Bio
Andrew Hedges is an educator and technologist based in Portland, Oregon. A professional web developer since 1998, Andrew is the Co-founder and COO of Assistiv Labs (https://assistivlabs.com), a web accessibility testing platform. Prior to Assistiv Labs, Andrew provided engineering leadership to Disney, Apple, and Zapier.
During the Summer of 2019, Andrew founded The Collab Lab (https://the-collab-lab.codes), a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides remote, collaborative project practice for early-career web developers. The program brings code school graduates and self-taught career switchers together with working web developers to work on software projects using agile practices used by professional software teams.
Outside of work, Andrew publishes books with his dad via Road’s End Press (https://roadsendpress.com) and produces The Slant and Go (https://theslantandgo.com), a podcast about the National Football League.
Prior to his career in web development, Andrew worked in higher education administration, coordinating training programs for university staff. He holds a Masters of Education from the University of Maryland, College Park. In 1995, Andrew wrote his terminal paper for that degree on the potential effects of computer-mediated communication on college student identity development (https://andrew.hedges.name/cmcandcsd.html).
What are you up to…?
Most of my energy these days goes into providing leadership for Assistiv Labs. I spent 25 years as a web developer and engineering leader, but in my current role have completely switched gears to doing everything else to free up my co-founder to focus on product development.
Since I started full-time in July 2022, I have quickly ramped up on everything from running payroll to enterprise sales. It has been and continues to be incredibly fulfilling to be working daily to make the web more inclusive as well as to be learning so much across so many domains all the time. We’re a young company right in the thick of achieving product/market fit.
The next few months should prove exciting and hopefully lead to at least a few years of adventures!
Why Portland?
I moved to Portland from the Bay Area. Wait, I can explain. I was actually born in Portland, then lived most of my life around the U.S. and New Zealand before returning here in 2016 to be closer to family. The Hedges clan has been in the area continuously since traversing the Oregon Trail (https://oregontrail.ws/games/the-oregon-trail/) with the wagon train of 1852.
While I could lift my nose at newcomers, I’m firmly in the camp that people moving to the area is what keeps it vibrant and interesting. The more the merrier, I say!
Like many, one of the things I love the most about Portland is the food/beer/coffee scene (well, except for all the IPAs everywhere, eww). I’m a huge fan of Victoria Bar (https://victoriapdx.com), Wajan (https://www.wajanpdx.com), and The Zipper, where I can often be found on Friday afternoons wrapping up my work week over a sipping Tequila at PayDirt (https://www.paydirtbar.com).
Links
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewhedges/
- Twitter (I refuse to call it X): https://twitter.com/segdeha
- Personal site: https://andrew.hedges.name
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