Osirus Gonzalez

Current position: Director of Technology, Central Falls School District

Education: Master’s Degree (New England Institute of Technology)

Where were you born and where did you grow up? Born in NYC but grew up in RI

What did you want to be when you were growing up? Work on Wall Street

How did you get into computer science? 2001 and started at Brown University as computer tech

What other jobs have you had? Financial portfolio reporting agent for Putnam Investments

What is an average day at work like for you? An average day consists of ensuring the network is running smoothly with no bottlenecks, dealing with technology tickets and repairs for all schools and staff, responding to emails pertaining to various topics, meetings, and vendor engagement.

What is your favorite part of your job? Solving problems so that our faculty & staff can provide the resources to our students

What is the best opportunity you have had because of computer science? The best opportunity I had was to change the course of my career.

Any great stories about working in computer science? We, at Brown, got tired of paying for parking tickets via the mail. Every two hours we had to stop what we were doing to move our cars. While I was working at Brown University, I created a collaborative group where we created the frameworks an iOS app (going back to 2010) to pay for parking tickets in Providence. The group never got the app off the ground due to restrictions on connecting to bank accounts (right idea but wrong time) and Providence Police systems but the exposure to what we thought was possible was eye-opening.