Bio
Morgan came to Portland from the far away East Coast (New England) back in the very early 90’s (before it was cool) after a failed attempt at becoming a rocket scientist (because there’s just too much paperwork at NASA for her taste).
After a few years in the carpentry trade building movie sets and fancy houses—and a few more years working as a drafter helping to build silicon manufacturing plants and silicon crystal growing chambers—she finally discovered her true calling was software development. She is an agile evangelist, and loves building software to solve business issues and automate processes.
What are you up to?
These days I’m straddling that oft-encountered dilemma many software engineers do: Do I continue perfecting my craft, or do I embrace the natural empathy I’ve been told I have and seek out a management path?
At this point I’m deciding to do the former, which is why I took on the software architect role here at Metal Toad. However, focusing on honing my skills does not preclude the human aspect: the software architect role requires quite a bit of coordination with other technologists, clients, and non-technical folks, and improving my ability to communicate effectively and empathetically with everyone is another skill I am actively working on.
Why Portland?
For all of the tech industry’s current struggles with diversity and inclusion, as a woman in the Portland tech community I personally have experienced a lot of support and willingness to address these issues wherever I’ve chosen to hang my engineering hat. I do know, however, that I am luckier than many, and am passionate about spending my time improving and educating others on the continuing struggles that so many minorities of every stripe encounter.
Links
Drop me a line and say hi!
Interested in being featured?
Silicon Florist introduces one person, each day of the work week, to the Portland startup community. If you’re interested in being one of those folks, please let us know a little bit more about you and you’ll be selected at random to be featured.
