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Catalina Laverde Highlight
Fake it until you make it...Believing in yourself, being your own advocate, won’t be easy. But you’ve got to stretch. Embrace those challenges because they are going to make you who you are.
About Catalina
- Born and raised in a small town outside of Bogota, Colombia.
- Spent the majority of her younger years indoors studying, reading, and writing because it wasn’t safe to play outside.
- Early on, she developed an interest in journalism and worked for a local radio station throughout her teen years—she always assumed she would eventually become a journalist.
- After graduating high school, she had a change of heart and decided that she wanted to pursue something new and challenging, which led her to software engineering.
- Admits her first exposure to computers and programming came during her first semester of college, before that she had never taken a computer class.
- When she was 18, she decided to move to the U.S. to finish her college degree and give herself more opportunities—arrived with 1 suitcase, $200, and didn’t speak a word of English.
- Got accepted to Rutgers University, where she majored in computer science—her mother sold their family home in Columbia in order to help her pay for her tuition.
- She is now a Senior Software Engineer at Spotify in New York and is the Co-Founder of Civic Action Network, an organization bridging the gap between Congress and Constituents.
