I have a working history based on listening to and understanding people — what they want, how they can get there, where the hurdles are. I began as an artist with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, and luck has taken me around the world and into the IT industry where I learnt the foundation of my role was asking the right questions and learning what the user actually wanted. Transitioning into web design allows me to bring all my life experiences together to apply them professionally.

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I started playing around making websites as a kid, living on an isolated farm in the Waikato and just wanting to communicate with anyone I wasn't related to. Surprisingly, computers were a big part of my childhood — as much as riding horses and working on the farm was. Being a horse mad teenager, it's probably a good thing I don't remember any of my usernames to Geocities, Angelfire, and the other free web hosting websites.

My family moved to the South Island in 2003, and in 2009 I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design, at their Christchurch campus. I don't know if anything can prepare you to work collaboratively and take on criticism like an arts degree — once a week, presenting your concept to your peers and tutors, to have them rip it all apart in the most constructive way possible. I supported myself through school, and after, working in retail and hospitality; it wasn't until I ended up living in Oxford, UK, on my O.E that I "fell" into an IT role. I got a temp role as a Mobiles Administrator, realised that navigating my way around computers and mobiles felt like second nature and so stayed on in a permanent role on the a second tier mobiles helpdesk where I enjoyed taking on extra responsibility.

My employers efforts to sponsor me to stay on in the UK didn't work out, and I returned to Christchurch. I got work in another helpdesk type role but with more system administration responsibilities and a heavy emphasis on staff training. Public speaking has never been my forte, but like anything, I threw myself into it and enjoyed the user interactions — interviewing, finding out what people needed, what the end goal was, and how they could achieve that with as little friction as possible. I ended up preferring the training side of the role, as I started to realise that I didn't want to work on a helpdesk anymore; at home, I found the Codecademy website and started the journey to learn to code.

2014 presented a once in a lifetime opportunity to move to Japan as my partner was offered a contract playing rugby. Within a month of receiving the offer, we had sold off the majority of our belongings, stored the bits we couldn't bear to part with, and were in our apartment in Nagoya. I didn't speak Japanese, so got work as a preschool teacher in an English International School — I had to land on my feet running when I was given the responsibility of a class of under 2 year olds with no training or existing curriculum to learn from. While I was able to measure my success by students wanting to come to school, having the trust of the parents, and the appreciation from the next-level-up teacher, teaching was definitely not going to be a career choice for me. It did however teach me that effective communication is not just with our words, especially when we don't share the same words, and I came out of this as a more empathetic team member. But most of all, I now know that no matter how over my head I feel in a role, I can, and will, succeed.

Throughout the three years in Japan, I would get up early before work to fit in a couple hours learning to code. On the weekends, I was dabbling in jQuery, python, django, and postgreSQL, attending online seminars, chatting over Hangouts with professionals in the US to get more tutoring. And to take a break, I was sketching, painting, and building up my design knowledge base. The school year in Japan finishes at the end of March, so I finished teaching for good (with more than a few teary goodbyes) in March, 2017. I threw myself into learning front-end development and design full time, and at the end of July 2017, I returned to Christchurch with the goal of starting my career in web design and development.