This week, we heard from Janackeh Blackwell about her experience!
Hello Sauce Labs Community! I’m Janackeh Blackwell, a creative community builder and software developer in Denver, Colorado and an enthusiastic Sauce Labs Fellow.
I transitioned to tech after working in insurance and mortgage for several years. I started my technical learning journey in 2019 when I completed a full stack software engineering bootcamp at General Assembly in Atlanta Georgia. It was the most difficult, satisfying, frustrating, and rewarding thing I have ever attempted.
After not getting a job following my first bootcamp, I ended up going back into mortgage, got laid off for the second time in 2022 and decided to finally fully transition to tech. I completed and graduated from my second bootcamp in November and joined on as a Sauce Labs Fellow this past December.
I am also the organizer and founder of Black Tech Denver, a networking incubator for underrepresented communities (Black, POC, LGBTQ+, neurodiverse, etc.) in tech. We recently had a mini conference with lightning talks from members who wanted to practice public speaking and glean knowledge from one another.
I was very interested in the fellowship program when I saw the emphasis on mentorship and working in an open source capacity with content, development, user experience, and design. I have been delighted and inspired by several mentors and leaders in the organization so far and I have had a great time getting to know the other members of the cohort. I especially love the sessions with James Tacker all about development fundamentals, getting into the details of user research with Marija Stupar and the specifics of language with Rachel Andre. I’m looking forward to helping spark more ideas, to contributing to open source and to building a project we will be proud of for years after the fellowship has ended.
