Cecili Reid

Up until my freshmen year at Georgia Tech, my plan was to study Biomedical Engineering, attend medical school, and to become a doctor. That year, I enrolled in the dreaded Computing for Engineers course to learn Matlab. At that time, I had never programmed anything before. Despite this, I immensely enjoyed the class. I noticed that I started working on programming projects early in order to avoid chemistry, a course I needed to take for 4 years in order to apply to medical school. I was sincerely disappointed my future Biomedical Engineering courses would not involve the joy of successfully solving a problem with no bugs! I wanted to code more and decided to change my major to computer science and had to reconsider my entire career plan. Much of my time at Georgia Tech was spent learning what computer science has to offer. If there was a language or something I was interested in (i.e. Ruby) that wasn’t in my curriculum, I learned it on my own. Even though I have a degree, there are many more concepts, languages, and technologies that I have yet to learn and I am eager to explore. I have become heavily involved in local tech meetups and conferences like Women Who Code and AnitaB.org Atlanta chapters. I would like to participate in more alumni activities and be more involved with the tech groups and communities in Atlanta to complement my work in my current position. Feel free to contact me if you have any interesting groups, meetings, or events in which I can be involved.