Participants
Our participants enter The Collab Lab with a strong baseline of coding skills including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and React. They leave with experience in how software teams work.
To participate in a Collab Lab cohort means buying into a growth mindset, opening yourself to learning, and taking risks in a relatively low-stakes setting. Seasoned technologists guide these early-career developers as they pair program, review each others’ code, and submit & merge pull requests. They are also coached on how to be effective on a fully distributed (remote) team by people who do it every day for a living .
Alums of The Collab Lab report being better equipped to talk about how they work on a team as well as the thought processes behind their work, helping them perform better in job interviews for technical roles. Hire them!
TCL 25 | April – May 2021
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Chenemi
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Cynthia
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Ibrahim
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Katia
TCL 24 | April – May 2021
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Ana
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Camila
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Juan
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Karen
TCL 23 | April – May 2021
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Ana
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James
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Jessica
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Zenzi
TCL 22 | April – May 2021
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Abigail
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Caitlin
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Daria
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Karan
TCL 21 | April – May 2021
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Adam
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Tamara
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Taryn
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Vanessa
TCL 20 (Advanced Project) | January – February 2021
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Caitlyn
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DeVon
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Rachel
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Shayne
TCL 19 | January – February 2021
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Becky
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Chiamaka
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Joseph
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Julia
TCL 18 | January – February 2021
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Alejandro
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Cristina
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Mariangel
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Verónica
TCL 17 | January – February 2021
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Brittany
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Dee
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Rachel
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Viet
TCL 16 | January – February 2021
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Jessica
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Kevin
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Maeesha
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Waverley
TCL 15 | October – November 2020
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Debora
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Hajar
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Kenny
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Sarah
TCL 14 | October – November 2020
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Andrés
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Lizeth
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Manuela
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Yesika
TCL 13 | October – November 2020
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Audra
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Rachel
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Rebecca
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Shayne
TCL 12 | October – November 2020
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Alexandra
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Eden
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Gabrielle
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Terry
TCL 11 | August – September 2020
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Brandon
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Kathy
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Stefanie
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Volha
TCL 10 | August – September 2020
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Kat
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Lauren
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Quinn
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Tiana
TCL 9 | August – September 2020
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Fabrice
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Leigh-Ann
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Lia
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Mabel
TCL Pilot | May – June 2020
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Amber
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Ashling
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Jennifer
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Matthew
TCL 8 | May – July 2020
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Ali
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Lily
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Luka
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Shajia
TCL 7 | May – June 2020
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DeVon
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Megan
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Nabil
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Tanzima
TCL 6 | April – May 2020
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Elise
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Myles
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Sara
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Scott
TCL 5 | March – May 2020
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Ashling
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Diane
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Jennifer
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Jon
TCL 4 | January – March 2020
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Haley
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Jaela
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Matthew
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Rachael
TCL 3 | December 2019 – February 2020
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Amber
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Mike
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Monica
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Nikema
TCL 2 | November 2019 – January 2020
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Claudia
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Ethan
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Michelle
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Mindy
TCL 1 | August – October 2019
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Caitlyn
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Kate
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Scott
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Stacie
Mentors
Collab Lab’s mentors are the lifeblood of the program. All of our mentors are working software developers and engineering leaders. They volunteer their time because they believe in leaving tech better than they found it.
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Adrienne
Adrienne Lowe is an experienced engineering manager and leader of distributed development and ops teams. She’s given keynotes and technical talks at PyCon, PyTexas, SoutheastPHP, DjangoCon Europe, The Lead Dev, and GOTO Berlin, among others.
Adrienne is a former chef turned coder who loves dreaming up new recipes with her partner, Alan, in “Music City”—Nashville, Tennessee.
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Alejandro
Alejandro Ñáñez is a Frontend Engineer at Zapier and organizer of React La Conferencia, the first React conference for Spanish speakers in Latin America.
Alejandro lives in Medellín, Colombia, with his fiancé, dog, and 4 cats.
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Alex
Alex Morton is a self-taught web developer and host of The Ladies Code Collective Podcast!
When not coding, it's quite likely she's curled up with a book, working on an embroidery project, or snuggling with her dachshund pup, Nelson.
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Ali
Ali Lynne Thompson is a Frontend Engineer and a proud participant of The Collab Lab’s 8th cohort.
Ali is a former substitute teacher with patience for miles and a desire to teach anyone. In her spare time she crochets and sews. She lives in California with her husband and three cats.
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Chris
Chris Dopuch is a Senior Fullstack Engineer working at Zapier, located out of Portland, Oregon.
Chris grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and moved to Oregon after graduating college. He loves to play games and paint miniatures, as well as go hiking and running and doing yoga.
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Dani
Dani Gómez is a Software Engineer at Huge.
Dani loves languages and speaks German, English and Spanish. She was also a nurse at the ICU (intensive care unit), now working and living in Medellín with her doggie Gretel and her love.
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David
David Lluna is a Site Reliability Engineer Manager at Flywire.
He lives and works remotely in Valencia, Spain. He is also a mentor in a local free code academy, Devscola.
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Eddie
Eddie Solar is the VP…Actually, he doesn’t like titles that much so he is a Developer at Health Karma living in South Florida.
Eddie enjoys video games, sports, movies, anime and spending time with his family.
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EJ
EJ Mason is a Senior Software Engineer at Webflow. They are a fierce advocate for web accessibility both at Webflow and on the open web.
EJ lives in sunny Los Angeles, California.
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Golfo
Golfo Vasiliou is a Front-End Software Engineer at Mist.io.
Based in Greece, she's a proponent of remote work and a fan of open-source software. She gets +1 to her coding skills when her tibbie, Luna, is sleeping on her desk.
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Indira
Indira Gutierrez is a Senior Software Engineer at Visa. Originally from Colombia, currently living in Austin, TX. She is also a mentor for a fully virtual bootcamp Springboard.
In her free time, she enjoys reading, cross-stitching, and sharing career and interviewing tips in her Instagram.
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Jayson
Jayson J. Phillips is a Senior Engineering Manager for the Core Learner Platform team at Coursera.
In his spare time, Jayson also teaches a Web Development bootcamp (currently at UCLA Extensions) and devotes time at places like CODE 2040. He also streams software development and bad gameplay at https://twitch.tv/its_jay_phillz. Come say hi!
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Jennifer
Jennifer Batara is currently a Software Architect at Tura Labs in Portland, Oregon.
Jen watches way too many PC build Youtube videos and loves playing video games, especially on her Switch!
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Jill
Jill Kuchman is a Quality Assurance Engineer at Vacasa in Portland, OR. She’s a tech education enthusiast who has written curriculum and taught at bootcamps in both Portland and Nairobi.
Jill enjoys creating in all forms and can usually be found knitting, drawing, out enjoying the sun, or trying out extravagant recipes.
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Joey
Joey Laguna is a Software Engineer at Skyslope.
Joey is a former musician in various hardcore bands and lives in Sacramento, California with his fiancée. He loves to think about and play D&D!
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Jonathan
Jonathan Yeong is a senior software engineer originally from Australia, currently based in Seattle, USA.
Primarily a Ruby developer, he is learning Javascript and Elixir on the side. He loves contributing to communities, climbing, and playing Ultimate.
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Juan
Juan Andrade is a Senior Software Engineer at Khan Academy, working on frontend infrastructure. Juan is passionate about design systems, tooling and web performance.
When not coding, he likes biking, playing soccer and hanging out with his family.
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Julia
Julia Undeutsch is a self-taught web developer based in Vienna, but willing to move to Japan or Korea for her next job!
Besides coding, Julia likes to travel all over the world (especially to Japan), watching movies, and playing the piano.
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Juliana
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Keeley
Keeley Hammond is a Senior Software Engineer at InVision, and a member of the core governance team for Electron.
She lives and works remotely in Portland, OR with her husband Dave, and her dog Luna.
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LaQuita
LaQuita Gollman is a Frontend Engineer in Seattle, WA.
LaQuita considers herself a maker in every way and enjoys crocheting, sewing, pattern making and listening to reality-show podcasts.
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Lars
Lars Brekken is a Principal Engineer at Olo in New York City.
Originally from Norway, Lars lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and 2 parrots.
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Lauren
Lauren Beatty is a Senior Frontend Engineer and Team Lead at Treasure Data.
A former opera singer, Lauren lives and works remotely in Minnesota with her husband and two sons.
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Lauren
Lauren Yu is a Software Engineer at Data Society.
In addition to coding, Lauren loves performing with her bassoon quartet, The Breaking Winds, and traveling. She loves all things Lord of the Rings/Game of Thrones (except for the final season) and lives in the DC area with her husband and two cats, aptly named Tyrion and Sam(well).
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Luis
Luis Augusto is based in Sacramento, CA and currently works as a software engineer at Cerebral, working in React and Ruby on Rails.
When not working, Luis likes to enjoy the outdoors with his wife and dog, host board game nights, and enjoys wine tastings.
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Luka
Luka Baramishvili is a Frontend Engineer and a proud participant of The Collab Lab’s 8th cohort.
Originally from country of Georgia, Luka is currently based between New York and Berlin. In his spare time, he builds speaker systems and participates in live coding sessions.
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Matthew
Matthew Hughes is a Contracted Software Engineer, most recently at GridRival, as well as a volunteer Social Media & Marketing Coordinator with the Portland Jr Dev Meetup group.
A world traveler, dual citizen and overall nomad by nature, Matthew currently resides in Windsor, California with his fiancée, RaeLynn.
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Melina
Melina Mejía Bedoya is a Software Engineer at Bunny Studio.
Melina is passionate about web accessibility, volunteering, languages, drawing, anime and Korean culture.
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Michael
Michael Sholty is Frontend Engineer at Zapier living in Gainesville, FL.
Michael loves his wife Amanda and his dogs. He loves helping other people. He's also working hard on his emoji game ♥️ 🤩 😅
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Mike
Mike Lambert is a Full Stack Engineer and UI Lead at CDK Global. He found his passion for software development after prior careers in education and insurance.
Mike lives in his hometown of Portland, Oregon, where he enjoys traveling, languages, snowboarding, and programming with his wife (a fellow developer) and their two lovebirds, Raymi and Condor.
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Mindy
Mindy Zwanziger is a math teacher and admin turned software engineer who has a goal of supporting folk entering the tech field.
Outside of coding, she loves to take part in all that the Pacific Northwest has to offer. Hiking, camping, and kayaking are all high on the hobby list. She also enjoys a good fantasy or sci-fi novel, long afternoons playing strategic board games, and traveling.
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Phoebe
Phoebe Voong-Fadel is a Frontend Developer at Blue Fox Technology.
Phoebe used to work in university administration before being a stay-at-home mum, where she learned to code. Phoebe is a writer for freeCodeCamp and enjoys writing about tech and parenting. She lives in England with her husband and two children.
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Radhika
Radhika Morabia is a Software Engineer at OpenTable. She is a proud self-taught developer who writes about learning and the tech industry in her newsletter and blog.
Radhika lives in Oakland, California and checks Twitter way too much.
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Salman
Muhammad Salman is a Software Consultant providing full-stack solutions. He works for Houston-Inc and is currently residing in Helsinki, Finland.
Salman loves Finnish long summer days and white winters. He likes outdoor activities and likes to be out in nature.
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Scott
Scott Bergler is currently a freelance software developer.
Scott is a Golang enthusiast and cat whisperer. He enjoys travel, mixed martial arts, and reading magical realism and mid-to-late-century science fiction. He is extremely envious of Steve Gardner’s nomadism.
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Skyler
Skyler Shaw is a Software Engineer at Zapier.
He's a world nomad, professional skydiver, and loves to learn both human and computer languages.
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Steve
Steve Gardner is a Frontend Engineer at Zapier.
Steve takes advantage of Zapier’s remote work culture to travel the world with his wife and 2 young kids. We’re pretty sure he’s currently living on an island in the Caribbean. No, we’re not kidding.
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Tito
Tito Agudelo is a Frontend & Mobile Engineer at Toptal.
Tito lives and works as digital nomad in Bogotá, Colombia with his wife and his 2 young kids.
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Yenly
Yenly Ma is a software engineer with a product mindset and an eye for design and usability. She is a maker of functional art.
Yenly loves to travel to immerse herself in other cultures and to enjoy all the different cuisines. She spent four transformative weeks tea house trekking in the Himalayan mountain ranges of Nepal.
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Yves
Yves Gurcan is the founder of Parallel45. Born in France, Yves moved to the Pacific Northwest in 2014. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
From Nike to small startups, Yves has worked for companies of all sizes. He’s a senior software engineer who enjoys helping others. For him, being a mentor at Collab Lab is the best way to give back to the community. He’s always looking forward to meeting new people.
Board & Advisors
Craig John Alimo is a Trainer/Educator for the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at San Jose State University. He serves as an advisor to The Collab Lab’s Board on diversity issues and survey design and lives in sunny Richmond, California, with his partner Nancy and their dog, Tessa.
Kelly de Vries is a Software Engineer at Clarity Innovations, Inc. and organizes the Portland Jr Dev Meetup. She serves as an advisor to the Board on community issues and lives in beautiful Portland, Oregon with her husband Jason and their spunky pup, Otto.
Michelle Sauque is a Customer Champion at Zapier. She serves as Treasurer on The Collab Lab’s Board and as one of Collab Lab’s points of contact for Code of Conduct concerns.
Founders
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Andrew
Andrew Hedges, Founder of The Collab Lab, is a longtime web developer, engineering manager, and educator. He leads remote teams at Zapier and is an advisor to and former instructor for PDX Code Guild, a coding bootcamp located in his hometown of Portland, Oregon. He also serves on the technology committee for Pueblo Unido PDX.
Andrew holds an MEd in counseling and human development from the University of Maryland College Park. He spent 7 years designing and conducting training programs for university staff before making the leap to web development in 1998.
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Stacie
Stacie Taylor, Co-Founder of The Collab Lab, resides in Sacramento, California with her two kids and works as a Frontend Engineer at Zapier. The career-changing journey that took her from product management to engineering sparked a fierce passion for advocating for early-career developers — especially fellow moms in tech.
Stacie serves as Secretary on the Board of Directors and as a point of contact for Code of Conduct concerns. Fun fact: Stacie participated as a developer in The Collab Lab’s first-ever cohort!
Get in touch!
The Collab Lab is on Twitter @_collab_lab. We post periodic updates about the program on our dev.to channel. Press inquiries may be directed via email to Andrew at andrew@the-collab-lab.codes.