Natalie Reed

Current position: Coumputer Science Student at Brown University

Education (degrees and school): Bachelors of Science, Brown University

Hobbies: Video Games/Board Games, Rock Climbing, Swing Dancing, Reading

Where were you born and where did you grow up? Where did you go to high school?

Born in Central Massachusetts and went to the Advanced Math and Science Academy Charter School.

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

I changed my career almost yearly. I thought about being a teacher, author, architect, artist, mathematician, or editor. That changed in 6th grade when the head of my school’s CS department acted as a substitute teacher for my class. She asked what we were currently working on and declared “That’s boring! Let’s learn how to code!” She taught us Alice (a block based coding language developed by Carnegie Mellon university to build games and animations) on the spot and I knew from that day that I would want to be a computer scientist. I then spent the next half a year daily asking my non-substitute teacher when would we work on Alice again (she got quite close to running out of patience after a while). I then spent the majority of my summer break coding Alice games and animations.

What other jobs have you had?

In computer science, I’ve worked at companies that have as many as 150,000 and as small as 3. Some have specialized around one specific idea while others thrived on diversified interests. Outside of tech, I had plenty of babysitting and mentoring positions in high school. In college, I worked in IT, was a teaching assistant, and helped run some odd jobs for the athletics department.

What is an average day at work like for you?

Despite working at 5 different tech companies, most days would break down similarly. I would get into work on the early side so that I could get work done before being called away to meetings or falling into the afternoon slump of unproductivity. Almost every company I have worked at does not care about strict punch in/punch out times as long as there is some general time frame you are there for meetings. Most companies large and small care a lot about maintaining community culture though, whatever that might be. That might be lectures about new technology, company-wide discussions about values, or free snacks and swag to celebrate a successful launch. There will almost always be something going on in a large company, but you can have more agency and feel better connected in a small company.

What is your favorite part of your job?

I like improving people’s lives. Computer science is so versatile that it can solve so many problems and help so many people in a variety of different ways. I love being able to look at what I’ve accomplished and clearly see how it helps people.

What is the best opportunity you have had because of computer science?

I have been very lucky to fall into computer science because of how many opportunities have been available to me because of my interest in computer science. The people I have met along the way is probably the best thing to come out of computer science. Though it is probably against the stereotype, I find work in computer science an extremely social experience. There is the immediate benefit of meeting people who see the world like me, as a collection of interesting and unique opportunities waiting to be explored. On the other hand, computer science works best when developed for people who are not in computer science themselves and so it lends itself nicely to working with interesting people across a variety of disciplines. Because of my work in computer science, I’ve met lawmakers, teachers, researchers, toy makers, environmentalists, activists, gamers, hairdressers and more (and those people I’ve met primarily due to my own self-selecting interest in the particular flavors of projects I work on). I would never have had the opportunity to meet so many wonderful people across so many disciplines had I not worked in computer science.

Any great stories about working in computer science? The initial stories I think of are serendipitous times I’ve had in the office. At one point, I was working on a team that kept causing the program we were writing to fail (which we call “breaking the build”) and so my friend wrote a parody of “Breaking free” from High School Musical called “Breaking Build” and serenaded our boss with this song while I sang backup. I also think of times technology has connected me to interesting and important people, like when my work in computer science education research allowed me to join the Clinton Global Initiative and see Bill and Chelsea Clinton give speeches at the summit. I’ve seen technology that helps do the impossible, like the Microsoft Emma project that corrects Parkinson’s tremors allow people to write their own name for the first time.