Kristina Thai – From Virtual Pets to Real World Success
Written by WWCode HQ with thanks to Kristina Thai
Kristina Thai first developed her love of coding in an unlikely way; through an online virtual pet website called Neopets, when she was just 12 years old. The site gave her a “clubhouse” which she could use to learn the fundamentals of web development, by employing html to improve the look of her page. That allowed her to approach programming in a fun, no pressure manner, that built her confidence while instilling her with the basic principles of code.
Kristina attended the University of California, San Diego, where she took on the role of President of the Computer Science and Engineering Society, and Academic Peer Educator for the Academic Integrity Office. She also used her development skills to become the Webmaster for the Academic Integrity Matters Student Group, and the International Academic Integrity Matters Student Organization. Upon graduation in 2012 with a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Computer Science, she was hired by Intuit as an iOS Software Engineer.
At Intuit, Kristina has had a variety of roles and experiences, which has helped to expand her horizons as a programmer. She started out working on the company's mobile OCR project, which afforded her a somewhat atypical job for an iOS developer, as rather than focusing on a particular app she worked to create mobile frameworks and libraries that could be integrated with any mobile app. After that she transitioned to Quickbooks self-employed app team, where she develops products that help people simplify their finances and find tax deductions for their business.
She has also had a chance to work on social good projects for the company, including an internal female developer community called Tech Women @ Intuit. She joined the nascent group when she first started at Intuit and noticed a lack of community among its female engineers. Her many contributions have helped bring technical women together from across the company so they could support one another and reduce the isolation that can be an everyday part of a female coder’s life at a big tech company. Since its inception, the group has been a huge success, supporting both Intuit’s technical women and groups like NCWIT, Girls Who Code, and more.
Kristina is also a programming pioneer, being one of the first people to learn how to develop for the Apple Watch not long after the beta version was released. This was a difficult process, and one that left her without a buttress of support, as there weren’t any other people familiar with this work that she could turn to for help. However she enjoyed the challenge of being on the cutting edge, and today she is the one people look to for help, as she writes WatchKit tutorials for her website, KristinaThai.com.
Now that she has achieved success and recognition in her field, Kristina does whatever she can to help the next generation of budding programmers reach their potential. She’s given various talks, panels, and workshops for girls and young women of all ages from very young up to university level. She’s also mentored female high school and college students, giving them wisdom and guidance to help achieve their dreams.
Kristina is an active member of the Women Who Code Silicon Valley Network, and a passionate advocate for women in tech. When asked what advice she had for female programmers she said, “Every year women leave the tech industry because they don't feel welcome in such a male-dominated space. Do your part and reach out to other women in your company. The more we band together, the more of us will stay and help shape the future of technology.”
