Date: Mon, 03 Jun 2019 10:00:00 +0000
<p>In this episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with developer advocate Alejandra Olvera-Novack about how she broke free from her restrictive cult upbringing, moved to the United States, and taught herself how to code.</p> <p>Alejandra was raised without technology, without formal schooling, and in an extremely conservative environment. When she was in her late teens, she left her village and moved to Florida. </p> <p>After a couple years of googling everything under the sun to catch up on the world's events, and trying to attend college, she ran out of money. Since she was alone - having cut all ties with her family - she took a leap of faith, moved to Seattle, WA, and started looking for work.</p> <p>She worked odd jobs for a while, but quickly realized she'd need something more to survive and thrive. So she started to learn about HTML and CSS, something she never thought she could do. Fast-forward a couple years later, and she was working her way up to a job at Amazon Web Services.</p> <p>Today, Alejandra works with robots, helps developers be as happy and productive as possible at AWS, and runs the non-profit she founded that teaches women, minorities, and disabled how to code for free. She manages her anxiety and PTSD with the help of a service dog and some really great mentors and friends, and she still can hardly believe she's living her dream.</p> <p>Find Alejandra on Twitter here: <a href="https://twitter.com/QuetzalliAle">https://twitter.com/QuetzalliAle</a></p> <p>Visit her website here: <a href="https://alejandraquetzalli.com/">https://alejandraquetzalli.com/</a></p> <p>Check out SheCodesNow, Alejandra's non-profit here: <a href="https://twitter.com/shecodesnow">https://twitter.com/shecodesnow</a></p> <p>Find Abbey on Twitter here: <a href="https://twitter.com/abbeyrenn">https://twitter.com/abbeyrenn</a></p>