Today we’d like to introduce you to Kristen Perez.
Hi Kristen, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I’m an Atlanta native (or nearly-Atlanta native depending on your view of OTP living). I have lived downtown for nearly 12 years and grew up in the suburbs but knew the layout of every Atlanta concert venue like the back of my hand by my early teens. My time spent as a youth was driven by the belief that I would be able to follow in the path of great surreal artists and land an exhibit in the High Museum of art one day. But, as it turns out, life is not without a sense of humor and the best opportunities in my life have largely begun with the statement, “We regret to inform you…”
Those were the words that I read when I found out that I did not make it into the graphic design program I had spent the first two years of my college life working towards. Those were the same words I received upon my initial application to my dream company. But, as it turns out, flexibility and a sense of comedic determination have been my best attributes along the way.
After pivoting to journalism from graphic design under the assumption that they were mutually beneficial skills, I found I had an almost supernatural knack for strategy and communications.
It wasn’t long after this pivot that I landed a job in a conservatively-driven company after graduating from Georgia State University. This was not the ideal fit to say the least. After two years of attempting to conform, I quit that job and abandoned the idea that I needed to shrink to fit any professional setting again. I then sold all of my belongings, and went to travel the eastern hemisphere for a year to refine myself, my ideals, and okay, maybe enjoy a wild jungle party along the way. After a year of swimming with sea turtles, traveling by boat with salty sea dogs, and praying with monks, I came back from my hiatus with the one clause for myself: Any future workplace I dedicated myself to must be diverse. Little did I know that it was this clause that would then set a standard for most of my future professional passions and missions.
I landed a job shortly after at Georgia Institute of Technology where I did web development, communications, and news writing. It was a wonderful journey where I discovered so many dormant passions, revamped my love for education, worked with people from across the globe, and found some incredible friendships along the way. All in all, it was a beautifully-fun journey that defined my passion for technology and equity in technology.
Now, I have transitioned yet again and after a few attempts, I am about to begin working at my dream company as a Content Marketing Manager for HPC software – my specialty.
I am now the art kid who has turned into a marketing professional for science and technology and I could not be happier.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Overall, I can definitively say, “yes, it has been a smooth road.” However, there have been trials along the way that have served as guides to tell me that certain aspects of my life were no longer serving me. I found myself in a company where diversity was nearly absent and then another company that was a boy’s club and fed into a somewhat classist ideological system. But all in all, I have been extremely fortunate for the lack of struggles I have encountered throughout my life. Each time something reared its head that I could not agree with, was the time I would quit, leave, or move on from and into something much better. I like to think that’s all that life is – a series of growing pains that get progressively more difficult but with greater reward.
However, one thing is certain, the glass ceiling does exist for many women and minority groups. As a woman in a male-dominated industry, I have encountered it many many times. And it is this obstacle that fuels the fire for most of my drive to build initiatives that increase equity and access for others.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m a marketing and communications professional for science and technology. I specialize in a field called high performance computing which goes by the easier-to-say moniker of supercomputing. Pretty much, it’s a field that enables incredibly large computers to solve the world’s biggest problems and enables some of the greatest findings in science, healthcare, astronomy, and so much more. While my work focuses on showcasing what amazing research is happening in this area, my greatest enjoyment was in helping establish an Atlanta chapter for the Women in High Performance Computing at Georgia Tech. This group is one of several incredible chapters that aims to build access to speciality computing resources and education for women and minority groups. Only 20 percent of computer scientists are women and the need for these types of initiatives is of critical importance to helping bridge the gap in representation and ultimately, safety of science and technology in our lives.
What are your plans for the future?
After four years at Georgia Tech, I am moving on to my next professional chapter and am beginning a new job serving as a Content Marketing Manager for HPC Software at NVIDIA. This is an exciting transition that will present a whole new world of high performance computing outside of academia and I can’t wait to see where it goes! I also hope to continue looking for avenues to foster equitable initiatives to computing resources for underserved communities along the way now that the Women in High Performance of Computing at Georgia Tech is up and running with an incredible team of people. In the meantime, I am keeping busy in the HPC/scientific community by serving as the Communications Chair for the Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing Conference for 2022.
Contact Info:
- Email: kristencperez@gmail.com
