A Brief History: "How I Came to Be Where I Am Today"

My story is a strange one. If you had asked me 7 years ago what I was going to "do" for a living when I grew up, I would have confidently informed you that I was going to be a professional musician, most likely a French Horn player in a major orchestra or a film score composer in Hollywood. Life had different plans for me.


I started off on a path that I thought would lead me to professional musiciandom: I attended a small, but well-known midwestern music school. I majored in music and participated in as many ensembles as humanly possible. I studied theory, ear training, composition, music history, and a plethora of other musical topics (I also studied management, marketing, and accounting, just to make myself well-rounded). I travelled to Asia and Europe performing in different ensembles. I even composed the first movement of a Symphony and conducted a full orchestra the live premiere in front of an audience of about 300 people.

Sadly, I focused so intently on music that I burned out. By the time I graduated from college with a BA in Music Management, I was tired of being in school, and most definitely tired of studying music. I decided to take a break and work for a few years before attempting grad school. Unsure of what I wanted to do, I took a position as a receptionist at an IT consulting firm.

I found the IT firm to be a veritable jungle of unexplored possibilities. I learned about everything from how a basic network is set up to the best methods for managing risks on a software implementation. More importantly, my interest in Project Management and Business Analysis (the gathering of requirements for software projects) was piqued, and a new energy was born within me to learn more about technology.

From the IT firm, I moved to a position as a Business Analyst on the technology team for a mid-size advertising agency. For the past year and a half, I've spent most of my waking hours honing my skills around collaborating with developers to imagine and design the best possible custom software solutions to meet all of our business needs.

I have been so excited by the skills I have learned, and so interested in the processes happening "behind the scenes" (i.e. the actual writing of the code and designing of the UI), that I recently made a career decision to attempt a move from the "business" side of technology (Project Management and Business Analysis) to the "technical" side (Software Development). More to come on that in my next post.