Episode 91: Sara Cope

Introducing Sara Cope

Sara is a software engineer working remotely for the US Federal Government. She’s passionate about education and diversity in tech and loves helping others level up their skills.

Show Notes

Twitter | @sarassassin

Website | sara.io

Episode Transcript

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions, and our guests share their stories, ideas and perspectives.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is episode 91.

Liam: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Liam Dempsey.

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Sara Cope. Sara is a software engineer working remotely for the US Federal Government. She’s passionate about education and diversity in tech and loves helping others level up their skills. Outside of work, she enjoys collecting toys and adventuring with her family. Welcome, Sara.

Sara: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Liam: You’re most welcome. Thanks for joining us. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Sara: Yeah, I am a woman in tech for the past 17 years surprisingly. My background with that is in software development and project management. And then outside of my full-time job, I also do some mentoring and teaching at an education boot camp. And then my home life, I have two sons and a pug named Bowie.

Tara: And your two sons, how old are they?

Sara: Ben is 12 and Nick is 18.

Tara: And are they involved in tech?

Sara: Well, Ben for sure is. He is more of a systems nerd. He built his own computer, I think he was 10 or 11 when he built his first computer. He loves networking and all sorts of things. Nick is not into tech as much. He actually wants to be an epidemiologist.

Tara: That’s interesting that your older son took apart a computer. We recently spoke to somebody who works in education. We were discussing the fact that it seems like the current generation of students is less inclined to actually dig in and take things apart because everything is so app-driven and not as much hardware. Is he involved in something in school that does that or have you led him down that path? Where does that curiosity come from?

Sara: Well, it’s actually my younger son. My 12-year-old.

Tara: Oh, sorry. Okay.

Sara: And he is on a RobotX team in a local community. It’s not affiliated with his school but it’s a community team, which he’s been doing for four years and it’s called First LEGO League. That probably I’m sure has had some influence and we also, I always have old computers and old electronics that I keep on hand so he’s always kind of having sitting around to tinker with. I think that’s helped him get interested, too.

Tara: Interesting. How did you get involved in tech? Tell us a little bit about your background?

Sara: Well, when I was young, my dad had a lot of computers that were sitting around that I wanted to tinker with. He would get computers and computer parts and go and sell them at local conventions or the Hamventions is what we have here in Dayton, Ohio for Ham radio operators. So we always had these computer things laying around, and I just wanted to play games on them. With my siblings, we would try and see which computer worked and would run the games that we wanted to play. And then eventually after Windows came out, I got more interested in computers and actually creating things on computers. And I would make little movies and animations and thought that was really cool. And then in junior high, I had the opportunity to take a programming class. And I just knew right away that I want to do something with computers.

Liam: That’s really interesting, the progression there.