About Hi, I'm Ella.

Following my graduation from Clark, I took a position as a Software Engineering Fellow with the United States Digital Corps. USDC is a full-time 2 year early-career technologist opportunity to create a government that better serves the American public. The intent of the program was to place each fellow at an agency working on high-impact projects to improve the digital maturity of government services. At the time I begun, I was very excited to be joining a supportive community that was focused on and aligned with my values of more accessibility and diversity in the tech field.

I was placed on a team at the United States Geological Survey, within their Water Mission Area. In my six months there, I worked on internet water data portals, including the Water Quality Portal and the National Groundwater Monitoring Network to serve data about our nation's water resources, products that are often used by researchers, scientists, environmentalists, as well as politicians to shape our nation's regulations and policies. My work as a full-stack engineer, on a small team with two other developers, helped me learn a lot, and develop as a technologist in my first post-school role. My tasks ranged from frontend UI updates, to website architecture and design modernization efforts, to research on technology options, and cloud deployment processes. Working in civic tech often means navigating legacy tech stacks, and years of code being built upon outdated code and system styles, and I quickly became adept at navigating the various projects and their stacks and the quirks that came with their system design.

In addition to my work at USGS, the fellowship had a huge focus on prioritizing our individual growth, both professionally and personally, something I can attest to from my time. With regular learning and development sessions, supporting individual learning, and opportunities to explore other interests, I found myself constantly learning and working with my peers on different issues. This included working groups I joined, and time spent researching and presenting on topics like the history of healthcare policy in the US from the colonial era to today, to cross-track (between engineers, product managers, cybersecurity analysts, and designers) collaboration to explore solutions to improve communications between the government and the public. My time in this role has been invaluable for my development professionally and personally. Working for the American public in this way has been an honor and something I have loved to do, and I know I walk away from the role better for it.

My Fields

Why I Do What I Do

The first comment I often get after being asked what I am studying is "huh, computer science and political science are completely unrelated."

While at first glance, computer science and political science seem to share no similarities, at a closer look, like many things, connections can be drawn. I am interested in cybersecurity topics of data privacy, cyber law, and cyber warfare. In political science, I am interested in voter rights, government procedures, and legal justice. As our world becomes increasingly more online, those issues of cybersecurity become more prevalent in our politics and will begin to affect the rights of individuals.

Throughout my courses so far, I have been able to combine my interests in my research and projects, analyzing political data through programs I designed, and discussing the impact of the cyber laws we have so far, and how they need to be adapted as technology advances. My research has involved analyzing the data privacy regulations of various international organizations, as well as the impacts AI has had and will continue to have on US national security concerns and international, global relations.

I am a quick learner, with a strong self-motivation and level-headed management of my work when under pressure or in stressful situations. I excel in my ability to work independently, and with limited direction, but also enjoy and thrive working in a team environment. I have strong communication skills with both coworkers and customers, skills I have developed and strengthened in my time in customer service.

A Few More Words About Myself

Most recently in my final year at Clark I took on a leadership position as Vice President of Clark Competitive Computing Club (C4). This club is one of the tech focused clubs on campus. Our goal was to create a community amongst computer science students at Clark, supporting students throughout the program and through their career searches. We held many different events, from panels, to workshops, to student get-togethers. We were also very passionate about making computer science more diverse and accessible for different groups, to this end we regularly held outreach events to teach coding to young students in the Worcester community, partnering with other Clark clubs, and other events (our "Code@Clark" series) to help members of the Clark community become more comfortable with tech skills. When I stepped into the role, I knew one of the areas I wanted to work on was community outreach. My interest started in CS because of a required coding class in high school and a field trip to IBM to see their programs focusing on women in tech. From that moment, everything clicked and I knew what I wanted. All it takes is one moment to introduce the right kid to the right field, and my hope was that by exposing kids in Worcester to tech, through our outreach events, teaching coding through Lego Education Robot kits, that at least person would find something they really loved. The hope also was that with our E-Board of mostly women, and people of color, that these kids could see themselves in this field and see a future doing this. This is an idea I also tried to carry into the rest of our club events on campus, hoping to bring more women and people of color into the major, and show them that if I can do it, succeed, and hold leadership, that they could too. One of our major events we held every semester is our 48-hour hackathons. The hackathons we hosted while I was Vice President were major successes, garnering projects that have been promoted around campus as actionable solutions, and gaining much more attention and praise from across campus for our small, but mighty, computer science department.