Episode 35 – How Rachel became a champion for girls in technology and started a movement

Rachel Ober is helping to pave the way for women of technology everywhere. Rachel began with her loves of art, technology, and cognitive thinking and married the three together. Rachel’s love of technology soon leads her to a form a movement that helps support and educate women across the country. Listen in to Arsalan and Rachel in this exciting new episode for more juicy details.
Rachel’s Bio:
Rachel Ober is a Ruby on Rails developer based in New York City. A true renaissance woman, Rachel has significant experience in and a passion for user experience, user interface, and cognitive design. Rachel is a senior developer at Paperless Post where she serves as a technical mentor for all front end developers on the development team and leads front end development for the company. Rachel encourages other women developers to hone their skills by contributing to the 3-day conference Write/Speak/Code as a co-organizer. Founded in 2013, Rachel organizes and volunteers her time to teach women Ruby and Ruby on Rails through RailsBridge NYC. Rachel lives in Brooklyn with her husband and fur-child Isabella and loves scrapbooking and card making.
Episode Highlights and Show Notes:
Arsalan: Hi everyone. Today I have Rachel Ober with me. Rachel, how are you?
Rachel: I’m doing great. How are you?
Arsalan: I’m so excited to have you on here. I’ve been trying to get you on the show for a while, but we’ve had some scheduling issues. There’s something very interesting about you. You are a speaker and a presenter and a teacher. You focus on Ruby on Rails. You are a conference organizer. But, there’s something interesting about the way you started your speaking and public career that’s a little bit unusual. You weren’t asking for it. It just came to you. Tell us a little bit about it.
Rachel: I really did not expect to get to the point where I started my own conference with some friends. It wasn’t until somebody had found me and reached out to me to teach at general assembly concerning Ruby on Rails. So that’s just a little bit about what got me into it and it was kind of the ignition point in my life.
Arsalan: I think that this is really inspirational for me personally because your girl and women have certain issues when it comes to technology careers, and getting accepted is sometimes a problem. We’re going to talk about this. You are an organizer for a conference that focuses on women and helping women to speak. So, were going to talk about all that because it’s really exciting and I think that all of us who don’t know about the conference should go and check it out. It’s going to be in Chicago. So if you’re in the area, then go ahead and get there.
Rachel: Get yourself to Chicago in June.
Arsalan: Get yourself to Chicago in June. Chicago in June, by the way, is the place to be. Where else will you be, right?
Rachel: Right.
Arsalan: So, describe yourself for us. Who is Rachel Ober?
Rachel: Rachel Ober is probably first and foremost a dreamer and a creator. I love technology, and everything about me has to do with software engineering, coding, creating something new. Even in my free time outside of my job, I’m working on coding one of my projects or helping others do something similar. I would also say that I’m an entrepreneur. I wouldn’t have really called myself that it until somebody said “Rachel, you’re really an entrepreneur. You started all these things. ”I definitely like being supportive of other people. And it all comes down to all the things that I’m passionate about and being able to share what I’ve learned.
Arsalan: That’s great. You’ve been coding for a while. Do you remember your first encounter with programming?
Rachel: Wow. I would have to go really far back. I always joked about this back in college. My father conditioned me from a very young age to be a software engineer. Whenever I told him that I had been telling people this,

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