Education
Computer Programming
freeCodeCamp
Certification Program
April 2020 - August 2020
I earned a series of certifications from freeCodeCamp over the course of five months, demonstrating my proficiency in key web development and software engineering skills. These certifications include Responsive Web Design, Front End Development Libraries, JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures, Data Visualization, Back End Development and APIs, Quality Assurance, Scientific Computing with Python, Information Security and Quality Assurance, and Full Stack Development. Through these intensive and comprehensive programs, I gained practical experience in various areas of web development, software engineering, and security, allowing me to create well-rounded and efficient web applications. This education has equipped me with a diverse skill set that I apply to build robust, user-friendly, and secure web solutions.
Nursing
Western Governors University
Bachelor's Degree (not obtained)
August 2015 - May 2017
I pursued two years of nursing studies at Western Governors University, where I gained a solid foundation in nursing practices and healthcare. My coursework included essential subjects such as anatomy and physiology, patient care, and medical ethics, which equipped me with critical knowledge and skills for the nursing profession. Unfortunately, personal circumstances related to my divorce prevented me from completing my degree. Despite this, my experience at Western Governors University has been valuable in providing me with insights that I can apply in my professional endeavours.
Labour Law
National Labour College
Bachelor's Degree (not obtained)
August 2012 - May 2014
I studied Labour Law at the National Labour College for two years, where I gained a deep understanding of workers' rights, labour relations, and employment law. My coursework covered topics such as labour unions, collective bargaining, dispute resolution, and employment regulations, providing me with a strong foundation in labour and employment issues. Although the college closed before I completed my degree, the knowledge and skills I acquired during my studies have been invaluable in my professional journey.
Education
Washington State University
Bachelor's Degree (not obtained)
August 2009 - May 2011
I completed my undergraduate studies in the education program at Washington State University (WSU). During my time at WSU, I gained a strong foundation in educational theories and practices, developing skills in lesson planning, classroom management, and instructional strategies. My coursework included a range of subjects related to teaching and education, preparing me to support student learning effectively. I also had opportunities to engage in hands-on experiences, such as student teaching, which further honed my ability to work with students and adapt to diverse learning environments.
Primary Schooling
Vancouver School of Arts and Academics
Diploma
September 2002 - June 2009
I attended the Vancouver School of Arts and Academics from grades 6 through 12, where I immersed myself in a rigorous academic and arts education. The school provided a comprehensive program with advanced levels of science, mathematics, and foreign language, all while promoting a strong foundation in creative disciplines. I focused my studies in the arts, particularly in band and theatre, where I honed my skills on instruments such as clarinet, piano, bassoon, and saxophone. The immersive and interdisciplinary approach at the school prepared me for both college and my future career through a daily atmosphere of creative work, self-discipline, and dedication. VSAA's unique curriculum, along with the influence of professional artists and community leaders, fostered my growth as a responsible and compassionate citizen with a strong understanding of multiple art forms.
Projects
Mommy Bot
SpellWare
April 2025
A multi-platform bot that provides motherly words of encouragement.
Cordelia Taryne
SpellWare
February 2025
AI-powered Discord assistant that provides general information, alt-text for images, text summarisation, and more.
Gwen Abalise
SpellWare
February 2025
A private ticketing system for Discord that leverages private threads for a clean UX.
Life of a Naomi
SpellWare
December 2024
RPG Maker game that gives a brief insight into who I am.
Community Syndication
Deepgram
June 2024
A multi-platform tool that connects help threads from Discord and GitHub into an internal Slack, and allows discussion among the team and replying to the customer directly through the Slack thread.
Moderation Bot
SpellWare
May 2024
A general-purpose bot that provides powerful moderation tools for Discord communities.
Art 4 Palestine Bot
SpellWare
November 2023
A bot for the Art 4 Palestine charity initiative. Manages art requests and delivery, and provides a news feed.
CamperChan
freeCodeCamp
June 2020
A Discord bot that provides a variety of features for the freeCodeCamp community, including moderation and Github issue management.
Publications
i stayed for 36 hours straight. here's why~
SpellWare
24 June 2026
i went to ai hackathon @ berkeley 2026 representing deepgram and i did not sleep. not because i had to — because i genuinely could not make myself leave~
ADHD and Software Engineering
SpellWare
15 June 2026
How ADHD shapes programming work and what accommodations genuinely help vs what's noise.
i went to cascadiajs 2026. here's what developers are telling us~
SpellWare
12 June 2026
i spent two days at cascadiajs 2026 in seattle as deepgram's community engineer — notebook in hand a lot of questions and one very good conversation opener~
a dev community where people are scared to ask questions is not a community~
SpellWare
10 June 2026
if people are scared to ask questions, it is not a community.
AI Art, Ethics, and the Dopamine Tax
SpellWare
2 April 2026
An honest reckoning with my one vice, why I can't quit it, and whether the good I try to put into the world counts for anything.
Hikari: My AI Assistant for Work and Wellbeing
SpellWare
27 February 2026
How I built Hikari - a fully custom desktop app wrapping Claude Code with an anime assistant, wired into every tool I use - to manage my health, my ADHD, and three jobs without losing my mind.
Living With Mental Illness
SpellWare
24 February 2026
An honest account of my journey with schizophrenia, ADHD, anxiety, depression, insomnia, and everything that comes with them.
AI, Bigots, and Consuming Media
SpellWare
22 December 2025
Naomi's opinions on the latest discourse.
How to Think Algorithmically
SpellWare
10 December 2025
A structured approach to programmatic problem solving.
Learning In Public
SpellWare
31 October 2025
Why Naomi hates answering DMs
Networking
SpellWare
8 July 2025
How to forge meaningful connections that will advance your career
Community Curation
SpellWare
26 June 2025
The importance of creating safe online spaces for LGBTQ+ people
Building an AI DM
SpellWare
21 May 2025
How I created a Discord bot that became a wild storyteller
How to Help Someone with Their Code Using the Socratic Method
freeCodeCamp
7 January 2025
As a programming community, freeCodeCamp helps many people who have questions about their code. It can be quite tempting to simply provide the learner with the answer and move on, but that’s actually detrimental to the learning process.
Freelancing is Hard
SpellWare
12 October 2024
One of my clients put my contract on pause this month. They don’t have any work for me. Thankfully, I run a very heavy workload specifically so things like this aren’t quite the blow. But that’s not viable for many people (and arguably unhealthy for me).
I Did It, and You Can't Too!
SpellWare
9 August 2024
'Become job ready in 6 months'. 'Learn to code in 90 days'. If you've heard statements like this from various tech influencers, you're not alone. That seems to be the selling point lately - how to go from 0 to job ready as fast as possible.
De-Googling Myself
SpellWare
14 May 2024
Recent life events have made me more cognisant of my digital footprint and online privacy. So much so that I'm paying for one of those services that sends data removal requests automatically on your behalf. But over the weekend I realised... how much data am I still giving to the tech giants? So I sat down and spent many hours moving away from those platforms.
Migrating from Windows to Ubuntu
SpellWare
10 May 2024
I grew up on Windows. My very first computer ran MS-DOS. My schools all used Windows computers (except for a brief stint with the colourful iMac). I thought myself to be intimately familiar with how Windows works. Becoming a developer showed me just how wrong I was.
How to Claim Your Supporter Role on Discord
freeCodeCamp
12 April 2024
If you have donated to support freeCodeCamp's efforts, you can now claim a special Supporter role in our Discord community.
Hacktoberfest 2023 Contributors
freeCodeCamp
3 November 2023
The freeCodeCamp community just finished participating in this year's Hacktoberfest – a month-long celebration of open source. Our core team is excited to recognize all of our wonderful open source contributors. A big thank you to all of these folks for the effort they put into helping improve our curriculum and learning resources.
Hacktoberfest 2022 Contributors
freeCodeCamp
11 November 2022
freeCodeCamp participated in Hacktoberfest (a month-long celebration of open source) again this year. We wanted to take a moment to thank all of our wonderful contributors for the effort they put in to help us continue to improve our curriculum and learning resources.
How to Set Up Your Own Mastodon Instance
freeCodeCamp
11 November 2022
Mastodon is a decentralized, federated social media platform based on the ActivityPub protocol. It allows you to follow and interact with friends across multiple instances. In this article, you will learn how freeCodeCamp set up our own Mastodon instance - and how you can too.
How to Set Up a GitHub OAuth Application
freeCodeCamp
27 October 2022
GitHub is an incredibly useful OAuth provider, especially if you are building an application targeted toward developers. In this article, we will give you a quick rundown of how to set up a GitHub OAuth application.
How to Use RegEx to Match Emoji - Discord Emotes Regular Expression Tutorial
freeCodeCamp
13 July 2022
Emoji are special Unicode characters that render pictographs. But these characters can be very tricky to identify with regular expressions (RegEx).
Build a 100 Days of Code Discord Bot with TypeScript, MongoDB, and Discord.js 13
freeCodeCamp
31 January 2022
The 100 Days of Code challenge is very popular among new coders and developers looking to level up their skills. It's so popular that our Discord server has an entire channel dedicated to it.
How to Add Sentry to Your Node.js Project with TypeScript
freeCodeCamp
28 September 2021
Sentry.io is an external monitoring and logging service which can help you identify and triage errors in your code. These logs provide information such as a trace stack, breadcrumbs, and (assuming this is a web application) browser data. This can help you triage issues and resolve bugs faster, with less investigative overhead.
How to Use TypeScript and MongoDB to Build a 100 Days of Code Discord Bot
freeCodeCamp
22 June 2021
The 100 Days of Code challenge is very popular among new coders and developers looking to level up their skills. It's so popular that our Discord server has an entire channel dedicated to it.
What is SendGrid? SMTP Email Newsletter Tutorial
freeCodeCamp
14 May 2021
You may have heard of the term SMTP before, and wondered what it is. SMTP is a common method for handling email messages.
How to Create an Email Newsletter [2021 Tutorial] - Design, Layout, Send
freeCodeCamp
13 May 2021
If you manage a large community, chances are you need a way to communicate updates to your members quickly and efficiently. An email newsletter can be a very effective way to do so.
PowerShell Themes and Windows Terminal Colour Schemes - How to Customise Your Command Line
freeCodeCamp
5 March 2021
I recently set up and configured Windows Terminal for my local development environment. In this article, I will walk you through the steps to configure your own Terminal.
How to Build a RocketChat Bot with TypeScript
freeCodeCamp
7 January 2021
Today I will show you how to build your own Rocket.Chat bot and test it locally. This is the same process I used to build freeCodeCamp's moderation chat bot for our community's self-hosted chat server. This code is now running in production, and lots of people are using it.
How to Send an Email Newsletter with the SendGrid API
freeCodeCamp
14 December 2020
For years, Quincy Larson sent a weekly email newsletter through freeCodeCamp's Mail for Good platform, which is powered by Amazon SES. He recently migrated this process to SendGrid. In this article, I will show you how I built a tool to accomplish this.
