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Welcome! And thanks for visiting.

In 2016, with a Master's degree in Teaching English as a Second/Foreign Language and almost eight years in the teaching field, I decided to transition into a career in software development.

 

Through the process of learning to code, I was delighted to discover the many analogies between learning human languages and learning programming languages, and have since spoken and written extensively on this topic.

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Over the last few years, I've had a ton of fun improving my programming skills, as well as advocating for and supporting folks who are trying to make the transition into technology careers. I truly believe that with sufficient time, motivation, and support from the community, anybody can learn how to code and become a software developer.

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I've also become passionate about applying evidence-based science to help software teams learn, work, and thrive. I've been using my background in second language acquisition, language-learning pedagogy, and classroom-based research to develop innovative workshops, interventions, and curricula that promote technical upskilling and behavior change on software teams.

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I enjoy contributing to the engineering community through writing articles, guesting on podcasts, and giving conference talks. My favorite topics are those that aim to demystify empirical research on software teams for those best equipped to utilize its insights.

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When I'm not doing the above, I'm probably curled up with a book, or learning something new, or (slowly) running up hills in the Colorado Rockies, or combing the beach in Bandon, OR, or working on my golf swing, or beating my husband at ping pong.

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Feel free to get in touch, especially if you need someone to convince you that you, too, can successfully transition into a career in computer programming. If I could do it, you can do it.

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Following are research, presentations, articles, webinars, podcasts and interviews published and hosted externally:

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> Empirical Research

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> Conference Presentations

  • "I Didn't Grow up Speaking Code": GitHub Copilot as a Programming-as-a-Second-Language Tool" (Monki Gras 2024)

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> Articles

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> Podcasts

 

> Webinars

 

> Interviews

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> Miscellany

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