Saron on Twitter: https://twitter.com/saronyitbarek

Quincy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ossia

Get tickets to Codeland in NYC on July 22, 2019: http://codelandconf.com

Quincy's review of his Codeland experience: https://medium.freecodecamp.org/5f01cadf0a42

In this week's podcast, Quincy interviews Saron about her childhood, and her winding path into tech as an adult.

Saron moved from Ethiopia to the US as a child. Her parents had high standards for her academics, and they would even make up extra homework for her each night.

After studying liberal arts, Saron worked in science journalism. Eventually she decided to learn to code. After some self-study, she attended a coding bootcamp. From there, she got her start as a developer at ThoughtBot, and then worked at Microsoft.

Saron founded CodeNewbie in 2014 and started hosting Twitter chats for people who were interested in learning to code. Then she launched the CodeNewbie podcast, which now has more than 200 interviews with developers around the world.

Even though Saron is extremely productive, this productivity doesn't come easy. She talks about was recently diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and General Anxiety Disorder, and she has adapted to her situation by being extremely methodical about how she invests her time and energy.

Enjoy the interview, and be sure to subscribe to both the CodeNewbie podcast and the freeCodeCamp podcast for new interviews each week.