Meet Jacqueline, Director of Coder Camps SF
Coder Camps houses a lot of talented and interesting people, and Jacqueline exemplifies this tenfold.
Jaqueline Sloves is the Program Director for Coder Camps in the San Francisco Bay Area, but she was originally a student in their Houston location. Classes in the Bay Area begin January 20th, and the program is ready to hit the ground running thanks to the hard work and dedication provided by Jacqueline. She has said the process of expanding Coder Camps to different cities across the country has been a fun, dynamic work experience.
You can become a student at Coder Camps by filling out an application here, followed by a 30 minute interview.
As far as her personal experience, Jacqueline sees Coder Camps as the best possible first step towards a career she wants to explore. No matter what she wants to stay in the technology field because it’s so innovative and booming in the Bay Area.
Her path to computer programming was “all over the board”. Jacqueline attended UC Berkeley and received Bachelors degrees in Environmental Economics and Philosophy, as well as a minor in Forestry. Her interests are diverse, but she is interested in the weaving narratives between different disciplines. She sees technology as as intertwined part of society and the environment; the fields are not mutually exclusive.
She does, however, wish that she had taken more time in college to learn some more technical skills. She advises students to get in touch with the more technical and mathematical side of their brains, and not get discouraged by interactions with teachers, or difficulty learning the material.
True to her environmental background, Jacqueline loves the Bay Area outdoor scene. She recently moved to the Bay Area, and loves running, hiking, and biking the regional parks. But these are balanced with a fantastic and diverse food scene and local events, which also make the Bay Area a fantastic place to learn.
Jacqueline’s journey from Coder Camps in Houston to Coder Camps in the Bay Area was preempted by other adventures that taught her a lot. She was in the Peace Corp in Ukraine, where she lived in a little village with limited virtual contact and technology. For her, the contrast between her experiences facilitating after-school programs to young students in technological isolation, and her experiences learning coding in some of the most vibrant cities in the US was eye-opening.
“I went from feeling very isolated in Ukraine because I didn’t even have internet in my vilage. There were three computers in our library and one of them was broken most of the time, so coming back into America where everyone has internet and there are resources everywhere was a big shift. But I definitely have a big appreciation for connecting with people and how technology makes that possible.”
Now, Jacqueline has a full understanding and appreciation for being able to take an idea and put it on the internet.
“Being able to program and help create the internet is a really amazing way to be creative and make ideas happen,” she says. “It’s really difficult to take an idea and make it actually happen, but if you know how to program you can actually do things, which is really cool. I like being part of that.”