In Hackbright Academy’s immersive and rigorous 12-week full-time Software Engineering Program, students build impressive web apps in a manner of weeks! Get ready to be inspired by these amazing women and their creations ranging from micro-donation apps to geo-location hiking trail maps that showcase their unique personalities.
Ada Cohort: December 2017
Amy Sowash
Amy became enamored with the problem solving process of software programming while taking a few C++ classes at Regis University in Denver. Since retiring from her career as a World Champion athlete in International Shooting, Amy is excited to apply her tenacious spirit to programming in a primarily backend or full stack engineering role. She is particularly passionate about test driven development and the study of algorithms. She loves working on the nitty-gritty steps of logic that make a program great at the most basic level. The world is changing at a feverish pace and Amy wants to help drive those changes through high quality technology.
Hackbright Project: Weather to Wander
Weather to Wander is a travel planning app that equips users with two different ways to plot their next vacation. First, the app provides monthly weather forecasts for world cities, allowing a user to view weather predictions during their selected month of travel. Each city has a marker displaying the relevant weather data with an easily identifiable color coded temperature. While a user is logged in, they can save searches to their profile. Because traveling home is often the worst part of a trip, Weather to Wander minimizes suffering by providing a route recommendation with the shortest possible flight home. When users select cities from their saved searches to plan a vacation, the recommended route is displayed on the page.
Technology Stack:
Flask, PostgreSQL, jQuery, SQLAlchemy, bcrypt, JSON, GeoPhy, HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, Python, AJAX, Jinja
APIs Used:
Dark Sky, Google Maps
C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:
Amy’s tech experience started at Regis University in Denver where she completed several computer science and math courses, including C++ Data and Control Structures courses, discrete mathematics, and ethics in computer science. She also completed the Codecademy courses in Python and most of the Ruby course prior to Hackbright. While coaching and competing, Amy worked with the SCATT infrared sensor system for improved feedback and data in Olympic style shooting.
Audrey Hart
Audrey’s educational background was in Fine Arts, but she found herself developing a career in the Biotech industry as a Clinical Data Manager after school. After working in this role for several years, she discovered that the aspects of her job that she enjoyed the most were problem-solving, anything relating to database build and testing, and the collaboration with the statistical programming team. At this realization, she began investigating software engineering and delving into online coding courses which prompted her decision to pursue a career in the field, beginning with attending Hackbright. She is excited to transition into the tech industry as a software engineer, combining her love of data, problem-solving, and creativity.
Hackbright Project: Goal.spirE
A collaborative goal tracking web app that allows users to track their goal completion rates and share goals with their friends. Goal.spirE is designed to provide a platform where friends can motivate one another while tracking their own progress on personal goals.
Technology Stack:
Python, Flask, SQLAlchemy, PostgreSQL, JavaScript, jQuery, HTML, CSS
C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:
– Before enrolling in the Software Engineering Program, Audrey took the Hackbright Prep Course, completed self learning with courses on Udemy and Codecademy, and studied some SAS – software developed by the SAS Institute for advanced analytics, multivariate analyses, business intelligence, data management, and predictive analytics.
Becca Rosenthal
Becca is a quick, yet deep thinker who constantly looks for new problems to explore from many viewpoints. An Oakland native, she earned a B.A. in Middle East Studies from Claremont McKenna and then moved to Jackson, MS for a Jewish Education Fellowship. Her love of immersive learning helped her hone her skills as a societal translator who communicates effectively across ideological and cultural gaps. Ask her about it! Looking for a new challenge, she moved back to the Bay hoping for a job that wouldn’t be automated. She enrolled in Hackbright’s Prep Course, began the full-time Software Engineering Program soon after, and loves the work. She is excited for opportunities to work with both technical and non-technical teams to develop creative solutions to complicated problems.
Hackbright Project: Despair Change
Despair Change was born when Becca’s desire to donate $1.00 to the ACLU during times of despair was trumped by the length of the donation form on their website. It was too much hassle for a dollar.
Despair Change integrates PayPal to streamline the micro-donation process and helps people feel good about making small donations. With a few clicks, people can donate to their favorite organizations, amplify their impact by referring their friends to do the same, and see stats, charts, and graphs that show their donations as a part of a larger collective whole. Users can change their default donation amount, adjust which organization shows up front and center on the donation page, and see their donation history sorted by organization and date.
Technology Stack:
Python, JavaScript (AJAX, JSON), HTML, CSS, SQL, Flask, jQuery, Bootstrap, Jinja, PostgreSQL, bcrypt, charts.js
APIs Used:
PayPal REST API
C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:
Becca began to learn Python, HTML, and CSS from various online tutorials. She then took the Hackbright Prep Course, during which she built a blackjack game before a final project was even assigned.
Chloe Stamper
Chloe is a former hardware engineer making a career transition into software engineering. While she enjoyed her work in hardware, the problem-solving and design aspects of programming have always appealed to her. Prior to Hackbright, she took a number of online courses and self-taught from books, focusing on art and hardware oriented languages such as SuperCollider, Processing, Max MSP/Jitter, and Arduino. In the future, Chloe hopes to connect with an established company or startup in the role of full-stack developer, eventually marrying her skills in hardware with software to create elegant embedded devices.
Hackbright Project: Virtual ANS
For her Hackbright project, Chloe created a virtual model of the ANS Synthesizer, a Soviet era visual synthesizer which translates images into sound. As there is only one ANS synthesizer in existence, she created an accessible simulation. Using the Python Pillow library to analyze pixel data, and Flocking, a generative audio synthesis library for JavaScript, the Virtual ANS enables users to draw or upload images and produce sonic compositions based on their visual characteristics. Uploaded images are moderated using the SightEngine API in order to reduce inappropriate content provide content approporiate for all ages of users. Registered users are able to upload images, save drawings, and favorite images in a public image library for faster access and playback.
Technology Stack:
Python, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, Flask, jQuery, AJAX, Bootstrap, Jinja, Flocking, Pillow PIL, bcrypt
APIs Used:
SightEngine API
C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:
Udemy: The Complete Web Developer Course, Rob Percival. Codecademy: Learn SQL, Learn JavaScript. FutureLearn: Creative Coding, Monash University. FutureLearn: Learn to Code for Data Analysis, The Open University. FutureLearn: Introduction to Cyber Security, The Open University. Arduino.
Hallie Leonhardy
Hallie came to Hackbright after receiving her B.A. in Astrophysics from UC Berkeley. Prior to this, she worked both at the SF Zoo and as a student lab assistant for the Physics and Astronomy departments at City College of San Francisco. She was introduced to coding while pursuing her degree, mostly during a Radio Astronomy lab class. Wanting to gain a solid foundation in programming, she decided to take the Hackbright Prep Course, which inspired her to continue on to the full-time Software Engineering Program. Hallie is very excited about becoming a software engineer and hopes to focus on back-end development.
Hackbright Project: Sun Setup
While every sunset is beautiful, some can be overwhelmingly more fantastic than others. Sun Setup uses specific cloud forecast information from aviation weather reports to give the user a predictive description about how good the sunset will look for any given location. Sun Setup also looks at forecasts from several nearby airports and gives each airport location a rating for sunset quality. A recommendation is then given to the user of the location with the highest rated sunset prediction.
Technology Stack:
Python, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, Flask, Bootstrap, jQuery, Jinja, SQLAlchemy, GeoAlchemy, PostgreSQL, PostGIS, datetime, timezonefinder, pytz
APIs Used:
CheckWX, Sunrise-Sunset, Google Maps
C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:
Hackbright Prep Course
Inhye Baik
Inhye Baik is an epidemiologist and software engineer. She studied Public Health at Johns Hopkins and Harvard where she learned statistical programming and health surveillance. Additionally, she has done research for the Maryland Dept. of Health, MIT Sloan School of Management, and nonprofits. Her background in statistical programming got her into Python programming and subsequently Hackbright. In her spare time, Inhye is a college admissions consultant and GED tutor for at-risk youth. Her favorite languages are Python, Ruby, Stata, and Korean.
Hackbright Project: Keep in Touch
Keep in Touch automates keeping in touch by emailing and texting contacts on your behalf, using the SendGrid and Twilio APIs, respectively. Facebook OAuth registration imports Facebook friends/family as contacts to the database. Users can schedule messages ahead of time for contacts. Messages can be original or from Keep in Touch’s list of scraped birthday, thank you, and follow-up messages. A schedule function emails and texts: (1) messages to contacts from the user on the given date, and (2) reminders for upcoming events to users to double-check messages. Users can confirm and edit their messages via SMS, configured to update the database.
Technology Stack:
Python, JavaScript, Flask, SQLAlchemy, jQuery, AJAX, bcrypt, OAuth, threading, Bootstrap, HTML/CSS, Scrapy, Masonry
APIs Used:
SendGrid, Twilio, Facebook OAuth
C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:
Inhye Baik was the lead statistician and SAS programmer for the U.S. Coast Guard Life Jacket Study (2015). She has implemented factor analyses, survey design, meta analyses, statistical modeling, model validation, and machine learning for large datasets in SAS, Stata, R, SQL; and built Ruby/Rails apps. Outside of academia, she was a data analyst for non-profits and startups.
Jessica Brock
Before Hackbright, Jessica worked as a database administrator and database engineer focusing on performance issues and building new features for client applications. Jessica came to Hackbright to broaden her software engineering skills. One of things Jessica enjoys about software engineering is building things without getting her hands dirty. Jessica is excited to combine her previous experiences with databases and her new skills in software engineering and looks forward to becoming either a backend or full stack developer.
Hackbright Project: BioBreak
BioBreak allows you to search for public restrooms – a topic that has been in the news lately. This app is geared towards three populations: anyone needing a gender neutral bathroom, those with disabilities that need an accessible bathroom, and people with a small child that need a bathroom with a changing table.
Technology Stack:
Python and Flask, JavaScript, jQuery, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, GeoAlchemy2, pandas
APIs Used:
Refuge Restrooms, Google Maps & Places, OAuth2
C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:
Jessica has several years of experience in managing databases and building backend applications that interact with disparate data sources. Jessica also has experience in shell scripting and Linux administrative duties, such as monitoring and reporting on system issues.
Lindsay Kroyer
Lindsay holds a J.D. from Columbia Law School and a B.A. in English from Colgate University. Before joining Hackbright, she worked as a corporate associate at Proskauer practicing private investment funds transactional law. Prior to that she worked in-house at J.P. Morgan Assessment Management with a focus on cross border transactions. She is certified to practice law in New York State. While she still enjoys writing words, Lindsay discovered her passion for writing code after taking a CS course online. She quickly became inspired by the potential for automation around her. She now hopes to build on her love of problem solving to develop new technologies that meet complex business needs.
Hackbright Project: Lglease
Lglease is a web application that allows users to upload a legal document and autogenerate a response document. The uploaded document is processed via optical character recognition (textract, using Tesseract), parsed with a natural language processing library (TextBlob), and indexed into an enterprise search engine (Elasticsearch). Users may customize their responses by selecting among legal arguments to include. Users may also generate a legal document by inputting custom data into the API. All documents are generated as MS word documents (Python-docx). Case status is displayed in an enterprise-style dashboard (jQuery), and case notes are stored in the user’s local web storage.
Technology Stack:
Python, JavaScript (AJAX, JSON), HTML, CSS, SQL, Flask, jQuery, Bootstrap, Jinja, SQLAlchemy, RegEx, textract, TextBlob, Python-docx, Chart.js
APIs Used:
Elasticsearch, Google Maps, Github OAuth
C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:
Lindsay has completed MITx: 6.00.1x: “Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python” on edX.org. She has also written about web scraping compliance procedures for hedge fund managers for the Hedge Fund Law Report.
Lisa Casner
As a math major from the University of Michigan with actuarial experience, Lisa has always had a love for solving complex problems, logic challenges, probability, and automation. She has been automating her task work with VBA and SQL since her first job, but it was her exposure to engineering while in operations and product roles at Zenefits that made her realize she wanted to code full time. There, she experienced what it was like to investigate the codebase for bug root causes, and open pull requests for basic bug fixes. She is excited to further develop her skills in her everyday work as a programmer.
Hackbright Project: Liar’s Dice
A web-app of the bidding dice game, the Liar’s Dice app is a game where a player is matched against up to 5 opponents with bidding AI. A user can choose to create a new game or return to a game in progress – games can always be accessed at the stage in which they were left. The player’s opponents have 3 varying attributes, calculated using the NumPy library, that impact their bidding strategy. The opponent AI is based off of a bidding algorithm built with Python and the SciPy library, that combines their attributes with the probabilities of their move options to generate a bid selection. If the player is having trouble deciding what bid to make, they can refer to a table of bidding probabilities, calculated using the SciPy library.
Technology Stack:
Python, Flask, SQLAlchemy, PostgreSQL, Jinja, AJAX, JavaScript, jQuery, Bootstrap, HTML, CSS, Chart.js, NumPy, SciPy, Selenium
C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:
Prior experience includes SQL, VBA, and some Java and Python. Python certifications include Programming for Everybody and Python Data Structures on Coursera.
Marie Reed
Before Hackbright, Marie was a tech integration coach for elementary school teachers and a science educator for elementary aged children. As a tech integration coach, Marie hosted Hour of Code at her schools and quickly wanted to be able to help students learn how to code. This led Marie to begin teaching herself how to code and eventually pursuing software engineering full-time. She continues to enjoy coding and hopes to combine her love for teaching and programming to bring high quality tools that enable teachers and learners to acquire, teach, and spread valuable information and skills.
Hackbright Project: Blog DeFog
Blog DeFog is the media platform that your brain deserves. This simple and streamlined RSS feed aggregator removes the stimulating and manipulative adds and styling commonly found on many blog and news sites. Articles are presented to the user fully sanitized, in a uniform, calming format, all in one place. Blog DeFog saves time, reduces mental load, and breaks the feedback loop for destructive habits.
Technology Stack:
Flask, Jinja, CSS, Bootstrap, HTML, AJAX, JSON, jQuery, JavaScript, SQL, SQLAlchemy
APIs Used:
bcrypt, beautiful soup, schedule, datetime, ElementTree
C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:
Codecademy HTML & CSS, Codecademy JavaScript, How to Think Like a Computer Scientist
Meggan M Green
Meggan relocated from Mexico to San Francisco to study software engineering. She enjoys and excels at writing the solutions that bring a project from its current state to the desired future state. Before being accepted into Hackbright’s full-time program, she did data collection and visualization programming, and technical documentation content management at Mondelēz Intl, the world’s second-largest food manufacturer (they make Oreo cookies!). She is also a successful writer and editor and has been published in several print and digital publications.
Hackbright Project: AltDash
AltDash is a proposed alternative dashboard for examining World Bank data as it reflects progress toward the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by UN member countries in 2015. AltDash improves upon the existing dashboard in two ways: 1) it uses more data to assess a country’s “goal attainment score;” and 2) it sets the default view to a very high level and allows you to dive into successively deeper levels of granularity at will. Next-to-build features include map-based comparisons among countries.
Technology Stack:
PostgreSQL, Flask, SQLAlchemy, Jinja2, JavaScript ES6, jQuery, jQuery UI, AJAX, Charts.js Bootstrap 3.3, CSS3
APIs Used:
The World Bank Data Catalog, UN Sustainable Development Goals, SimpleMaps
C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:
PHP, VBA, SQL, MySQL, WordPress, HTML, RegEx
Nancy Reyes
Prior to Hackbright, Nancy spent 11 years as an Operations Manager at bebe Corporate, where she coordinated the openings and closings of brick and mortar stores. She initially started college as a Computer Science major and graduated with a B.S. in Biological Sciences due to a personal interest in biology. While completing her biology degree, she continued to learn and practice web development and built several personal websites. Computer programming has always been a passion for her, and she attended Hackbright in order to turn this passion into a full-time career. Outside of work, Nancy also volunteers for Hackcancer and Women’s Entrepreneurship Day and maintains their websites.
Hackbright Project: Storenet
Storenet is a communication portal/task manager for retail stores. The key feature of Storenet is the ability to measure the effectiveness of each post that that is posted to stores. Posts may have a task associated with it, and the task is then assigned to an employee of that store. Task completion is also measured, giving corporate headquarters visibility to compliance of these tasks.
Operational compliance & task completion rate is measured at the post level, company level, store level, and down to the employee level. This information provides valuable insight to the performance of a particular store or employee, and can tied to performance reviews and store KPIs (key performance indicators such as shrink %, sales per hour, etc).
Technology Stack:
Python, Flask, SQLAlchemy, PostgreSQL, JavaScript jQuery, D3
APIs Used:
OpenWeatherMap
C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:
Nancy has experience in HTML, CSS, PHP, mySQL, C++, Perl, JavaScript, and the Adobe Creative Suite.
Natalie Komforti
Prior to Hackbright, Natalie was a customer success manager at LocBox managing a book of 50 small-businesses — acting as their marketing strategist and business cheerleader. She was also the head of operations & business manager at Ellie Herman Studios managing a staff of 25, and running the daily logistics for its three locations and e-commerce site. Furthermore, Natalie is an artist and designer, she holds a BFA from Pratt Institute and still dabbles in creative work whenever she’s not coding. Natalie discovered her passion for coding when searching for new ways to challenge herself. She hopes to transition her new technical skillset, as well as her love for problem-solving, learning, and all things creative, into a career as a software engineer.
Hackbright Project: HobbyHabit
HobbyHabit is a tracking application that gives you the ability to record your progress for any and as many tasks or hobbies you want to hold yourself more accountable for – or wish you could more easily gauge your process and efforts towards. Once registered, you’ll add HobbyHabits to track and set goals for any of your HobbyHabits based on what you’d like to achieve. The app also enables users to opt-in for text reminders to keep on-track of hobby timelines, find events where you can socialize with others in your area interested in the same activities, and toggle between several data visualizations that make analyzing the details of your progress easy and approachable. HobbyHabbit is the tool for busy multi-taskers to visualize their projects and marvel at all your hard work in a snap so you can get back to getting things done!
Technology Stack:
Python, AJAX, Flask, Javascript, jQuery, Bootstrap, CSS, HTML, JSON, Jinja, SQLAlchemy, Chart.js
APIs Used:
Eventbrite
C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:
In preparation for Hackbright, Natalie took Python courses from Codecademy and Learn Python the Hard Way. As a customer success manager at LocBox, Natalie used the company’s software platform to develop cross-channel marketing campaigns to help small businesses across the country. Additionally, Natalie’s creative background has enabled her to master a number of graphic and design softwares including AutoCAD, Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.
Swathi Iyer
Swathi completed her Bachelor’s in Information Science Engineering, and has worked with Thomson Reuters and SAP in cloud service business in Bangalore, India. She worked on content deployment, testing, and troubleshooting using JavaScript and proprietary scripts. She moved to the Bay Area in 2015 and rejoined her team at SAP Palo Alto. She was fascinated by the technology-driven culture that helped her settle down in a new place with convenience. This rekindled her interest in computer science, which led her to Hackbright. She is excited to continue learning after the fellowship for her next steps in her career in software engineering. Outside of work, Swathi is a hiker and has organized various hikes for women.
Hackbright Project: Hike-bright
Hike-bright is a hike-search app that allows users to search for hiking trails around a given location in United States and Canada. User can enter a city, state, and radius range to find hiking trails around the given location. User can also search for trails live from the location where the user is logged in. Hike-bright uses the geolocation module from Google Maps to capture the current location of the user. It uses an API called the TrailAPI to get the search results and passes them to Google Maps for displaying them. Users can save searches on their profile for future reference, and can also add ratings and comments to a specific hike.
Technology Stack:
Python, Flask, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, JavaScript, jQuery, AJAX, Bootstrap
APIs Used:
TrailAPI, Google Maps
C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:
Swathi took Hackbright Prep before joining the full-time program. She has also used JavaScript, HTML for troubleshooting content on LMS, as a process Associate at SAP. Prior to SAP, she worked at Thomson Reuters where she integrated content [AICC / Scorm versions] on LMS and has used LMS reporting tools. Before Thomson Reuters, she also worked as a Software Engineer trainee at Exilant Technologies for about 6 months, designing front end with Java using eclipse.
Trang Hoang
Trang is a partner at Deloitte, assisting technology clients in financial transformation and M&A activities (e.g., IPOs). The innovation and creativity of her tech clients, as well as her passion for mentoring women and changing the ratio, has inspired her to become a full stack developer. With her vast experience, she would like to focus on AI and dabble in the challenges of cyber – and don her grey hat.
Hackbright Project: BUDdy
BUDdy enhances the consumer/business experience for small businesses. Business owners can track analytics with consumer traffic based on referrals, promotions, and related redemptions. The network connection of all users/businesses via degrees of separation allows consumers to customize their own filters rather than relying on an arbitrary algorithm that deletes reviews. It also encourages business owners to address reviews for the opportunity to get updated reviews or customer service rating. The gamification and promotions offered entice consumers to not only support small businesses but pay it forward via referrals to friends. BUDdy also features businesses that are trending and/or doing something innovative.
Technology Stack:
SQL with PostGIS, SQLAlchemy, Flask, Flask-Upload, Jinja, Python, JavaScript, Bootstrap, ChartJS, D3, Faker, Mockaroo, Font Awesome, Angular
APIs Used:
Google Maps
C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:
While she has taken online courses through Codeacademy and Udacity, Trang is also a recent graduate of the Hackbright Prep Course. She enjoys the problem solving aspect and simplification of everyday life from enabling technologies. Her other experience with tech has been more with the financial aspects of tech companies and the various challenges start-ups face in growing at a fast pace and capitalizing on the financial markets.
Interested in learning more? Check out our upcoming Part-Time Prep Course and our immersive 12-week full-time or 24-week part-time Software Engineering Programs. Hackbright Academy offers deferred tuition to select, eligible students.