Kavari Ellingson: The road to DevOps

Karvari Ellingson was having a hard time after getting her Fine Arts degree. She got tired of having to choose between eating and paying bills, so she picked up “computer programming” out of a list of “10 highest paying careers” and ran with it.

Karvari joined a coding school and couch surfed to make it work. After completing the program, she earned a coveted paid internship and after trying different programming teams she found her spot in DevOps. Along with a new job, she is a mentor at the PDXWIT mentorship program, and she helps code school recent grads with interviewing skills.

It all sounds like the tech turn-your-life-around dream, but she still has to put up with a lot of sexism, and other -isms that a career in tech seems to bring.