A Brief History of My Career So Far

My career history is pretty short, but sweet. I see myself as fairly rounded, cultured and experienced for my age. I graduated high school one year early and that was one of the best things I could have done for myself at the time.

From the moment I watched Passport to Paris with the Olsen twins at age 9, I wanted to go there. I was super excited to learn a new language when I began middle school, but I was smart enough to take Spanish instead of French. I knew studying abroad was something I would want to do as well so I settled for Spain over France; besides I would be able to visit Paris while over there. I probably studied Spanish the hardest in middle school and was very proud of myself when I earned high school foreign language credits before getting to high school.

I started my college career at Arizona State as I had been aching to leave home for almost ten years at this point. It was a great experience living away from home and being forced to do things even more independently than I usually do them. I had no idea what I wanted to study yet and ASU was extremely expensive. After one semester, I decided it might be better to go back to my home town and attend University of Nevada — Reno. At UNR I would focus on a way to study abroad, join Delta Delta Delta and still save over $100,000 on my education. Tri Delta and studying abroad ended up being invaluable.

Tri Delta was a great experience for me as well. I know you’re thinking of stereo-typical sororities from TV and movies, but those are nothing like real-life sororities. I learned to have a better self-esteem, raised my standards and morals, and became better at small talk and networking.

Studying abroad was a top experience of my life. I lived with a family, where I was forced to learn to speak the language and came back almost fluent. I played card games with my madre between partying like the Spaniards til 8am. During my time abroad, I of course made it to Paris, twice actually. I visited Rome, Dublin, Amsterdam, a few others and Marrakesh, Morocco, the place I was most satisfied with. It’s a hop, skip and jump over Gibralter at the top of Africa. Marrakesh was a little scary at first because I was going with only one other girl and we were two young women in a Muslim city. I absolutely loved it, though. I loved stepping outside my comfort zone even further and seeing the busiest square on the continent of Africa (Jemaa el-Fnaa), hiking in the mountains amongst wild monkeys, crossing a bridge literally made of sticks. Living abroad made me crave the world. I wanted to see everything!

As a kid/young adult, I never imagined myself going to Asia, but living abroad opened up that door for me. As I neared college graduation. I had wanted to return to Spain to teach, but they didn’t pay much and I would be graduating with a LOT of debt. A few acquaintances told me to look into Korea. They paid 7 fold what Spain did, so I began investigating.

In August 2011, three months after graduation, I left for South Korea. I didn’t know anyone there, but I was beyond excited for all the new things I would experience and places I would go. I planned on learning to speak Korean even though I had read you didn’t need to. It was a lot harder than Spanish. I had to learn a whole new alphabet! I ended up spending nearly three years there and became conversational in the language, better than a lot of other foreigners. I loved my time in Korea and believe I stayed just the right amount of time.

In Korea, I met an American soldier who I ended up following to the boonies of Upstate New York. I knew I belonged in the city (any city) before I moved there, but I thought I was following love. Moving in together made me see the true colors and long story short, I decided I was unhappy about a year later and moved back to my home town. Plus, there were no real career opportunities out there and I’m a career-oriented woman! My best friend owned a coffee roasting business and agreed to give me a job when I got back. I worked a few odd jobs before -so luckily- falling into my current position as the Administrative Coordinator for Infinite Red. The timing was perfect and offered me just what I needed when I needed it.

I really like working for Infinite Red because I do a broad range of things and don’t ever really do the same thing from day to day. I help with sales, marketing, administrative tasks, and I am currently planning the All Team Retreat outside of Portland, OR. Infinite Red is a growing company as they recently merged with Clearsight, which increased the team to 20-ish people. We are a remote company with people spread from San Francisco to New Orleans. What I really love is how even though we are spread out, there is still camaraderie. We use tools like Slack, Zoom and Trello, which help make the team feel closer. I feel welcome as the only female in the company, partially because they let me play Team Fortress 2 with them. The bosses: Jamon Holmgren, Todd Werth and Ken Miller are pretty great; they’re considerate, dedicated and diligent. I appreciate how they listen and value their employees opinions and they are transparent in running the company. I find these to be good qualities of an employer as it shows they care not only about their company, but also their employees and how they perceive it. Someone once told me that in order to run a successful company, you need your employees to care about it and in order for that, you have to show your appreciation for them. I have only been working for IR since October, but I am definitely excited to grow alongside them.