="_blank">LinkedIn Profile</a> <br>
</div>
<div class='background'>
<p>As a product manager, Alexa brings a strong suite of entrepreneurial skills to holistically understand a business and her clients’ needs. Previous to joining the Def Method team, Alexa led deep structural changes within her first venture, an event and design production business to grow opportunities for technology application in her management system. This process led her to develop her second venture, aflutter, an integrative creative events platform after raising $500k in angel capital. Alexa brings strong business acumen, as well as a deep background in launching technology applications, UX, and product to the team.
As such, she looks at how your business will provide an interconnected digital experience from end to end for the primary customer by identifying gaps as well as providing solutions. Across her career, Alexa has worked on 12+ products, with B2C and B2B companies ranging from creative production and consumer technology to the legal industry. She continues to be an entrepreneurial business coach for 6+ small business owners.
</p>
</div>
<div class='developer'>
<p><strong>When did you know that you wanted to work in tech?</strong> I became a partner in a small business that was not setup with digital tools to conduct business. For example, the floral shoppe was still using paper work orders in 2012. The process of finding the right tool then onboarding my team and implementing its use within our daily workflow allowed me to experience the value of technology as well as its hurdles in solving simple problems. I was curious about how to build tech products so I took a UX course with General Assembly. It completely changed my approach to my business and changed the trajectory of my career. </p>
</div>
<div>
<p><strong>ON THE JOB</strong></p>
<p><strong>An MVP delivered in two weeks to reduce risk and validate product concept</strong></p>
<p>Pager, a social media start-up company, came to Def Method with a detailed plan of a product to build. After discussions with the client, Alexa identified the need to understand a single customer persona with a specific problem to build out an initial MVP before tackling all of the problems the client looked to solve. A strong believer in user testing and validation, Alexa ran continuous experiments in a 2-week timeframe to efficiently test the business problem and release an initial version of the product, needing only a basic amount of code and resources to do so. As a previous small business owner, Alexa recognized the need for validation and reduction of risk to ensure that the client’s investment would be successful and leveraged effectively. By quickly delivering a clean, basic product to gain feedback, Alexa was able to use the data collected to confidently build out a more developed product.
<p><strong>Pivoting product strategy to effectively adapt to a COVID-impacted industry</strong></p>
<p>In 2020, Alexa worked with a client in an industry significantly affected by COVID-19. In a time of rapid transition, Alexa immediately began identifying areas that needed to pivot in order to support the business and its customers, while maintaining financial stability. Having already been tracking the pandemic from a holistic perspective, Alexa prepared for a drastic change in the economic reality and readied herself to address the difficult business questions that would arise. Taking a critical look at the progress already made and future product strategy, Alexa worked with the client to develop a plan that put a pause on new features and focused on a digital launch to best serve and stay connected to customers during the pandemic. Due to the impact on customers’ ability to interact with the product in its original form, Alexa focused on developing new user personas through research to understand how to iterate on the existing product to continue encouraging user engagement. In combination with the digital launch, the enhanced understanding of COVID-impacted users will lead to a product pivot, setting up for success in an new and unfamiliar economy.</p>
</div>
<p><strong>HIGHLIGHTED SKILL ACROSS THE PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE</strong></p>
<strong>Creation</strong>
<ul>
<li>Effectively transitions good ideas into sustainable businesses and products</li>
<li>Continuously conducts market and consumer validation through qualitative and quantitative analysis, reducing risk of building an unsuccessful product</li>
<li>Experiments creatively with limited budget to collect data and analytics for validation</li>
<li>Understands UX design process, leveraging skills to be efficient and smart about design</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Iteration</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Comfortably pivots product strategy and branding if necessary, understanding that markets are dynamic and may experience sudden change</li>
<li>Identifies the foundational, minimal features for quick validation, risk reduction, and product delivery in order to efficiently iterate towards a built-out product</li>
<li>Integrates Agile methodologies within business processes in order to set up clients to be comfortable with changing environments, roadmaps, and features</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Maintenance</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Strategically monitors analytics and business metrics to determine whether returning to iteration phases is necessary</li>
<li>Puts clients’ needs first by identifying when a product may need to pause with new features and move into maintenance in order to manage the health of the product</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>KEY STRENGTHS</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Effectively manages key stakeholders, having previously oversaw her own board and investors</li>
<li>Understands how to transition a company from a non-digital approach to a digital, Agile approach, where all departments understand how to move in alignment to address business and customer needs</li>
<li>Has comprehensive experience in launching a business and understand how to find and keep initial customers without spending money</li>
<li>Values people over process and advocates for individuals’ interests by creating working environments where individuals feel comfortable, safe, respected, and listened to</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>SKILLS</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>UX + Development</strong>: Sketch, Invision, Omnigraffle, Balsamiq, Pivotal Tracker, JIRA</li>
<li><strong>Project Management</strong>: Lucid Chart, RealTimeBoards, Basecamp, Trello, Insightly</li>
<li><strong>Business Intelligence + CRMs</strong>: Quickbooks, Mailchimp, Google Analytics</li>
<li>Production + Retail: Floranext, Honeybook, Squarespace, Wordpress</li>
<li>User experience, research, and design</li>
<li>SCRUM and Agile methodologies</li>
<li>Product strategy and roadmapping</li>
<li>Cross-team and cross-department communication</li>
<li>High-level business evaluation</li>
<li>Stakeholder management</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>FIELDS OF EXPERIENCE</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Grocery and food service</li>
<li>Creative production and consumer tech</li>
<li>Non-profit</li>
<li>Automobile industry</li>
<li>Retail</li>
<li>Online education</li>
<li>eCommerce</li>
<li>Legal</li>
<li>Beauty, weddings, and events</li>
<li>Social media</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- Isabelle Berner -->
<div id='Isabelle-info'>
<div class='hometown-location-education'>
<strong>Hometown</strong>: New York, NY<br>
<strong>Current Location</strong>: New York, NY <br>
<strong>Education</strong>: Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Neuroscience, Harvard University<br>
</div>
<div class='github-linkedin-twitter'>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/isabelleberner" target="_blank">LinkedIn Profile</a> <br>
</div>
<div class='background'>
<p>Isabelle has been a Product Manager for 12 years working in startups and consultancies such as TagPay, Pattern and Betterment, and Pivotal Labs. She has experience working on all aspects of the product lifecycle and on a wide variety of products including consumer facing products as well as enterprise and B2B products. She is passionate about working with cross-functional teams to bring bold ideas to fruition and de-risk products through research and experimentation. You can learn more about Isabelle on her website:
<a href="https://www.izzyberner.com" target="_blank">www.izzyberner.com</a> <br>
</p>
</div>
<div class='work-in-tech'>
<p><strong>When did you know that you wanted to work in tech?</strong> "My Journey as a Product Person began as a product manager in 2008 when I discovered the opportunity to build a payments platform for the under-banked using a sound-based contactless transaction technology for a company called TagPay (think Apple pay for 1990s flip phones). From the moment I understood how software could be leveraged to solve meaningful problems, I was hooked."
</p>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Ben Gross -->
<div id='ben-info'>
<div class='hometown-location-education'>
<strong>Hometown</strong>: Long Beach, NY <br>
<strong>Current Location</strong>: Brooklyn, NY <br>
<strong>Education</strong>: Bachelor of Arts, Psychology, Colby College<br>
</div>
<div>
<p><strong>Ask Me About:</strong>Test Driven Development, Clean & Readable Code, Refactoring, Agile Software Development, Full stack Engineering </p>
</div>
<div class='github-linkedin-twitter'>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminjgross1" target="_blank">LinkedIn Profile</a> <br>
<a href="https://github.com/BenjaGross" target="_blank">GitHub Profile</a> <br>
</div>
<div class='background'>
<p>Ben is a Senior Software Engineer with 10 years of experience both building and supporting software. After starting his career on the intranet support team at a large hospital managing data migrations and training users to use new systems, Ben acquired significant experience in healthcare technology, e-commerce, real estate, media, and fine art. At Def Method, Ben leads engineering teams, designs and implements software solutions, and coaches agile methodologies. Ben is also an avid snowboarder, surfer, mountain biker, and cook.
</p>
</div>
<div class='languages-technologies'>
<p><strong>Languages & Technologies </strong> Ruby, Rails, Sinatra, Swift, SwiftUI, Python, Django, Flask, React, Redux, Javascript, PostgreSQL, Heroku, AWS, HTML, CSS, ElasticSearch </p>
</div>
<div class='sample-projects'>
<p><strong>Projects</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><strong>Healthcare:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Built an native iOS app and Rails back-end for patients to track treatments and improve their health by integrating with bluetooth-connected IOT medical devices</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Diversity Recruiting Platform:</strong> </p>
<ul>
<li>Inherited a large legacy code base used to track job seeking event attendees</li>
<li>Coached customer’s project managers in agile best practices, managed a team of remote engineers</li>
<li>Implemented large scale updates to transition the site into a platform for attendees to find job postings</li>
<li>Added application roles for various users to hiring managers could post listings and reach out to prospective hires</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Enterprise Media Company:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Developed tools for managing wedding guest lists</li>
<li>Built a vendor portal for small companies to advertise their services for weddings</li>
<li>Built a suggestion-based display listings catalogue to enable people to find and hire vendors for social events</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Server Co-Location Finder:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Custom built parsers to seed a large amount of PDF based data into a custom database</li>
<li>Designed a database for monitoring rental availability in server farms by provider and location</li>
<li>Used elasticsearch to allow users to search for the most fitting spaces across various criteria</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class='developer'>
<p><strong>When did you know that you wanted to be a developer?</strong> "I spent a year working with a team of developers as an intermediary between the engineering team and the users. After a time, I didn't want to have to ask the engineers for everything so I started making small edits to the code base myself. An engineer saw what I was doing and helped me write my first hello world in Cold Fusion. I quickly moved to Ruby after that and have been hooked ever since."</p>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Jeff Jia -->
<div id='jeff-info'>
<div class='hometown-location-education'>
<strong>Hometown</strong>: Ann Arbor, MI <br>
<strong>Current Location</strong>: New York, NY <br>
<strong>Education</strong>: Bachelor of Arts, Albion College in Computer Science and Philosophy<br>
</div>
<div>
<p><strong>Ask Me About:</strong>Test-Driven Development, Design Patterns, the Value of Agile practices</p>
</div>
<div class='github-linkedin-twitter'>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-jia-b8b55283" target="_blank">LinkedIn Profile</a> <br>
<a href="https://github.com/jjiadev" target="_blank">GitHub Profile</a> <br>
</div>
<div class='background'>
<p>Jeff is a Principal Engineer with 15 years of software development experience. He is a full-stack
software developer in a multitude of domains and technologies. He has experience
in software architecture, design, coaching, mentoring and development. He has a strong Test-Driven Development and
Object Oriented Design background and approaches projects with an emphasis on long-term maintainability. When he's not working, he enjoys playing video games and reading comics. He recently picked up the hobby of assembling and painting plastic miniatures.
</p>
</div>
<div class='languages-technologies'>
<p><strong>Languages & Technologies</strong> Java, Ruby, C#, JavaScript, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Python, jQuery, React.js, Angular.js, .NET</p>
</div>
<div class='sample-projects'>
<p><strong>Projects</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>International Media Compan</strong><strong>y:</strong> Synced data on an administrative platform by
transferring data from a .Net base to a Rails API through a translation layer </li>
<li><strong>Globally-Focused Nonprofit</strong><strong>:</strong> Prototyped and designing a new architecture for
website and worked as a Lead Developer to implement the Rails/CMS application</li>
<li><strong>Biotech Startup</strong><strong>:</strong> Developed software to run a biological research instrument
called a Flow Cytometer using Java as a desktop application, with a Swing frontend. Jeff was involved with the
full-stack development of this application, from plotting, to statistical calculation, down to the data storage, and device
communication in the backend</li>
<li><strong>Dog Agility Management: </strong>Built a data management tool and automated rules engine for a
company that managed Dog Agility competitions using a C# application with a MySQL database and an ASP.MVC
frontend</li>
<li><strong>Enterprise FinTech Application</strong>: Worked on front-end development, collaborated with traders to develop a usable interface for dealing with large amounts of financial data.</li>
<li><strong>Sports Statistics Application</strong>: Overhauled and modernized legacy systems to create a more maintainable product, and created green fields architecture to marry various data structures and information into structures consumable by a mobile app. </li>
<li><strong>Government Agency</strong>: Developed a micro-service driven flood insurance information website and calculator, translated a government-issued insurance calculation table, and integrated with existing municipal and federal data to provide estimates for flood insurance rates </li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class='developer'>
<p><strong>When did you know that you wanted to be a developer?</strong> "I think it was when I played the first
Civilization game. It could have been earlier, video games were definitely the entry point, but Civ was one of the
first that I can remember wanting to know how things worked under the hood. I also have a distinct memory of doing
some "modding" to it, which was probably in truth changing some .ini files and uploading a crude picture from
paint to make it so that you could build Start Destroyers in the game."</p>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Jesumar Lima -->
<div id='jesusmar-info'>
<div class='hometown-location-education'>
<strong>Hometown</strong>: Caixas-MA-Brazil <br>
<strong>Current Location</strong>: Brooklyn, NY <br>
<strong>Education</strong>: <br>
</div>
<div class='github-linkedin-twitter'>
<a href="https://github.com/jesusmarlima" target="_blank">GitHub Profile</a> <br>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesusmar-lima-47160b57" target="_blank">LinkedIn Profile</a> <br>
<a href="https://twitter.com/jesusmarlima" target="_blank">Twitter Profile</a> <br>
</div>
<div class='background'>
<p>Born in Northeast of Brazil in 1975. I am the third of my four siblings to have become a Software Engineer. I’ve
been working as a Software Engineer since 2000 in the insurance, financial back office, cellular, drilling, and
digital security industries. A couple of years ago, I moved to NYC to continue my journey as a Software Engineer
and joined the Def Method team in 2017. I have three passions: programming, music, and skateboarding. These days I
use my skateboard to commute to work, let music be my daily inspiration, and let programming be what feeds my
intellect. That way I can have each of my passions present in my everyday life.</p>
</div>
<div class='developer'>
<p><strong>When did you know that you wanted to be a developer?</strong> "My oldest brother is to blame. When I was
a child he was a Software Engineer at Banco da Amazonia SA in Brazil and he took me to his office to spend the
night running batches and programming. I thought to myself, "I want to do this."</p>
</div>
<div class='languages-technologies'>
<p><strong>Languages & Technologies</strong> Java, Spring, Gosu, React, Javascript, Ruby, Rails, C#, .Net,
Sql, Guidewire Studios</p>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Joe Leo -->
<div id='joe-info'>
<div class='hometown-location-education'>
<strong>Hometown</strong>: New York <br>
<strong>Current Location</strong>: New York, NY <br>
<strong>Education</strong>: BS, Engineering, Penn State and MA Arts, NYU<br>
</div>
<div class='github-linkedin-twitter'>
<a href="https://github.com/jleo3" target="_blank">GitHub Profile</a> <br>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jleo3" target="_blank">LinkedIn Profile</a> <br>
</div>
<div class='background'>
<p>Joe brings his mix of engineering muscle, business acumen, enthusiasm for challenges, and technical leadership to
the helm of Def Method. Before founding DM, Joe spent over a decade as a developer delivering high-quality
software solutions spanning government, education, finance and e-commerce.</p>
<p>As the CEO and Founder of Def Method he emulates the brand values of transparency in business operations, trust
among the team and partners, and excellence in code. </p>
<p>Joe is co-author of <a href="https://livebook.manning.com/#!/book/the-well-grounded-rubyist-third-edition/" target="_blank">The Well-Grounded Rubyist, Third Edition</a>. Outside of the office, he has helped to build the NYC developer community as lead organizer of GORUCO, a member of the Technical Advisory Board of the New York Founding, and an instructor at General Assembly.</p>
</div>
<div class='developer'>
<p><strong>When did you know that you wanted to be a developer?</strong> "I knew I wanted to be a software engineer
at about the same time I wrapped up my graduate degree - in cinema studies.</p>
<p>At that point I was 'technical,' building some very basic software for NYU School of Medicine. I loved film,
which I studied at night, but my day job was getting more and more interesting.</p>
<p>Finally, I decided that I could always fall back on my degree and pursue film in some form. So why not give this
software thing a real shot?</p>
<p>The rest is history."</p>
</div>
<div class='languages-technologies'>
<p><strong>Languages & Technologies </strong><Ruby> <Angular.js>
<MySQL> <Python> <Clojure> <PostgreSQL> <RSpec> <Ruby on Rails>
<Redis> <C#> <F#> <CSS3> <HAML> <Scala> <JavaScript>
<jQuery> <Backbone.js> <Heroku> </p>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Joshua Book -->
<div id='joshua-info'>
<div class='hometown-location-education'>
<strong>Hometown</strong>: New York, NY<br>
<strong>Current Location</strong>: New York, NY<br>
<strong>Education</strong>: BA, Cinematography, NYU
<p>Web Development Immersive, General Assembly</p>
<br>
</div>
<div>
<p><strong>Ask Me About: </strong> Rails APIs, React, System Architecture, Design and Discovery Sprints, Rapid Prototyping, Test-Driven Development, Agile XP principles, practices and process, iOS development</p>
</div>
<div class='github-linkedin-twitter'>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuacbook" target="_blank">LinkedIn Profile</a> <br>
<a href="https://github.com/boovius" target="_blank">GitHub Profile</a> <br>
</div>
<div class='background'>
<p>Joshua is a Senior Software Engineer with 7 years of experience. He is a generalist with a diverse background, considering himself a “Swiss-army knife” of engineering, who prides himself on being able to jump into situations requiring learning many skills. Joshua most enjoys leading his teams to success by naturally fostering creative-collaboration through leadership, facilitation, and coaching. Joshua is originally from New York but has lived in various places throughout the country and traveled around the globe. In his free time, Joshua loves to write, read, bake bread, snowboard, play nerdy board games, and be out in nature. </p>
</div>
<div class='languages-technologies'>
<p><strong>Languages & Technologies </strong> Ruby, Python, React, Redux, Node, PostgreSQL, RSpec, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, CSS3, SQL, HAML, jQuery, Angular.js, Backbone.js, Heroku, Objective-C, MongoDB, Redis, HTML5/CSS,
Swift, Docker, Kubernetes, Typescript, SwiftUI, Combine, Twilio, Stripe, Kafka</p>
</div>
<div class='sample-projects'>
<ul>
<li><strong>Video Sharing Startup</strong>: built a full native iOS application dealing with video capture and sharing</li>
<li><strong>Mattress Delivery Startup</strong>: implemented a backend piece of middleware that interacted with bookkeeping and
accounting software with better streamline processes</li>
<li><strong>Government</strong>: integrated a complex user interface and design with React and Sass</li>
<li><strong>Real Estate Startup</strong>: Built shopping cart and credit card payment functionality </li>
<li><strong>E-commerce Supply Chain Logistics</strong>: Involved location, geo-coordination, and mapping for ultra-fast delivery operations.</li>
<li><strong>Legacy Project Solidification</strong>: Trained QA staff to build up suite of automated regression tests for discovering and ensuring behavior of an existing legacy system primed for a re-write/refactor.</li>
<li><strong>Fashion-Tech Platform</strong>: Connected retailers to designers (namely boutique designers) and vice-versa. Created a plug-n-play integration and ETL system.</li>
<li><strong>Social Media Startup Mobile App</strong>: Led product discovery sessions and prototype builds which lead to rapid user testing.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class='developer'>
<p><strong>When did you know that you wanted to be a developer?</strong> "I transitioned into the tech world from being a filmmaker. Video game development served as a bridge between the two fairly disparate worlds of movies and tech. But the overlap was there of creative group problem solving and this has always been something I’ve thrived doing. I really knew I wanted to do something in tech when I realized I wanted to make innovative “tools" for people that would empower them. My focus has shifted somewhat over the years but the core values of innovation and empowerment still guide me powerfully."</p>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Kent Robinson -->
<div id='kent-info'>
<div class='hometown-location-education'>
<strong>Hometown</strong>: Heber City, UT <br>
<strong>Current Location</strong>: Salem, OR <br>
<strong>Education</strong>: Bachelor of Arts, Political Science and Government, Brigham Young University. Minor in Business Administration and Management
<p>Master of Health Policy and Administration, Washington State University</p>
<br>
</div>
<div>
<p><strong>Ask Me About: </strong> Design Systems, Storyboarding, Accessibility Guidelines, Rapid Prototyping, Information Architecture, Developer Handoff, Working with Style Guides, Design Workflows, Figma</p>
</div>
<div class='github-linkedin-twitter'>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenterobinson/" target="_blank">LinkedIn Profile</a> <br>
<a href="https://dribbble.com/kentrobinson" target="_blank">Dribbble</a> <br>
<a href="https://www.kentrob.com/" target="_blank">Portfolio</a> <br>
</div>
<div class='background'>
<p>Kent Robinson is a designer and researcher passionate about building scalable applications. He has 7 years of experience in design, strategic planning, and team building experience, specializing in user research, rapid prototyping, and visual design. After founding two startups as an operator and lead designer, he gained extensive experience consulting and building dozens of products in the startup and enterprise world. He enjoys helping clients turn ideas into actionable concepts and find true Product-Market fit. Kent is originally from Utah and has lived in almost every western US state along the Pacific coast, spending many summers travelling around in a camper van he built himself. He enjoys biking, skiing, slacklining, and playing with his husky. </p>
</div>
<div class='languages-technologies'>
<p><strong>Design Skills: </strong> Empathy Maps, User Interviews, Journey Maps, User Personas, Storyboarding, Affinity Diagrams, Site Maps, Design Systems, Hi-fi Mockups, Prototyping, Usability, Testings, Developer Handoff, Style guides, Branding Materials</p>
<p><strong>Software Skills: </strong> Adobe CC, XD, Sketch, Invision, Figma, Zeplin, Marvel, Github, Hotjar, Jira, Trello</p>
<p><strong>Other Skills: </strong> Business Strategy, Product Management, Kanban/Scrum, Video Editing</p>
</div>
<div class='sample-projects'>
<ul>
<li><strong>Event Management Software</strong>: Lead designer on an event management system for Tony Robbins that grossed over $30 million in profit in the first month. </li>
<li><strong>Healthcare</strong>: Lead designer and programmer for a patient service kiosk for AT&T. Built an interface to allow patients to check-in for appointments without any human assistance. The prototype was showcased at the HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition in 2019. </li>
<li><strong>Restaurants</strong>: My company was hired by Famous Dave's to build and launch two test kiosks at locations near their headquarters near Minneapolis. I helped broker the deal, develop the UX, and integrate their Point of Sale system into our app.</li>
<li><strong>Home security</strong>: Strategized and designed a mobile version of the desktop interface to help customers manage their home devices on the go.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class='developer'>
<p><strong>When did you know that you wanted to be a UI/UX Designer?</strong> "When I started my own company and realized how bad our product looked. No one was using our product and I wanted to do something about it and figure out why. I taught myself how to make a product more useful, usable, and enjoyable. I scrambled to consume everything I could find on research methodologies, information architecture and wireframing techniques. I took several online courses, went to meetup groups and started shadowing an adept, seasoned designer. By the time we sold our software to an industry competitor I had a working knowledge of the UX process and my passion for building engaging, user-friendly products was born." </p>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Kathy Zhao -->
<div id='katherine-info'>
<div class='hometown-location-education'>
<strong>Hometown</strong>: East Brunswick, NJ <br>
<strong>Current Location</strong>: New York, NY <br>
<strong>Education</strong>: BA, Princeton University <br>
</div>
<div class='github-linkedin-twitter'>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherine-zhao-aa6089143/" target="_blank">LinkedIn Profile</a> <br>
</div>
<div class='background'>
<p>Katherine Zhao is a graduate of Princeton University. At Princeton, she co-founded a theater
company, planned its first season of shows and events, and managed operations of the company in its first
season. She led marketing efforts to establish its brand as a theater company focused on representing diverse
experiences and worked to establish its presence in the university community. In her current role as Marketing Lead at Def Method, Katherine is building the Def Method community and presence in the NYC tech
scene and working with partners to build strong and sustainable digital products. </p>
</div>
<div id='entrepreneur'>
<p><strong>When did you know that you wanted to be an entrepreneur? </strong></p>
<p>"I've always loved starting my own clubs and organizations at school whenever I felt like there was a space in
the community that needed to be filled by one. There's something really exciting to me about adding value to
different spaces and communities and people." </p>
</div>
<div class='work-in-tech'>
<p><strong>When did you know that you wanted to work in tech?</strong></p>
<p>"In college, I took a computer science class and was super excited to learn more about the growing influence of
technology on our lives. Then I went to an entrepreneurship conference where I heard about the useful products and
services that tech innovators are creating." </p>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Keith Perfetti -->
<div id='keith-info'>
<div class='hometown-location-education'>
<strong>Hometown</strong>: Highland Park, NJ <br>
<strong>Current Location</strong>: Brooklyn, NY <br>
<strong>Education</strong>: Bachelor of Arts, Double Major in Fine Art Photography and Journalism, University of Arizona <br>
<div>
<p><strong>Ask Me About: </strong> Full-Stack Development, Scaling Solutions, Process, Test-Driven Development, Platform Architecture, Third-Party Integrations </p>
</div>
</div>
<div class='github-linkedin-twitter'>
<a href="https://github.com/perfetti" target="_blank">GitHub Profile</a> <br>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-perfetti-77958444" target="_blank">LinkedIn Profile</a>
<br>
</div>
<div class='background'>
<p><p>Keith is a self-taught Senior Software Engineer with ten years of engineering experience. He started his career working at the University of Arizona’s Language Learning Lab, before starting his own captive portal company. After moving to NYC and building software for several fashion companies, he joined Def Method in 2016 and has been providing programming, management, and consulting services. </p>
<p>Keith excels at understanding all parts of an application and ramping up quickly on new projects. He has experience leading engineering teams and coaching clients on development and agile best practices. </p>
<p>When he's not writing code, Keith likes to learn human languages, make puns, woodwork, ride bikes and find beautiful places to hike. </p>
</p>
</div>
<div class='languages-technologies'>
<p><strong>Languages & Technologies </strong> Ruby, Python, MySQL, RSpec, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, jQuery, SS3, MongoDB, Redis, jQuery, PHP, React.js, Heroku, Aurelia, Sinatra, Django, Postgres, AWS Services </p>
</div>
<div class='sample-projects'>
<ul>
<li>
<p><strong>Campaign Finance Technology</strong>: Led scaling efforts during the beginning of Covid-19 quarantine, when campaign finance technology became the only viable method for people to donate to NYC-based political campaigns.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Art Museum</strong>: Rebuilt three archive applications’ front-ends and created a standardized API interaction design. </p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Government Agency</strong>: Helped build the front-end of a flood risk calculator to compute insurance prices for all addresses in NYC’s 5 boroughs. Also helped refactor the calculator when FEMA updated their flood insurance rates.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Fashion-Tech Startup</strong>: Worked with the team to build the front-end of an E-commerce platform for preordering high fashion clothing and the admin area to editorialize any page. Keith managed the remote team in India and also built an isometric rendering engine based on Algolia and Mustache.js templates.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Flash Sale Startup Post-Acquisition</strong>: Completed overhaul of the front end of the site and the eventual integration of sale-affiliate reporting to the acquiring company's corporate APIs.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Government Contractor</strong>: Taught the engineering staff React.js and React best practices, and provided a roadmap for implementing React throughout the rest of the application.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Early Stage Startup</strong>: Build a custom captive portal to monetize commercial internet
connections </p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Mark Simpson -->
<div id='mark-info'>
<div class='hometown-location-education'>
<strong>Current Location</strong>: New York, NY <br>
<strong>Education</strong>: Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Worcester, MA<br>
</div>
<p><strong>Ask Me About: </strong>Test Driven Development, Agile Software Development, Clean Code, Refactoring, Handling Legacy Code</p>
<div class='github-linkedin-twitter'>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-simpson-00ba781" target="_blank">LinkedIn Profile</a> <br>
<a href="https://github.com/verdammelt" target="_blank">GitHub Profile</a> <br>
</div>
<div class='background'>
<p>Senior Software Engineer, Mark Simpson brings over 20 years of software development experience to Def Method. He
has been involved in software architecture and design, coaching and mentoring and development in numerous
environments, domains and team sizes. He has extensive experience in the design and implementation of diverse
technologies.</p>
</div>
<div class='languages-technologies'>
<p><strong>Languages & Technologies </strong>
Typescript,JavaScript, React.js, Redux, Angular.js, Clojure, Common Lisp, CSS3, Docker, Heroku, MongoDB, MySQL, Python, ReactiveX, Redis, Ruby
</div>
<div class='sample-projects'>
<p><strong>Projects</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><strong>Blockchain</strong>:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Worked closely with end-users and
product managers to implement back-office tools for managing
blockchain assets including the customer's own crypto-currency.</p></li>
<li><p>Learned programming languages and technologies (Go & Docker) on the
fly to get the needed work done with the client-team didn't have the
bandwidth to work on those parts.</p></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>High-end Real Estate</strong>:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Worked with client team to produce new version of broker facing property search application, while maintaining and integrating features from the old system.</p></li>
<li><p>Also consulted on Agile practices such as retrospectives and helped make them 'stick'.</p></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Options Volatility</strong>:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Joined team working to add features to existing application to make it useful/usable by a new set of users.</p></li>
<li><p>Learned/reacquainted languages/technologies on the fly to get the job done.</p></li>
<li><p>Learned, then taught, customer team how to test and write redux-saga code which was in the codebase but unfamiliar to current customer team.</p></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Logistics Company</strong>:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Consulted with team to reinforce Agile processes (regular retrospectives, more informative iteration planning meetings).</p></li>
<li><p>Configured management tool adhering to ITIL standards to maintain application environments and availability</p></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Ed-Tech Company</strong>:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Developed software for a mission critical detailed network discovery, device monitoring, topology visualization, and RCA tool</p></li>
<li><p>Worked with the client team to extend and maintain the application which helps postgraduate programs market to students by building flexible jQuery based web form plugins to gather student information and interest quickly and seamlessly.</p></li>
</ul>
<li>
<p><strong>B2B Data Centers</strong>:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Took over (unfinished) product from previous vendor and brought it to a state where an MVP could be released and produce useful information.</p></li>
<li><p> Worked with customer to narrow the MVP definition </p></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class='developer'>
<p><strong>When did you know that you wanted to be a developer?</strong>"Since I was very little I wanted to be a
'scientist' of some kind. Around the time I was in Junior High, Digital Equipment Corporation moved into my town -
part of the deal was that they'd donate computers to the school system. In 8th grade 'Industrial Arts' class we
were shown how to use one to write a simple Basic program (it was actually a VT52 networked with the
PDP-11(?) in the high school). Something about that dumb program got me hooked."</p>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Merziyah Poonawala -->
<div id='merziyah-info'>
<div class='hometown-location-education'>
<strong>Hometown</strong>: Houston, TX <br>
<strong>Current Location</strong>: South Brunswick, NJ <br>
<strong>Education</strong>: MBA - Management and Global Business, Rutgers University; BA - Computer Science, Rice University <br>
</div>
<div class='github-linkedin-twitter'>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/merziyahpoonawala" target="_blank">LinkedIn Profile</a> <br>
</div>
<div class='background'>
<p>Merziyah is a detail-oriented, multifaceted product manager with over 8 years of experience in Product Management. Prior to working as a PM, Merziyah was a software developer who found a knack for understanding stakeholder needs and communicating effectively as a liaison to engineering, design, and upper management. As such, she brings deep technical knowledge to her clients, along with her expert ability to find the root of a problem, scope a project, and deliver feasible results. At Def Method, Merziyah has worked on 14+ products focused on driving startups to their MVP. A generalist at heart, Merziyah has extensive experience with B2C and B2B products, across various industries, such as healthcare, finance, and consumer goods.</p>
</div>
<div class='developer'>
<p><strong>When did you know that you wanted to work in tech?</strong> "I have always been fascinated by computers starting back in the day when I installed Lotus Suits by feeding in 30 3.5" hard disks and learnt what software had to offer. Today it's the application of technology to solve basic human problems in unique and innovative ways that fascinates me." </p>
</div>
<div>
<p><strong>ON THE JOB</strong></p>
<p><strong>Balancing cost and value to prioritize clients’ needs</strong></p>
<p>On a government-run project working with the Campaign Finance Board (CFB), Merziyah worked within a fixed budget to maintain and enhance a platform used by campaigns to collect contributions. As a product experiencing increased user growth, there was a need to refactor and optimize the feature set to support the growing user base. To ensure that the optimizations would remain within the scope of the client’s budget, Merziyah critically evaluated the cost of addressing issues via support, versus optimizing the product in order to balance time and resources appropriately. Through the evaluations, she helped the client determine which opportunities needed allocation of engineering resources for a permanent solution and which issues were better to deprioritize.</p>
<p><strong>Experimentation to improve team performance</strong></p>
<p>Merziyah was asked to jump in on a project where the team was flustered, disorganized, and unable to deliver around on the set expectations. Unable to set realistic timelines, the engineers often scrambled to finish requested features, resulting in the production of non-prioritized and technically faulty code. Merziyah was able to quickly identify the root cause of the issues as lack of engineering involvement and lack of data for accurate estimation. Through continuous experimentation of agile team processes, such as weekly planning and grooming, regular retrospectives for team feedback, and collection of velocity, time tracking, and delivery date data, Merziyah increased the productivity of the team. These processes gave engineers the opportunity to be more hands on and committed to user stories, improving their motivation and ability to succeed. The data collected gave the team the ability to reflect on past work to better estimate future work. The process concluded with increased productivity due to happier engineers who were able to set the right delivery expectations with the stakeholder.</p>
<p><strong>Identification of core challenges to feasibly build a product</strong></p>
<p>A non-profit client was looking to build a new member center for their website that would allow their donors access to new features as well as the ability to manage their donations online. Although seemingly straightforward, the challenge was that the clients’ website operated on one CMS system, but the donation data was driven by a donor CRM system without a clear link of data between the two systems. Merziyah talked to different teams across the organization to better understand the nuance of how the systems were set up, how the data could be linked between the two, and what the technical challenges of doing so were. Applying her technical knowledge, Merziyah identified the required data exchange in order to present a solution to connect the online portal to the donor CMS system. Going above and beyond the fundamentals of developing a product roadmap, Merziyah took her role to the next level by identifying exactly where the challenges and considerations were before launching and building the product. In doing so, she mitigated the risk of losing donors by laying out the necessary product requirements in order to ensure a seamless integration between the donor’s online experience and client’s backend donor CRM.
</div>
<p><strong>HIGHLIGHTED SKILL ACROSS THE PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE</strong></p>
<strong>Creation</strong>
<ul>
<li>Asks critical questions to make stakeholders gain clarity and focus on what product they are really building and why</li>
<li>Designs focused user interviews for usability testing and target customer evaluation to validate fundamentals of the product</li>
<li>Understands core challenges of building a product, creating a clearer vision for the creation of the product</li>
<li>Has an evaluative eye for the success of a design</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Iteration</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Conducts experiments within the team to improve efficiency and productivity by understanding challenges that may be holding the team back and build processes that can optimize the workflow</li>
<li>Efficiently prioritizes and organizes backlog for successful iteration and development</li>
<li>Strategizes roadmap to quickly deliver core value features for early validation through user feedback</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Maintenance</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Strategically evaluates the cost and value of bug fixes to balance time and resources</li>
<li>Leverages analytics and business metrics to evaluate the need to return to iteration</li>
<li>Identifies the root cause of a problem to avoid wasting future costs on irrelevant or peripheral issues</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>KEY STRENGTHS</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Understands the user to balance user empathy and business strategy</li>
<li>Effectively communicates between across design, engineering, and stakeholders</li>
<li>Takes technical descriptions and breaks them down into layman’s terms</li>
<li>Takes the time to ensure all teams are on the same page and understand priorities</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>SKILLS</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Product management: Jira, Trello, Pivotal Tracker, etc.</li>
<li>Technical: SQL, Invision, Balsamiq, GitHub</li>
<li>Backlog prioritization</li>
<li>User story mapping</li>
<li>Roadmapping</li>
<li>Meeting facilitation</li>
<li>Communication across teams</li>
<li>Flexibility and adaptability to fill in gaps where needed</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>FIELDS OF EXPERIENCE</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Healthcare</li>
<li>Finance</li>
<li>Nonprofits</li>
<li>Government agency</li>
<li>B2C, B2B</li>
<li>Startups vs legacy enterprise systems</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- Michael Deertz -->
<div id='michael-info'>
<div class='hometown-location-education'>
<strong>Hometown</strong>: Palmer, NE <br>
<strong>Current Location</strong>: Queens, NY<br>
</div>
<div>
<p><strong>Ask Me About: </strong>Full-Stack Development, Test-Driven Development, Agile Software Sevelopment, Functional Design, Linux Administration</p>
</div>
<div class='github-linkedin-twitter'>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-d-2b9b8b15b" target="_blank">LinkedIn Profile</a> <br>
</div>
<div class='background'>
<p>Michael is a Senior Software Engineer with 12 years of experience in Full-Stack and native application development across all phases of the product life cycle. He has owned every part of the software development lifecycle and has designed and implemented the entire IT infrastructure for a growing company. Michael's experience includes building networks and servers, supporting end users, gathering requirements, designing, building, and deploying complete applications; implementing ERP systems; and plenty of troubleshooting. Michael loves Linux and Linux System Administration, as well as teaching and learning! </p>
</div>
<div class='languages-technologies'>
<p><strong>Languages & Technologies </strong> TypeScript, JavaScript, React, Redux, RxJS, Testing Library, Python, Django, Flask, C#, .NET, Node, HTML/CSS, Nginx, SQL, Linux, Kubernetes, Docker, Ruby, Rails </p>
</div>
<div>
<p><strong>Projects</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><p><strong>Campaign Finance Technology: </strong>Performed data maintenance for a campaign fundraising platform</p> </li>
<li><p><strong>Fashion E-commerce: </strong>Implemented product search for a children's fashion brand, while improving overall site performance by several times.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Delivery E-commerce: </strong>Developed tooling and services to enable ultra-fast product delivery from a variety of retail locations.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>FinTech: </strong>Developed user interface for a derivatives trading platform.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Sports Team Management: </strong>Built out a front-end web application for managing youth sports teams</p></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class='work-in-tech'>
<p><strong>When did you know that you wanted to work in the tech space?</strong> "When I was young, my family had a
Commodore 64. I spent hours playing games and fumbling around with BASIC. Then, as a teenager, I discovered Linux
and became fascinated with how an operating system is constructed, and with the idea of software developed in the
open, as a community."</p>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Paul Ort -->
<div id='paul-info'>
<div class='hometown-location-education'>
<strong>Current Location</strong>: New York, NY <br>
<strong>Education</strong>: B.A. Computer Science, Thomas Edison State College<br>
</div>
<div class='github-linkedin-twitter'>
<a href="https://github.com/paulstefanort" target="_blank">GitHub Profile</a> <br>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulstefanort/" target="_blank">LinkedIn Profile</a> <br>
</div>
<div class='background'>
<p>Paul is an engineer, musician, and bibliophile. He is well-versed in web and mobile development and is
committed to software craftsmanship and professionalism with a determination to build technical excellence and
business value. Currently, he is working primarily with Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, React, PostgreSQL, Python,
Django, Objective-C, Swift, and related technologies.</p>
</div>
<div class='developer'>
<p><strong>When did you know that you wanted to be a developer?</strong> "I was first introduced to programming
twenty years ago at the age of 7 with QBASIC on a DOS laptop, typing and modifying short programs published in
Boys’ Quest Magazine (<a target="_blank"
href="http://funforkidzmagazines.com/back-issues?cat=5&limit=all">http://funforkidzmagazines.com/back-issues?cat=5&limit=all</a>).
</p>
<p>Software’s promise of creating something purely from one’s imagination was thrilling. It still is. The excitement
of transforming empty text files into functioning systems has been unparalleled for me."</p>
</div>
<div class='languages-technologies'>
<p><strong>Languages & Technologies </strong><Ruby> <Python> <Java> <PostgreSQL>
<RSpec> <Ruby on Rails> <JavaScript> <Objective-C> <C> <C#>
<jQuery> <Backbone.js> <Heroku> <Swift> <React.js></p>
</div>
<div class='sample-projects'>
<ul>
<li>
<p><strong>Case Management System for Human Services</strong>: Lead a team to meet SOW feature requirements and
refactored Javascript to pay down technical debt and allow faster new feature delivery</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Mobile Wallet Software</strong>: Developed mobile payment processing tools, administrative
portals, custom analytics processes, and APIs for web and mobile application</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Educational Nonprofit</strong>: Built enterprise information systems for document management/delivery
and text analysis tools </p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Stephen Petrina -->
<div id='stephen-info'>
<div class='hometown-location-education'>
<strong>Hometown</strong>: Yonkers, NY <br>
<strong>Current Location</strong>: White Plains, NY <br>
<strong>Education</strong>: Bachelor of Science, IT Management and Finance, State University of New York At Albany<br>
</div>
<div>
<p><strong>Ask Me About: </strong>Front-end Development, Back-end Development, iOS App Development, Troubleshooting, Building An MVP, How to Communicate with your Engineers</p>
</div>
<div class='github-linkedin-twitter'>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-petrina-929a4087/" target="_blank">LinkedIn Profile</a> <br>
</div>
<div class='background'>
<p> Steve is an experienced software engineer with over a decade of professional experience in full-stack development. He takes an approach to thoroughly understand the business side of a product before diving into development. In his spare time, Steve enjoys hiking, cooking, working on digital art and music creation, reading, and game development.</p>
</div>
<div class='languages-technologies'>
<p><strong>Languages & Technologies </strong> Java, Javascript, iOS, Swift, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Ruby, Rails, Kotlin, Python</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><strong>Projects</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><p><strong>Healthcare: </strong> Developed an iOS application in Swift with Rails API and a React administrative interface from scratch.</p> </li>
<li><p><strong>Media and Technology Company: </strong>Upgraded a significantly outdated Rails application to a more modern state and set up the application deployment on a new infrastructure.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Social Media Startup iOS application: </strong>Built out features for an iOS application using Swift; focused on onboarding, image sharing, and topic subscription flows.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Government Agency: </strong> Developed features for and supported a campaign-finance web application, working with Rails and PostgreSQL. </p></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class='developer'>
<p><strong>When did you know that you wanted to be a developer?</strong> "My interest first began when I was 10,
when my parents brought home our first computer (Gateway 2000). I started by exploring every folder I could
navigate through looking for games, pictures, and sound files to play with. Over time, I eventually started
creating my own games, artwork, and audio, as well as teaching myself programming languages. The ability to
create and do anything I could dream up is what drew me in and keeps me interested and active to this day."</p>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Tom Van Dort -->
<div id='tom-info'>
<div class='hometown-location-education'>
<strong>Hometown:</strong> Howell, NJ <br>
<strong>Current Location:</strong> Hoboken, NJ <br>
<strong>Education:</strong> A.S. Computer Science from Brookdale Community College<br>
<strong>Ask Me About:</strong>Keeping abstractions simple, the .NET Platform, tools to maintain your JavaScript and TypeScript code bases, constructing a better developer tooling experience, and developer setups that work across multiple platforms.
</div>
<div class='github-linkedin-twitter'>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-van-dort-885b0892/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">LinkedIn Profile</a> <br>
<a href="https://github.com/tvandort" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">GitHub Profile</a>
</div>
<div class='background'>
<p>
Tom started working in the software industry in 2012. Between 2012 and 2015 Tom worked on Windows desktop applications and transitioned into a Full Stack developer in 2015.