The difference between a beginning and an ending is the direction your facing.

Hello and welcome to this Oregon State computer science capstone journey!  I have no idea where it will take us, but I’m glad you’re here for the ride. Really though, projects haven’t been assigned yet, so I’m as in the dark as you.  Since we both know very little about the journey that is about to begin, I figure we can get up to speed on the journey that got us… ok ok… got me here.

First things first, my name is Ren and I currently live in Northern Virginia about 15 miles outside of Washington, DC.  My family has been in the DC suburbs since my abuelo immigrated here from Peru with my mom and the rest of the family, so he could work on computer hardware at the Pentagon in the 60’s. I’ve also got programmers and electronic engineers on my dad’s side too.  I guess you could say I’m going into the family business.

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by and interested in performance and human potential and that passion has been a thread in my professional life from the start. Currently, I work as an organization development facilitator, coach and consultant which is a fancy way of saying I invite teams to play with a purpose, I challenge leaders to be more nimble in their approach and thinking, and most importantly, I save you from meetings that should have been emails.

I have been doing that work for longer than I’d like to admit, but along the way I have also worked in multiple other industries.  The most recent position I held was the head coach and team manager of a youth rock climbing program with 4 levels, 10 coaches, and about 100 youth athletes with ages from 7-17 years old.  And yes, if you got the reference in the title of the blog and you recognize the “BELIEVE” sign at the top of the home page, you may suspect my coaching style was a lot like Ted Lasso’s and you wouldn’t be wrong. If we are going to get right down to it though, my coaching style may have been like Ted, but I had the expressive range of Roy Kent.  My kickball game is also quite similar to Roy Kent’s “He’s here! He’s there! He’s every…”. Well, you get the idea. If you haven’t seen Ted Lasso, make it happen – you won’t be sorry.

Other fields I have worked in over the include personal training and massage therapy. I’ve also done some basic web development for a couple local small businesses which leads us to how I got to this computer science program.  In my first bachelors degree, I studied business with a focus on organization development and learning as well as exercise science. In that program, I also took a web development and design course.  I was surprised by how much I liked it and offered to help out a few small businesses mostly with updates and a few small feature redesigns after I graduated. After that, I started to dabble in using Google Apps Script to send automated email reminders for my business, back before the schedule email option was a thing in Gmail.  I really enjoyed the programming aspects of that project.

Fast forward a few years and I started to hear about the need for more representation in the tech industry.  I thought well I enjoyed the programming work I’ve done, I love problem solving, and it sounds like there’s a need for folks like me – a queer, non-binary kid of a Peruvian immigrant with a variety of leadership and professional experiences. Maybe I should consider it.

I did and that decision to pursue a career in tech led me to OSU which brings me here to you, at the start of this OSU capstone journey. I’m looking forward to discovering what lies ahead and sharing those hard learned morsels and maybe some easily learned ones too.

Until the next post, be a goldfish.