As I said in my last post, it might be nice for you to know about the baggage I carry and the places I already visited. So, this post will be my introduction to tell you my background, so we can start this journey with more context.

My first contact with web development was on my high school, as I studied in an institute that offered technical courses along with the basic education. I choose the Informatics course from two other options: Farming or Tourism. The classes were focused on programming (with Pascal!) but we also had hardware and network contents.

On my last year, 2011, we had two classes that I got passionate about Web programming and Web design. Most of my colleagues didn’t like it and even cheated on the final projects, but I loved it! Made my projects with full commitment and got really excited to have something I liked that I could do well, unlike the other programming classes that I couldn’t watch the magic happening the same way.

The time to choose a career came, and I never had anything in mind (besides being a ballerina when I was little). My brother was persuing a servers management career and had a degree on Internet Systems, so when I told him I liked the Web development class in my technical course, he knew the same degree would be right for me.

I started college in 2013 with a great base on programming that made it easy to get an internship early on my first semester. I was very lucky to find a great company and have a good mentor, that showed me how amazing working with CSS and Javascript was. My job was to develop institutional websites, and when I went from intern to officially hired, I began to also develop Magento themes.

My next stop was in a marketing agency, in 2014, where I continued to develop institutional websites and started to reluctantly work with WordPress too. Our clients were more refined, so I got to be part of different and beautiful projects. Cultivating, even more, my design vein. But also started to develop more complex websites and systems, diving in the backend area.

2015 came with my dream opportunity! I always wanted to study abroad so when I got a scholarship from a competitive governmental program (Science Without Borders) to study part of my degree in the USA, it was surreal. After long months of anxiety, I got accepted by the New Jersey Institute of Technology and in August of that year, I started my 9 months journey there.

The dynamic of an American university is really different from a Brazilian one. The infrastructure, the integration events, the edge technologies class options, there were so many amazing things going on all the time. It was an incredible opportunity to open my mind and eyes to different cultures, problems, getting out of my comfort zone and having to adapt to a different reality. And it also made me value more my country and the great things we have in Brazil. I very much recommend everyone to have an exchange experience.

When I got back to Brazil in 2016, I started working in a farmaceutical software company, and took care of all the web products they have integrated with the main software: clients e-commerce, delivery apps and developed a new one, an integration with a communication app. I was a great experience to apply and improve all the knowledge I was getting during my degree, exchange and professional life.

Along with my daily job and nightly college, I was freelancing and developing Magento stores and WordPress websites as I learned to use these platforms getting the best of them and making my clients lives easier. At some point in 2017, I realized I needed a change and decided to leave my job and pursue the full freelance life. As I was never comfortable taking big risks, I first got a monthly contract with the marketing agency I worked previously, having some stability working remotely to the projects they had, but also having time to work with the freelance ones I would get.

Meanwhile, I finished my college classes and was only needing to do my senior project to graduate. I also moved to another city and state. It was a crazy time and I started to have second thoughts on my career, on being a woman in technology, how much I needed to prove myself, how behind I was, how few technologies I knew, a complete crisis. So I decided I needed to improve myself and choose to learn a new technology doing my senior project.

I took an events application project I started with an American friend and developed it from scratch using React Native. It wasn’t a good idea. It was way harder then I thought it would be and I had to re-do it in the middle. But I did it, I finished it and got a great grade. Graduated with honors in 2018 and closed that chapter of my life with a sense of duty fulfilled.

After all the madness that year was I needed some peace and having more stability was the way I decided to do it. I got a job on an inbound marketing agency and dived into the SEO world, developing websites, landing pages and blogs focused on strategic content and technics to improve our clients’ performance and visibility on the web.

Along with it, I am still doing my freelancing projects and focusing on improving my abilities so I can search for another abroad opportunity. Once you open the door to traveling and multicultural experiences, you can never close it again.

Now that you know my baggage I think we are ready to start this journey together. Let’s do this!

Ana.