Favorite Resources

For women in tech:

  • Inclusive Tech Lab: I’m on the founding team for this Boston-based organization. Inclusive Tech Lab Boston (ITL) is committed to creating a safe space for women and non-binary people, people of color, and anyone who has felt left out of “traditional” tech spaces to come and learn tech skills together. We aim to bring everyone into technology, while especially helping to lift up marginalized communities.

    We seek to normalize non-white, non-cisgender, underprivileged people because we believe that tech should represent everyone. We work together to create a community built on respect and empathy and support one another through workshops, networking events, hack nights, and hackathons. All of our events are free — though at most events, we’ll encourage attendees to donate to a featured Boston-area non-profit.
  • She Geeks Out: Brings “geeky” women together monthly to eat dinner, network, and hear from speakers.
  • Women Who Code: A terrific national organization that creates programs and services to elevate women in tech.
  • Tech Ladies: Sends out a weekly newsletter with woman-friendly job opportunities and hosts a super active Facebook community where women in tech can ask for advice, celebrate their achievements, and share resources.

For learning new things:

  • Codecademy: Features a terrific, interactive way to learn and build upon programming basics.
  • General Assembly: Offers well-known immersive programs, classes, and workshops on today’s hot skills, everything from web dev to digital marketing to business.
  • Launch Academy: As a graduate and former instructor of Launch’s immersive and online programs, I highly recommend Launch Academy for serious career-changers. It has a hefty price tag, like many other bootcamps, but stands out with its full-time team of caring, hard-working instructors, close-knit and proud community of alums, and rigorous training in Ruby/Rails, JavaScript/React, test-driven development, and agile practices.
  • Pluralsight: Unfortunately not free. But it offers a wealth of in-depth tutorials on a variety of technical subjects, most of which have closed-captioning (earning it kudos for accessibility) and downloadable starter files so you can code along.
  • Museum of Science: Offers a variety of fascinating public talks, from the ethics of artificial intelligence to gene editing, mostly for free.

For writing:

  • Wordplay: With my friends Becca and Suzannah, I founded this weekly writing group for Boston locals in 2013. Still going strong and growing today thanks to Becca and Suzannah’s efforts, Wordplay has something for everybody: Prompts to jump-start your writing, workshops to hone it, and drop-in writing circles to get it done.
  • Boston Book Festival: A whirlwind of inspiration and fun, the Boston Book Festival takes over Copley Square every fall.
  • GrubStreet: Great courses, great people, great events for the literary-minded.

For news and events:

  • The Skimm: On those mornings when I’m rushing out the door, I can still catch up on news from around the world, as well as shake my head at the latest misogynistic utterance by Donald Trump.
  • The Boston Calendar: Inspired by a Reddit post. Self-described place to hear about “interesting, fun, under-publicized, mostly-free events happening around the city and surrounding areas (e.g. Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline).” Really awesome.
  • Boston on a Budget: Provides lists of cheap and fun things to do in Boston, week to week.
  • VentureFizz: Curated newsletter of local startup news and upcoming events.
  • The Atlantic
  • The New York Times 
  • NPR