Professional Skills

Web Development

My web development journey is one that I never thought would be what it is now. In late 2018, I was given a chance to work for ARC Specialties where I found myself using WordPress. I had heard of this tool before but only at a very basic level. I had tried it once or twice before working at ARC but I was more familiar with it than I was experienced. Nevertheless, I was given the opportunity that later became the catalyst for my journey.

Like everyone, I made mistakes. I broke content and from time to time found myself wondering, "how does this work?". Somewhere in my questioning, I came across the words "coding" and "website" and this is where it all truly began.

Down the endless rabbit hole of tutorials and online resources I went. I spent hours during and after work studying basic HTML and CSS, trying to grasp the concepts of tags and classes, and learning when and where to use them. All this just sounded like a foreign language to me.

Fast-forward to mid-2019 when I moved to Philadelphia and got a chance to work with Therapy Solutions Inc., a non-profit organization providing various therapeutic services to children in the community. I was brought on as an administrative and marketing assistant and little did I know this is career as a developer would actually start to grow.

With my somewhat intermediate background in WordPress, I was able to update the company's website using Elementor and other plugins, and considering I didn't know that much about programming, I was able to give the site an entirely new look and feel. I learned how to style elements and how to use brand colors for consistency, and all this further fueled my desire to learn more. I later decided to update the administrative data-entry process by building a custom UI

Skills Known

HTML

CSS

SCSS

PHP

MySQL

jQuery

Composer

Bootstrap

NPM

Fork

NodeJS

Drupal

Wordpress

GitHub

GitLab

Postman

Jira

Codepen

Photography & Videography

I've always found it fascinating how powerful media can have such a huge impact on others. Movies, pictures, graphics, and everything else in between can tell a story, drive sales, make you reflect on your past and so much more, and for me it's no different.

Over the past 6 years, I've had the privilege to capture some amazing moments of the people around me. Being able to direct, film, edit and produce Therapy Solutions' 25th Anniversary Celebration video was one of my biggest and proudest accomplishments yet. Interviewing families and seeing how this organization impacted their lives, editing all the clips and putting it all into a fluid story of their service over the years, and seeing the crowd smile at the end of the presentation provided me a feeling of joy and accomplishment that will forever be in my heart.

But this road wasn't always easy (not saying that it's easy now). I originally got into making videos by entering a contest for an airline looking for brand ambassadors to send out to Norway for the summer in 2018. Needless to say, I didn't win, but the experience let me thinking, "well that was kinda fun...why don't I try to do this more professionally instead?" And that's exactly what happened next.

Fast-forward to the summer of 2018 and I was invited to film a small 5K race in the Houston area, I then helped a family-owned upholstery business with their furniture photography, and by September I was making videos for ARC Specialties and their manufacturing robots. All of this certainly prepared me for the projects with Therapy Solutions which was an unforgettable experience being able to film summer camps, corporate holiday events, and community outreach on top of the great celebration for 25 years in business.

I'll always be drawn back to pick up the camera and capture the world through my lens, it's a wonderful feeling to capture a moment in time.