Alumni Feature: Samantha Krieger Interview

Our Executive Director, Owen, has been busy interviewing LBN alumni to learn more about their experience with Learning Buddies! Their contributions and time have been invaluable to our growth, and now, their advice and feedback will assist us as we continue to expand. This month’s interviewee is Sammy Krieger, one of LBN’s first volunteers and a crucial part of LBN’s establishment over 10 years ago! Sammy has now completed an undergraduate degree in computer science at UBC and is now a Senior Developer Relations Engineer at Google’s Seattle Office, work she describes as part software engineering, part data science. 

Thank you for taking the time to return to LBN, Sammy! We’re grateful for all the work you put into LBN and so proud of how it has grown from your initial efforts. 

Owen: Hi Sammy, thank you for taking the time to meet with me.

Sammy: Hi Owen, it’s my pleasure.

Owen: So let’s have a little chat, then we actually have a team of staff and volunteers who are gonna take this recording, transcribe it, and put it up online! It's come a really long way, it’s pretty huge.

Sammy: Incredible yeah it's amazing. I remember when we started Learning Buddies, it was people in high school and a few university students. Then the program expanded and I think a lot of them are UBC students now? 

There’s been a lot of changes, like massive expansion. It’s really cool, it's expanded a lot in the past 10 years and just hearing what you're describing about people transcribing this…it's just incredible! Things were different 10 years ago, it was a way smaller program. 

Owen: Yeah exactly, we actually have a whole communications team of volunteers who just pump out the content in our social media, and it’s led by a staff member who works for us. 

Sammy: Incredible! It's so amazing how much time people are willing to spend on things like this. 

Owen: I think people know about us, and want to volunteer for us now. Like people are lining up to sign up, it’s pretty incredible. 

Could you tell me about what you experienced when you were first at Learning Buddies Network? What did that process look like, starting the organization and all? 

Sammy: There were meetings at our family’s house, where it would be friends from my high school and other people in IB that were interested. It kind of all started from that. It was more than 10 years ago, so I can't remember how the curriculum was developed, but there were obviously practical details that needed to be ironed out. For example, how are people going to get to the school? When are we going to do the programs for the kids? How do we identify kids that want to opt into this program?

There's like natural work that is just all the overhead and scaffolding to make the program happen. Then you obviously have the time with the kids and it's amazing; it's so much fun especially as a high school student! I didn't have any small cousins or anything, and I didn't interact with kids. I actually have my own difficulties with reading. I never worked with adults and high school students growing up, so even just hanging out with an older kid that's kind of there and walking you through things can be really encouraging. It's fun for both sides! 

At the time we didn't have the math buddies program. I’m actually a software engineer now and I’ve done a lot of volunteering in regards to Computer Science. It’s not like I do a whole lot of math for my job, but some of the thinking patterns are similar and sometimes people think “Oh I’m bad at math so I can’t do computer science.” Which, you know, obviously has an impact on employability because they're like “I'm not going to pursue this career because I’m bad at math.” Whereas the reality is [they have different skills to offer that] are really important skills to have as a software engineer. It’s a shame that there’s a disconnect there, and I’m glad LBN is trying to fill that gap and provide assistance. Especially for people that don't have personal tutors who struggle with math.

Owen: It’s interesting that you started off with the reading program because I joined as a math mentor. Then I was coordinating the math program, so I’ve been pretty focused on the math side of things. Exactly like you said, I’ve come to see how much it’s helped these kids actually get back up to grade level, and in such an informal setting too when we first started. It was just great to have kids in the same room as the high school and university volunteers. I remember when we first started mentoring, we barely had any curriculum. In the math program, we had a giant binder full of worksheets and we just said “go!”. Then they just figured it out, it's amazing. 

So how was it for you then? Was it more or less the same when you started the program? Did you all just go and try to figure out the curriculum on your own? 

Sammy: It was a bunch of high school students, my mom, and other adults who were willing to volunteer (none of which were teachers or any kind of professionals in the education domain). I remember whipping out a book and being like “All right let's do this. You go ahead and read, and I'm going to try, and obviously not read it for you.” There might have been some worksheets, but it wasn’t very structured. We just didn’t have the staffing, and it didn’t start out that way. 

Owen: Tell me a bit more about what you’re doing now…You’re a software engineer? Where do you work? What do you do? 

Sammy: I’m a software engineer at Google. Well honestly I’m more of a data scientist. There’s just a bunch of different hats that I have to wear, like pushing projects, writing proposals, then doing some software engineering and some data science. 

I was definitely struggling when I was young and still now, like my reading speed is really low. I was not strong at math, but I became a lot stronger with tutoring. Then I did a computer science degree at UBC. It was an incredible experience; very challenging. Eventually I ended up here, in this beautiful office room. 

Owen: Oh wow, so are you in San Francisco?

Sammy: No, I work at the Seattle office. 

Owen: What made you want to go into computer science and take that route?

Sammy: I was initially interested in cognitive science and I was studying that at McGill. Then I found out that I wasn't really able to do the type of cognitive science research I was interested in. It was a lot of neuroscience and then a lot of philosophy. So I wasn’t really learning about human cognition, which is what I was really interested in, like how people learn. Then I took this computer science class at UBC, really just because it was the only class that I would get credit for at McGill, for my degree program. Otherwise I wouldn’t have considered taking a CS class. So I was like “Alright, I barely know how to turn this thing on, but I might as well.” I was very fortunate that it was a really great class; I really loved it. So I ended up taking another one when I was back in at McGill, and then I took a semester off. 

It was just kind of funny because by accident when I was applying to UBC, I meant to just apply as a visiting student, taking courses over the summer. When I applied, it was too early (February), but I wanted to just get that done earlier so I wouldn’t have to worry about it down the road. In my mind at the time, it didn’t really matter to declare which degree program I was pursuing. Cognitive science was actually alphabetically right beside computer science, so I accidentally clicked computer science. Then when I was admitted, I was admitted into the computer science program and was like “eh idk it doesn't really matter.” Also I found out there would be free pizza at all of these events, and so I was like “Mmm I like free pizza!”. But I would sit and listen to the panel and I was like wow there's really a lot of career opportunities in this direction. So I was like I might as well just keep taking some computer science classes, I like it and then I just never switched out. 

Owen: What a fun journey! I actually joined LBN because the high school club was offering free pizza, so I went to that event, learned about LBN, and joined. 

Sammy: Pizza, it brings people together! Changes lives! 

Owen: What's kind of interesting and ironic is that through computer science I was still interested in learning and cognition. It was really interesting to see how different people work on their projects and study CS and things like that. 

Sammy:The department is so cool and I was involved in a lot of different communities in CS at UBC. So I knew all the professors and I remember walking into the professor's office and I was like, “Hey, can I do this research project on learning and gender differences in CS?” and she was like, “yeah we can do that” and so I started on this research project which took two years to complete. It was super interesting and very much related to the type of cognitive science I was interested in studying. Then it got published at a major computer science conference and I got funding for it. Through pursuing computer science I learned so much and I was still able to pursue my interest in cognitive science. Everything was fast tracked because it was in an industry oriented program. 

I actually just got an email last night because one of the faculty members saw me at the beach a couple weeks ago. She was like, “hey I think i saw you at the beach, do you remember me? Do you want to be a mentor?” I was like, “yeah, sure!” Yeah these connections from a while back do stay whether it's university or high school. 

Owen: On that same note we would love to have your guidance here at LBN! If you don't mind me asking what is your formal title at Google? 

Sammy: I am a Senior Developer Relations Engineer. 

Owen: What is one piece of advice that you’d give a current LBN volunteer? 

Sammy: I would say to stick with it and take a step back to think about what you would remember in your lifetime. Sometimes it’s all just a slog of studying, and midterms, and finals, and all of that. But you really do remember your experiences volunteering and working with these kids. It's a valuable skill, really valuable experience, and you never know when it's going to come up in life! You can also make some great connections and friends through this. 

Owen: I completely agree. I don’t think there are that many programs out there that actually allow high school students to work with kids in elementary school. We are a lot bigger now too, we have around 250 active volunteers and it just keeps getting bigger. 

Sammy: Thank you to all the volunteers, from a past volunteer myself. 

Owen: Founding volunteer, THE founding volunteer. 

Sammy: I was there at the beginning, I was volunteer number one. 

Owen: How do you think starting LBN has helped with your current career?

Sammy: I would say having the leadership skills to be like, hey, there's this gap, let’s try to figure out how to solve it. Demonstrating leadership and also figuring out the logistics, like how are we actually going to solve this problem? There's going to be easy ways, hard ways, ways that are less important, ways that are really critical, and that's super important at a job, especially for getting promoted. But even if you're not trying to move up in the ranks and get promoted, to be a high level contributor, you’re going to need to identify problems and try to find solutions. Identifying problems and helping out and figuring out solutions is so useful. Even just getting exposure on how organizations and nonprofits are run, what all the moving parts are, is so important. 

Owen: I think it's so incredible how you were able to start something from scratch and then seeing where it’s gone to at this point…None of that would have happened without your contribution from the get go. It’s amazing! We are so grateful for that. I stepped into this as a tenth grader, not knowing what this is, and now I have a job from this organization.