Catalina Laverde
Spotify
Los Angeles, CA USA
"Fake it until you make it...Believing in yourself, being your own advocate, won’t be easy. But you’ve got to stretch. Embrace those challenges because they are going to make you who you are."
Career Roadmap
Catalina's work combines: Technology, Engineering, and Learning / Being Challenged
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Day In The Life
Skills &
Education
Advice for getting started
My family was not rich, so I didn't have the luxury or freedom to spend a lot of time taking classes trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I had to pick one major and stick with it. Even though I had a passion for journalism, I knew I wanted to do something new and different. I set my sights on engineering and figuring out what type I wanted to study within that discipline.
Here's the path I took:
High School
Associate's Degree
Computer Science
Bergen Community College
Bachelor's Degree
Computer Science
Rutgers University-New Brunswick
Life & Career Milestones
My path in life took a while to figure out
1.
Born and raised in a small town outside of Bogota, Colombia.
2.
Spent the majority of her younger years indoors studying, reading, and writing because it wasn’t safe to play outside.
3.
Early on, she developed an interest in journalism and worked for a local radio station throughout her teen years—she always assumed she would eventually become a journalist.
4.
After graduating high school, she had a change of heart and decided that she wanted to pursue something new and challenging, which led her to software engineering.
5.
Admits her first exposure to computers and programming came during her first semester of college, before that she had never taken a computer class.
6.
When she was 18, she decided to move to the U.S. to finish her college degree and give herself more opportunities—arrived with 1 suitcase, $200, and didn’t speak a word of English.
7.
Got accepted to Rutgers University, where she majored in computer science—her mother sold their family home in Columbia in order to help her pay for her tuition.
8.
She is now a Senior Software Engineer at Spotify in New York and is the Co-Founder of Civic Action Network, an organization bridging the gap between Congress and Constituents.
Defining Moments
How I responded to discouragement
THE NOISE
Messages from Family:
Whatever major you pick, you have to finish.
How I responded:
My family was not rich, so I didn't have the luxury or freedom to spend a lot of time taking classes trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I had to pick one major and stick with it. Even though I had a passion for journalism, I knew I wanted to do something new and different. I set my sights on engineering and figuring out what type I wanted to study within that discipline.
Experiences and challenges that shaped me
As an international student, I was expected to pay out of state tuition, which was about 3 times as expensive. I ended up attending a community college for a year. My mom sold the house we grew up in order to pay for me to go to Rutgers University.
I asked my mother to help me move to the US when I was 16 years old. I ended up moving to the United States when I was 18 years old with 1 suitcase and $200 USD. I had no family here whatsoever and I didn’t know how to speak the language.
In trying to figure out what type of engineering I wanted to study, I had the issue of not seeing myself represented in areas like mechanical and electrical. It dissuaded me from pursuing those as options. I was always 1 of barely a handful of women.
When I first started studying engineering, I had trouble switching my brain's focus from reading and writing over to numbers. I failed my first couple of calculus classes before I finally started getting the hang of it.