Christine’s story: Chasing your dreams in tech

🎥 Sep 09, 2021 📺 Codecademy ⏱ 2m 👁 13465837 views

Meet Christine! See how one Healthcare Administrator took a different path and found her passion as a Software Engineer.

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About Christine Needles

Christine Needles, Global Head of Corporate Communications at Interface, previously worked in healthcare administration before transitioning to a software engineering role. In a 2021 interview, she said she migrated to the U.S. about 10–11 years ago and that many of her family members are nurses. She described being encouraged by a friend to apply her dedication to the tech field. She began learning to code through Codecademy and said she found it rewarding to type text into a code editor and see an application or interface appear. Needles stated that she values having room to make mistakes and keep trying at a problem until she finds a solution, which she said was not possible in healthcare. She expressed interest in projects that improve accessibility, noting that she tries to add descriptions of pictures for screen reader users and use certain colors for people who cannot see certain colors. She said she feels accomplished and that her family became excited after seeing the applications she could build. She advised others to create a study plan and not give up.

Source: AI-verified profile updated from Christine Needles's recent appearances. Browse all interviews →

Transcript (8 segments)

Christine Needles0:00

My name is Christine. I live in Jersey City, New Jersey, and I went from working in healthcare to being a software engineer in one year.

I like being able to make mistakes. Having that room to be able to fail but knowing that I'm a person that's resilient, I'll keep trying at a problem until I come up with a solution. That did not exist for me in healthcare.

I migrated to the U.S. about 10-11 years ago. All of my aunts across the U.S., Europe, back home in Trinidad, and my cousins — they're all nurses. So it felt like, 'Okay, maybe we should pursue that path and that's the safe way to do it.'

One of my friends, him and I, we were talking about my career goals and he kept telling me, 'Christine, the amount of dedication you put into your job and healthcare administration — if you put that into tech I can guarantee you'll see rewards.' That planted the idea at the back of my head.

I got on the Codecademy site and there was this little survey that I took. And then it recommends courses to you within your interests based on those answers and what development was it for me. Once I started seeing that I could type a bunch of text into a code editor and see an application or an interface — that's when I was like, 'Okay, I like this.'

If I can find a project that improves accessibility in some way for someone — that is my dream project. I have family members that are dyslexic. Growing up in Trinidad, there wasn't an understanding of what being differently-abled looked like. For me now, just even in my coding I try to make things accessible by adding descriptions of pictures for people who use screen readers or using certain colors for people who can't see certain colors.

I feel now that I am where I wanted to be when I moved here. I feel so accomplished. My family is so used to the traditional route for education. But when I started showing my family members the applications and the things that I could build, they started getting pretty excited about it. Me being able to land a role and knowing that most of my training came from Codecademy — I think that's really impressive.

My advice would be to create a plan for studying that covers the amount of hours you would want to dedicate towards studying. And do not give up.