hello!
About Mira Tellegen
My family used to call me a born English major. I read 3 books a week all through middle school; I was an award-winning competitive public speaker. I asked for recipe tips for my boeuf bourguignon at the supermarket and wrote the news section for my high school paper with perfect inverted-pyramid articles. I didn’t even learn to type until 9th grade, that’s how much I resented the puzzling errors that cropped up when working with computers, so nobody thought I would succeed in STEM. In fact, I didn’t think I’d succeed in STEM, because I felt smaller than the razor-sharp intelligence of the robotics team and app-coding students.
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What I didn’t see back then was all the ways I was wired for STEM, with my meticulous attention to the style conventions in journalism, my passion for integrals in my math classes, burning the midnight oil to refactor speech after speech for Mock Trial. When I took my first intro to CS course, and wrote my first lines in java, it scratched corners of my brain I didn’t know existed, and I’ve never turned back.
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I'm a born-and-raised Californian, from the San Francisco Bay Area, so I grew up craving Petaluma goat cheese and honeydew boba at Ocean Beach, but my mom's family comes from ranchers and organic farmers, so I also raised piglets and plowed high tunnels in my childhood summers. Iowa's in my blood, which led to me choosing to study at Grinnell College. Grinnell's liberal arts approach, gently pushing us to explore all types of courses, feels just right for me. I've never stuck to one thing, I joke that I've tried every hobby in the book. I'll bounce from macaron-making, to growing manzano peppers in our backyard, to embroidering thrifted jeans, to learning calligraphy. As much as I love coding, Grinnell has given me the opportunity to not just expand my knowledge, but to learn how to teach myself about anything I'm interested in.
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I was a Math/Computer Science/French triple major at Grinnell College, and continued studying software engineering fundamentals, going on to focus in GDPR privacy law applied to cloud data solutions during the 4+1 U2G program at University of Iowa. My four years of work in ITS support have made me hyper-aware of cybersecurity, and after assisting with the Grinnell multi-factor authentication rollout and enacting new campus-wide malware protection, I wanted to study data security from a CS academics’ point of view. Now, I apply those troubleshooting skills to generative AI for coders such as GitHub copilot.
After 8 years of Mock Trial, I can’t imagine not having the law in my life, but law school isn’t for me. Instead, I've joined the conversation in how we define ethics in technology that will always change faster than the law can keep up, and prevent discriminatory algorithms like faulty courtroom risk-assessment systems. This becomes particularly essential as all serviced move to web, and require the accessibility and privacy regulations to ensure they remain equitable.
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It's also so important to me to connect with other women in STEM, because I can attribute most of my growth in skill and confidence to working with women in the past. The first time I felt like a real coder was at MINK-WIC, a Midwest conference for women in computing. I saw women thriving in the field, and hearing about their experience and day-to-day, I finally saw an answer to the eternal question "Where do you see yourself five years from now?" I seek out hackathons because the women I've worked with there have taught me git, encouraged me to learn Swift, and fostered my interest in UI and design. Most of all, I've learned from the teams I've worked with, that why ask if something is possible, if you can just jump in and try it? (That's where I've seen the most growth, and where my computer has seen its life flash before its eyes in infinite-loop fueled rage)
Food is a passion for me, and if I won the lottery, my first move would be to open a cupcake bakery. Something about salt, fat, acid, and heat puts me in the zone, and I try new recipes on my family every night. Unlike coding, where deviating from the status quo will probably leave you with unchecked typecasting, FileNotFound exceptions, and an undocumented mess, I believe (however foolishly) that I can ignore most parts of any recipe with no consequences. Cooking is my mental break, where there are no rules: my fried chicken can become fried brussels sprouts, my kale lasagna can be make vegan with cashews, and my homemade enchilada sauce can have three times the cayenne. My grandpa immigrated from Trinidad, and he was known for downing a whole habanero with every meal. I may take after him there, because medium is never spicy enough, and I'm known to dip tortilla chips in hot sauce until I give myself a nose bleed.
I hope you'll explore this site to learn more about me!