“I honestly don't think I would be where I am today if I hadn't decided to go to that hackathon three years ago.”

Amy joined the hacker community when a friend invited her to an out-of-state hackathon. At the time, Amy didn’t fully understand what they were nor did she have any programming experience. She decided to hop on the flight anyway and never looked back. 

In January of 2017, she and her friend co-founded Hacklahoma, University of Oklahoma’s official student hackathon. She spent the year as the creative director where she worked with graphic designers on logo, branding, theme, and documentation as well as managed social media and marketing strategy. She managed to accumulate over 800 followers across the organization’s social media platform. Amy now serves as the executive director of the organization. 

Amy is currently a senior studying computer science and minoring in Japanese at the University of Oklahoma. She is interested in front-end web development and UX design. Her experience has led her to work in software development, interning at various companies such as Tinker Air Force Base, The Ronnie K. Irani Center for the Creation of Economic Wealth, and Hobby Lobby. 

Amy’s favorite project was a web app that helped build a community between volunteers and organizations & relief centers to provide services and resources to natural disaster victims. It was the most fun project she has worked on because she got to focus more on the design aspect of it which she had never done before a hackathon.