Infinite Careers is a collaboration between Career Services (CAPD) and the MIT Alumni Association to explore career paths and the non-linearity of career decision making. Read profiles of alumni with unique career paths, hear their stories and network at a series of talks.
Education
- MIT – Bachelor Of Science, 10 – Chemical Engineering
- MIT – Master of Engineering, 1P – Civil & Environmental Engineering
Bio
Jeri is originally from Corpus Christi, Texas, and came to MIT in 1993 to study chemical engineering. She stayed to get her M.Eng. in Environmental Engineering in 1998. After a brief stint in environmental engineering consulting, she gravitated to Aspen Technology, a company founded out of MIT that is a leading provider of process engineering solutions, where she found her niche in software testing, spending nine years as a software quality engineer. Since then, she has worked on projects that have delivered SaaS solutions for academic drug discovery, clinical trial data management, management of cloud cost and utilization, and genomic data analysis, among other things. Thanks to her engineering background, Jeri has developed a particular affinity for testing scientific and engineering software.
What influenced your choice of undergraduate major? How has it shaped your career choices and professional ability?
I had always gravitated to math and science in school and particularly enjoyed chemistry. I was interested in engineering because I wanted to take part in building something concrete, and to be honest, because I’d heard that you could earn a good living as an engineer. We never had much when I was growing up, and I wanted a career that would challenge me and enable me to help myself and my family, and maybe even work for the betterment of our world. It turned out to be a far more versatile choice than I could have anticipated. Training as an engineer taught me how to break down problems and critically examine the way systems are put together — not just chemical process systems, but many kinds of engineered solutions, including software. Having a background related to chemistry has been a real bonus when working with software that dealt with chemistry, too.
Is there anything you wish you had done differently or more of while you were at MIT?
As much as I like chemistry, I often wonder whether I shouldn’t have majored in Course 6 instead of Course 10. It’s hard to say I entirely regret my choice of major, though, since it gave me my entry into my current career! And I really do love working at the crossroads where software meets science and engineering.
What has been the most rewarding aspect of your career?
There’s a lot to love about what I do. I’m constantly challenged to learn new things. Technology and the domains I’ve worked in tend to change rapidly, and you have to keep up if you want to be an asset to your team and provide value to your customers. I have to be able to see things the way a customer might see them, but I also have to be able to speak the language of the development team, so I can communicate effectively with them. I frequently find things that surprise me; and I’m always looking for opportunities to work more efficiently, find and mitigate problems earlier, and cover more ground, whether that’s by reviewing code before it goes out, giving feedback on a proposed design, or cranking out automated tests, or something else.
What motivates you to do the work that you do?
My job is to break things! How many of us get to say that? I feel good when I find a problem before a customer does, and the earlier, the better. It’s one thing to find an issue in a pre-production environment, but it’s far better to prevent problems from getting to that stage in the first place.
Not just that, but I have had the privilege of working with some truly incredible people to solve serious problems. At AspenTech, we were making software that made chemical processes more efficient and less wasteful. At the Broad Institute, we were facilitating the work of scientists who were trying to understand the causes of diseases like cancer, diabetes, and tuberculosis, and reducing the time to find treatments for those diseases. At VMware, we were providing insight into cloud computing usage and making it easier for customers to do more and spend less. These are kinds of challenges I find very worthwhile and incredibly motivating.
What professional development activities do you find really useful these days?
A few years back I found out about an international group of people who work in software testing called the Ministry of Testing. They have a lot of useful resources on their website, and I like some of the discussions we have about all things related to software testing, from tools and processes to best practices for test automation to sharing experiences and more. They sometimes post 30-day challenges around areas like API testing and browser automation that can be a lot of fun to take part in and compare notes.
What’s the best piece of career advice you’ve received?
“Pay yourself first.”
What does that mean? It means that you should make time every day for your own personal professional development, preferably at the start of each day. It means you should always be thinking about what you need for your own growth and what you want your future to look like.
What do you like to do outside of work for fun/relaxation/inspiration?
I love reading, especially sci-fi and fantasy. Brandon Sanderson is a current favorite author of mine, and it’s been a challenge to keep up with him — he’s incredibly prolific, and I sometimes think he might write books faster than I can read them! I also like playing my guitar, and I am in two separate choruses. I’m also working to improve my Spanish, and I have a streak of over 2100 days on Duolingo, where I’m rated as a B2 (advanced intermediate) learner. So I also sometimes try to consume media such as podcasts and TV shows in Spanish to improve my proficiency, because while Duolingo can be fun, it isn’t really enough if you want to become fluent. (Ask me about all the advanced vocabulary I acquired from watching La Casa de Papel.)
Last edited: September 2024
