About#

I’m Nicole, welcome to my cloud portfolio!

In short, I got started in engineering in high school. At the time I wanted to become a orchestral musician and I did everything under the sun relating to music. When a Girls Who Code program started, I wanted to join, but I was met with opposition.

You don’t have time, you can’t learn programming

And I stayed there and made my case with the instructor proclaiming that I will make time.

I ended up finishing the entire program within 3 months. I sat in on the Robotics class during my lunch periods to work on the programming modules and the teacher saw how passionate I was about solving problems and how much I loved programming. He honored me as the Lead Programmer for our First Robotics Competition Team 2070 (eventually also becoming Captain). As I was doing the electrical work alongside programming in Java, which sparked my interest in Computer Engineering as my major, I developed a greater understanding of systems as a whole rather than as individual parts. I appreciate Ries and Acosta for giving me so many opportunities and encouraging me to pursue engineering.

I started in engineering because I wanted to prove that I could do it and I stayed because I loved coming up with creative solutions.

I worked simultaneously as a DevOps Engineer for SPHERE Technology Solutions under Hap Wiggins while finishing my degree at Stevens Institute of Technology. I learned so much, not just how to develop code, but how to manage, build, package, and ship it. I’ve had so many amazing mentors and team members over the years, it was amazing to learn from them and alongside them. During one of my final projects at Stevens, I architected a simple web-app in AWS and I fell in love with cloud computing. There are so many benefits, resources, and tools to basically create anything you want. Following my graduation, I studied and built projects to support my AWS learning, and I got my first certification: AWS Cloud Practitioner! Since obtaining my certification and completing my portfolio, I was able to work on designing a new product at SPHERE. I’m grateful that I was given such an immense privilege to own the new architecture.

This portfolio was built as my version of the AWS Cloud Resume Challenge by Forrest Brazeal, please enjoy and don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions!