About

Programmer/computer person, tinkerer, avid learner and reader of broad topics (mostly nonfiction), big-picture thinker.

Currently

Staff Developer at Shopify

Technologies

I aspire to move fluidly between programming languages/technologies and have built with many different ones. My strongest at the moment are Ruby+Rails and Typescript+React.

Values

Some things I value:

• seeking and speaking truth so I can improve rather than just confirm what I already believe
• the richness, depth, and uniqueness of each person
• constructive challenges and growth rather than comfort
• thoughtful, genuine, and precisely-worded communication

Bio

My experience with computers started with MS-DOS games around age 4. By age 8 I had my start in programming, if you can call it that — it was really just playing around in QBasic with making the computer beep and stuff. Red Hat Linux 8 For Dummies got me hooked on Linux as a teenager and I got my first paid web development gig at 16. Since then, I've built all sorts of software — on teams big and small, and on my own as a freelancer.

Some career highlights:

• 2013: Graduated from Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto
• 2014: Started career in bioinformatics and computational biology at Ontario Institute for Cancer Research building websites and web apps to support scientific research
• 2015: Joined Centre for Computational Medicine at the Hospital for Sick Children and worked on the open-source PhenoTips project to help clinicians and researchers more effectively capture phenotypic data
• 2015: PhenoTips was spun off as Gene42, a startup company that was spreading adoption of the software in clinical settings around the world. I joined as first full-time software development hire, helped the business expand substantially, and led the growing development team.
• 2020: Joined Shopify as a Development Manager, leading a full-stack team of developers building features for Shop app
• 2023: Transitioned from manager to individual contributor as a Staff Developer (still at Shopify). I liked management, but also really wanted to get more hands-on again.