Perficient is a company full of unique populations, and we’re committed to investing in resources that develop the skills of our colleagues while embracing diverse perspectives and voices. It’s a commitment that Perficient made to nearly 5,000 colleagues earlier this year through the Perficient People Promise, which promises to champion, challenge, and celebrates every colleague.
Bonus: Unveiling the New Perficient People Promise with Andrea Lampert, VP of People
We also believe that diversity and inclusion are constant pursuits and that more can be done to create equitable opportunities throughout the technology industry. That’s the purpose of our Bright Path’s Program, which aims to advance STEM education and career opportunities within our communities. Over the past several weeks, our first cohort of Bright Paths students, consisting of 22 women based in Detroit, have been hard at work learning about fundamental concepts of software engineering. Recently, the students put their knowledge to work by engineering their own innovative applications and showcasing their work during a Demo Day.
Perficient Proudly Presents Bright Paths Student Demos
With so many amazing examples of ingenuity, we are breaking our Bright Paths student profiles into two blog posts. Review the other Bright Paths student profiles and demos in our previous blog post. To view all the presentations in full, please enjoy the full playlist.
Melissa Rice’s Bright Paths Project: WanderList
Melissa is a Michigan State University alum with a B.S. in Kinesiology who moved to Seattle, WA, soon after graduation. There, she worked at a small start-up where she was introduced to new platforms, including Salesforce. She moved back to Michigan in 2018 and started a marketing company in 2019 where she fixed and built websites using WordPress. She then decided to enroll in a front-end web development bootcamp at Grand Circus in Detroit in January 2020 where she expanded her knowledge on several software programs. Almost a year later, she saw a post about the Bright Paths cohort with Perficient and never looked back. In her free time, Melissa loves to be outdoors rock climbing, mountain biking, hiking, and kayaking.
Bright Paths Project: WanderList
WanderList is an application for people who love to travel around the U.S. to see all the beauty within it. Want to visit Zion National Park? Add it to your favorites page. Already been to Pictured Rocks National Park? Just change your Visited status from false to true!
Technology Stack: Python, Postgres, Flask, JavaScript, SQLAlchemy, JQuery, AJAX, web API | APIs Used: NPS API: https://www.nps.gov/subjects/developer/api-documentation.htm#/
More About Melissa Rice’s Bright Paths Project: WanderList
Nicole Dreon’s Bright Paths Project: Mindful Everyday – ME
After losing her Program Director job in Summer 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Nicole saw the situation as an opportunity to develop her interest in coding into a career. She enrolled in a front-end bootcamp through Grand Circus where she was awarded a full scholarship from the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT). Post-graduation, a personal friend who works at Perficient informed Nicole about the Bright Paths program. Between the bootcamp, Udacity, and self study, Nicole came to Hackbright with prior knowledge of numerous software programs. She built a website for her yoga business and is currently building a portfolio site. Nicole volunteers at Mulick Park Elementary School where she shares her love of coding with the next generation.
Bright Paths Project: Mindful Everyday – ME
Mindful Everyday is a daily journaling application that allows users to chart the quantifiable data from entries to view correlations over time. Users make morning and evening entries each day which include quality of sleep, hours slept, number of times hitting snooze, activity level, and overall quality of day. The analytics page displays each of the aforementioned items on a line chart allowing users to view possible correlations between habits. Users can view past entries on their homepage and a daily inspirational quote.
Technology Stack: Python, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, Flask, Jinja, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, Chart.js | APIs Used: Zen Quotes
More About Nicole Dreon’s Bright Paths Project: Mindful Everyday – ME
Noelle Notermann’s Bright Paths Project: GOH! (Get Out of the House)
After four years of a rigorous science and technology program, Noelle pivoted to pursue her passions for music, languages, and mathematics in college, completing two majors, a minor, a full year abroad, and earning the highest honors – all by the age of 20. She went on to earn graduate degrees in music performance and pedagogy, with focus areas in higher education administration and women in leadership. She volunteers as a conflict coach and facilitative mediator in the areas of social justice, DEI, and restorative community dialogues. A natural problem solver, Noelle began to see patterns in her vocations and avocations that could benefit from improved technologies, and thus started a journey of self-study that led to a love of coding. Prior to joining the inaugural Perficient Bright Paths program, Noelle completed Hacbright’s Target Prep Course along with self-study in Python, Agile, and software development.
Bright Paths Project: GOH! (Get Out of the House)
Based on lessons learned during the global pandemic, “GOH!” (Get Out of the House) is designed to support users in getting outside to spend more time in nearby nature, parks, and recreation locations. GOH! allows users to create a profile with preferences, and then uses the robustness of the Google Maps API to return localized parks and recreation locations that may fit their needs and interests. Return results include a user’s personalized map with markers, location information, user rating, and a link to external details about the location. After completing a profile, users are able to safely and securely login/out and save locations to their favorites with immediate updates to their personalized favorites page.
Technology Stack: Python, Flask, JavaScript, jQuery, AJAX, JSON, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, Jinja, HTML, CSS,
Bootstrap, Python unittest | APIs Used: Google Maps API, Google Places API, Google Geocoding
More About Noelle Notermann’s Bright Paths Project: GOH! (Get Out of the House) | Go to GOH! (Get Out of the House)
Quanisha Williams’ Bright Paths Project: Family Ties
Quanisha has been interested in tech most of her life. In 2011, she received her B.A. in Computer Science and was fortunate to work her first IT job as a tech support specialist approximately six years ago. Prior to Hackbright, Quanisha had been a stay-at-home mom due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although she loves taking care and spending time with her family, she was looking to get back into IT right away. Just recently in 2020, she became A+ and Google IT-certified. She is looking to add more certifications underneath her belt as she continues to expand her knowledge and become well-rounded in IT. While searching for a job, she stumbled across an ad for an IT training opportunity. She applied and was accepted into the program. She was later connected to Hackbright Academy with another great opportunity through Perficient Bright Paths to continue developing her knowledge.
Bright Paths Project: Family Ties
Family Ties is a web app that allows users to keep track of family events. Once a user has successfully registered and signed into their accounts, they are able to view their profile which is generated from the registration process, and can upload a profile picture through a Cloudinary API implementation. The user can also keep track of upcoming events by viewing the calendar which is implemented by the FullCalendar API. Each family has at least one admin who has the same privileges as a regular user but can also create events to be stored on the calendar.
Technology Stack: Python3, Flask, Jinja2, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy ORM, Javascript, JQuery, HTML, CSS, Bootstrap | APIs Used: Cloudinary, FullCalendar
More About Quanisha Williams’ Bright Paths Project: Family Ties
QueenTesa Fugget’s Bright Paths Project: Rejuvenate
QueenTesa is eager to transition her career into the technology industry. With a background in education as a STEAM teacher, experience as a technology specialist, and customer service roles, she is passionate about teaching others, problem-solving, and communication. The Hackbright program is the second bootcamp she has participated in, with the first taking place through The Flatiron School. She received scholarships for both of these bootcamp programs. With this experience, QueenTesa has developed her knowledge on several software platforms and frameworks. She previously developed a job applications system, an exercise logger, and a tracker for user-created homemade hair products.
Bright Paths Project: Rejuvenate
Rejuvenate is a web application that allows a user to create recipes and add and look up food ingredients through an API.
Technology Stack: PostgreSQL, Python, Flask, Jinja, Javascript, Ajax, JQuery | APIs Used: https://developer.edamam.com/food-database-api-docs
More About QueenTesa Fugget’s Bright Paths Project: Rejuvenate
Rosemond Ho’s Bright Paths Project: Aspiration Recycling
Rosemond comes from a background in mechanical engineering where she worked in the semiconductor and consumer electronics industry. She is passionate about saving the environment and education equity and has volunteered her time and talents with the Society of Women Engineers to promote STEM with girls in K-12 education. In her spare time, she likes to read and hike, as well as watch and perform in the theater.
Bright Paths Project: Aspiration Recycling
“Aspirational Recycling” is a term that refers to people putting materials into the recycling bin that are not actually recyclable in the hopes that the items could possibly be recycled. However, non-recyclable items are bad for the recycler because they gunk up the machine and slow down the recycling process. Aspiration Recycling is a Yelp for Recyclers: users can search a database of all recyclers in the U.S. based on location and materials. Users can also provide reviews/comments on different recyclers and maintain a list of their own favorite recyclers.
Technology Stack: Python, Flask, HTML, Jinja2 | APIs Used: Earth911 API
More About Rosemond Ho’s Bright Paths Project: Aspiration Recycling
Sameea Fatima’s Bright Paths Project: BookWorld
Sameea earned a bachelor’s degree in software engineering and has professional experience as a software consultant and software developer. With a love for coding and a passion for data science and data visualization, Sameea looks forward to developing her talents and is interested in learning new technologies to drive her career forward.
Bright Paths Project: BookWorld
BookWorld is a web application where users can search for books, add them to their personal collection, and share with their friends.
Technology Stack: Python, HTML, CSS, Jquery, Ajax, Bootstrap, SqlAlchemy, Flask, Jinja, Cloundinary | APIs Used: Google Books API, Cloudinary API
More About Sameea Fatima’s Bright Paths Project: BookWorld
Sarah Barton’s Bright Paths Project: Spelling Bee Solver
Throughout her career, Sarah has reengineered manual processes into automated and scaled solutions. During her time in finance, this took the form of automating quarterly reporting using VBA and macros. At Amazon, Sarah paired VBA with SQL to build a tool that automated a seven-step manual workflow. Most recently at Dropbox, Sarah taught herself SQL, earning the reputation as the go-to person for all things customer data. She also led her team to build an automatic PowerPoint deck generator using Python that saved the sales organization ~500 hours per quarter. Until recently, Sarah thought that these interests in scale and efficiency meant a career in operations. At Dropbox, however, she worked closely with developers on internal tooling and learned a better word for the type of work she loves: software engineering. With a newly-found interest, Sarah successfully pursued a certificate of completion from Codeacademy’s Learn Python 3 course, is currently attending Hackbright Academy and is eager to pursue a full-time career in software engineering.
Bright Paths Project: Spelling Bee Solver
Spelling Bee Solver is a full-stack web app that displays the solutions to a daily NYTimes game called Spelling Bee. Solver looks simple but packs a lot of punch in the back-end. The app asks users to input the letters for the day’s game, then hit submit. What they get in return is a list of all the words for the day’s game, and some extra queues about certain attributes. Behind the scenes, an AJAX event listener passes the form data to the server, where a Regex and three CRUD operators are fired off to create rows in the Solver database. SQLAlchemy then retrieves the relational data, and the server feeds that data back to AJAX, where it’s added to the HTML and displayed to the user. All with just one click!
Technology Stack: Python, Flask, SQLAlchemy, JavaScript, AJAX, HTML, Jinja, CSS, Bootstrap
More About Sarah Barton’s Bright Paths Project: Spelling Bee Solver | Go to Spelling Bee Solver
Sherry Matlock’s Bright Paths Project: Mighty Missions
Sherry has hands-on expertise in quality assurance engineering and management where she has been challenged to deploy strong analytical problem-solving and project/program management to deliver quality results. During these experiences, she used her self-taught skills with HTML and Javascript to create an intranet work site for work processes and documents. Sherry is eager to further develop her software engineering knowledge through the Perficient Bright Paths Program with Hackbright Academy.
Bright Paths Project: Might Missions
Mighty Missions Network is a database and networking site for mission-driven organizations such as nonprofits and social enterprises. Its purpose is to facilitate networking and collaboration among small organizations with a similar mission or cause. Through successful collaboration and networking, these organizations can work together to successfully meet the needs of their communities. The project goal is to establish proof of concept with a small number of nonprofits. Future Mighty Missions 2.0 will allow organizations to connect with each other, see the success stories of other organizations, and include a group page. It will also feature a news feed of key articles and information related to their cause/mission.
Technology Stack: Flask, HTML, CSS, Python, SQLAlchemy, unittest, Postgresql, Jinja, Bootstrap
More About Sherry Matlock’s Bright Paths Project: Might Missions
Susmitha Kristam’s Bright Paths Project: Yummy Recipes
Outside of Hackbright Academy, Susmitha is a loving and doting mom eager to take part in her children’s activities, including leading STEM programs like a Science Olympiad and Math Pentathalon at her local elementary school. Prior to starting her family, Susmitha worked in quality assurance at a major healthcare group where she wrote SQL queries to query databases for testing. This experience sparked her interest in coding and a desire to pursue a new career path in software engineering. Prior to Hackbright Academy, Susmitha completed a Hackbright prep course and online self-study courses like Udemy’s Python curriculum.
Bright Paths Project: Yummy Recipes
With Yummy Recipes, users can find new recipes based on the ingredients and small appliances they have on hand. Users simply enter an ingredient or small appliance into the platform’s search function to find recipes that incorporate those materials. Nutritional information, type of cuisine, prep time, and cook time are also provided. Registered users can also create their own recipes, add recipes to their favorites list, and write reviews of other recipes.
Technology Stack: Python, PostgreSQL, JavaScript, Jinja, Flask, SQLAlchemy, HTML/CSS, Bootstrap, jQuery | APIs Used: Spoonacular/RapidAPI
More About Susmitha Kristam’s Bright Paths Project: Yummy Recipes
Yuliana Aldrich’s Bright Paths Project: Forever
Yuliana is excited to be starting a new career path in software engineering. Prior to starting the Perficient Bright Paths Program through Hackbright Academy, Yuliana worked in office administrator and project supervisor capacities where she managed groups of up to 50 people and developed 24 projects, including viable water and basic sanitation programs for the Guatemalan government. Her goal is to use the computer science skills learned to create, interact, and deliver projects that cover every client’s need. In addition to Hackbright Academy, Yuliana has completed self-study of basic concepts focusing on JavaScript, among other technologies.
Bright Paths Project: Forever
Forever is an app created specifically for couples. Using the app, couples can create an account, share and view information about each other, and exchange information with each other, such as requesting tasks to be completed and marking these requests as completed when a task is finished. Users receive a compliment of self-love on the welcome page when opening the app and can also find tips to grow closer with their partners.
Technology Stack: Languages: Python, JavaScript (AJAX, JSON), HTML, CSS, SQL. Framework & Libraries: Flask, jQuery, Bootstrap, Jinja, animate.CSS. Database & Industry Tools, PostgreSQL, Git, Github, Command-Line | APIs Used: Data scrapping
More About Yuliana Aldrich’s Bright Paths Project: Forever
We are blown away by the talent in the first Perficient Bright Paths class and wish each student success as we all take one step closer to helping close the gender gap in the tech industry.
At Perficient, we continually look for ways to champion and challenge our talented workforce with interesting projects for high-profile clients, encourage personal and professional growth through training and mentoring, and celebrate our people-oriented culture and the innovative ways they serve Perficient and the community.
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