Role at TomorrowNow: Lead Developer on the PeopleSoft Enterprise Support Team
Location: Key West, Florida
Total PSFT Experience: 10 years
Total Industry Experience: More than 20 years
Product Specialty: PeopleSoft Enterprise Financials and Human Resources
Catherine |
Growing up, Catherine's dad was in the U.S. Air Force, so they moved around quite a bit. Minnesota. New York. Germany. Texas. Mississippi. This experience taught her to be comfortable with change, meeting new people, and instilled a life-long love for travel.
"I had a great childhood," Catherine said. "Minnesota was my favorite. It was a very small community and we did a lot of stuff like ice skating, and camping every weekend."
She's taken that childhood love of the outdoors and combined it with her passion for travel in her adulthood. Catherine can often be found hiking, snow skiing, and scuba diving, all over the world.
After getting her scuba license in Australia nine years ago, she has found a tranquility under water she doesn't find elsewhere. Now she dives regularly near her Key West home, and has gone on some incredible dives around the world. In Honduras, she saw a Volkswagen Bug-sized sea turtle, and in Palau, she carefully swam in Jelly Fish lake—where she was more concerned about hurting the fragile non-stinging jelly fish than them hurting her.
When Catherine isn't outside enjoying nature, she's tackling TomorrowNow's tax updates. She's been the lead developer on every TomorrowNow tax update except the first one.
Programming, it turns out, came as naturally to her as camping. "I totally love programming," Catherine said. "My dad got one of the first home computers you could get, so I felt like it was around all the time. That's when I first saw programming languages, and started to play on little ones."
When her junior and senior high schools offered programming classes, she jumped at the chance to learn more. "I thought it was cool, and programming comes easy to me," she said.
Part of the draw was that programming was like puzzles. She enjoyed doing word puzzles as a kid. "Solving puzzles gives you a good feeling," she said. "If you can fix something or work it out, it's very satisfying."
TomorrowNow's commitment to work with our clients until we have a resolution to their case fits neatly into Catherine's own work ethic. "I stress 'until the issue is resolved'," Catherine said. "I love figuring out the problem, thinking up a solution, and seeing it work."