“How can I do that?”

# Who am I?

In March of 2020, a year out of university, I built this website with the hopes of figuring out who I want to be when I grow up. The way I had put it was:

Not so much in the career way as in the what-kind-of-values-are-important-to-me-and-how-do-I-want-my-work-to-reflect-them kind of way.

It was a plesant surprise to realize that now, nearing the end of 2022 and reflecting on this initial question, I’ve made a lot of progress in understanding my values. This is, of course, a lifelong question that’ll evolve as I age, but I have a much clearer picture of my values than I did back in 2020.

The next questions are “What do I want to build in my life and what skills do I need to get there?”. For now, by “my life” I mean my career, my community, and my art.

# What drives me?

The question that drives me is, “How can I do that?”

There is an element of making and crafting at the core of my interests, which is why I am drawn to both design and strategizing, cooking and painting, programming and knitting. The thread that weaves this interdisciplinary quilt together is fundamentally an interest in patterns. I look for the common shape of ideas to draw creative inferences across disciplines.

# Contact

You can find me on: GitHub and LinkedIn, or check out my paintings and drawings on Instagram

# Education

Bachelors of Arts and Science | McGill University
Cognitive Science (Psychology & Computer Science streams)
Montreal, QC | Sept 2013 - Apr 2019

# Experience

Operations & Research Associate - AI4Good Lab
Montreal, QC | May 2020 - present

  • Strategy, analysis, program execution, marketing & design

# Fellowships

2021 Learning Community Fellow | Montreal AI Ethics Institute
March - May 2021
Inaugural interdisciplinary cohort discussing AI ethics. Co-wrote “Design & Techno-Isolationism“ chapter published in the Sept 2021 MAIEI Community Insights Report. View on arXiv: 2112.01531

2019 BLUE Research Fellow | Building 21
Project exploring community building with particular focus on the aesthetic richness of complex dynamical systems.

# Design

Graphic Designer - Freelance
Sept 2016 - present

Head of Design - Fridge Door Gallery
Montreal, QC | Sept 2017 - May 2019

Front-End Development Intern - IBM Canada
Markham, ON | May 2015 - May 2016

# Research & Awards

Emotional experiences during breastfeeding: time of day, family support and mental health
McGill Neurophilosophy Lab | Sept 2018 - Sept 2020
Sofia Hempelmann Perez, Sophie Smith, Christina Isaicu, Natasha Binder, Ian Gold, Suparna Choudhury, Radhika Raturi, Charlotte Little, Marie-Helene Pennestri, Elizaveta Solomonova (in progress)

  • Research coordinator: Conceptualization, Data curation, Investigation, Methodology

Expectations About Gender and Predictive Factors for Social Beliefs
McGill University | Sept 2019 - Sept 2020
Samuel Veissière, Christina Isaicu

  • Research coordinator: Conceptualization, Data curation, Investigation, Methodology

Temporal Processing of Facial Expressions of Mental States
McGill Neurophilosophy Lab | May - Aug 2018
Gunnar Schmidtmann, Andrew Logan, Claus-Christian Carbon, Joshua T. Loong, Ian Gold. I-Perception doi: 10.1177/20416695209611

# Hackathons & Projects

Visualize evolutionary dynamics of cellular automata | 2019 McGill Physics Hackathon
Link to Devpost / Link to GitHub

Simulating Neanderthal Replacement | 2018 Computational Psychology project
Link to GitHub

# Volunteer & Leadership

Swim instructor | Jan 2017 - March 2020
Teaching kids with disabilities as an instructor for Swimming with a Mission Canada & independent.

Guest lecturer | July 2019
Presented Building 21 research at Shad Canada, a STEAM and Entrepreneurship program for High School students.

K-12 tutor | Sept 2015- Sept 2016
Chemistry, Math, English.

IBM Future Blue Exec | Sept 2015 - May 2016
Co-lead of Web Team for IBM intern community.

Camp Activity Lead | Aug 2015
Lead workshops at IBM’s EXITE camp (Exploring Interests in Technology & Engineering) on the topic of big data & analytics, lego robotics.

Front-End Developer for charity | Aug 2015 - Oct 2015
Worked on team of 4 interns with CIRCA (Citizen IBM Responding through Action), to develop a check-in app for the CIBC Run for the Cure Marathon.

# Skills

Languages
Intermediate: Python
Familiar: JavaScript, EJS, HTML, CSS

Data Analysis
Intermediate: Pandas, NumPy, Matplotlib

Tools
Intermediate: Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop; Git/version control
Familiar: LaTeX

Coursework
Familiar: Lisp, C, Bash, R, Java

# Athletics

Competitive Rower | Sep 2013 - Aug 2014
Row to Podium, a Canadian Olympic Development Program

Competitive Swimmer | Sep 2006 - Jun 2013
Markham Aquatic Club, nationally ranked