<About />

Software Developer, Tech Educator

I’m a full-stack software developer and a tech educator, who is passionate about automation and application security. I'm also an advocate of online privacy, open source software, and diversity in tech. I build applications in JavaScript and Ruby, and my favorite stack is Rails on the backend, and React on the frontend.

I'm currently the Director of the DC Youth Corps at FutureFIRST, where I help individuals from underserved communities in DC pursue a career in tech. Before that, I taught web development and visual programming with General Assembly, FLYE, and Code4Life. I've also worked on several social media campaigns and Search Engine Optimization projects for Fission Strategy, Loebig Ink, PCC4Refugees, and AsylumConnect.

I'm a big fan of CodeWars, a community of 500,000 software engineers. I'm one of its top 100 contributors, and I appear on its leaderboard. My SQL and TypeScript katas have been taken nearly 20,000 times so far.

In April 2018, I participated in the #SmallBusinessWeek hackathon, which was organized by Visa and the U.S. Small Business Administration. Together, with four of my colleagues, we built Hermyz, a Slack bot which helps small businesses track and pay their invoices. Hermyz won the grand prize of the hackathon $10,000, and was covered by Visa, PYMNTS.com, and the U.S. Small Business Administration.

When I'm not working, you can find me cycling with my Meetup group, practicing nature photography, and listening to Reggaeton.

You can always reach out to me at Mike@Mike.Digital.

Let’s build awesome apps together!

<Skills />

<Featured Projects />

• filter_dramaStoryteller
  #Ruby #Rails #React #PostgreSQL

  Storyteller is a social media platform dedicated to storytelling. It's a place where you can share your story with the world. Storyteller is built with Ruby on Rails and React. It uses a PostgreSQL database, and is deployed on Heroku. Storyteller has a wide variety of features including user authentication with Devise, third-party authenticathion through Facebook, Google, and Twitter with Omniauth, two-factor authentication with Authy, file storage on AWS S3, pagination and infinite scrolling, and many other features. It has 19 models, 22 controllers, and more than 3000 lines of code.

  Code Visit
• filter_dramaAgora
  #Node #Express #React #Redux #MongoDB

  Agora is an online forum and chat platform. It's built to provide an open and free space for people around the world to discuss the issues they care about. Agora is a fullstack application: Node and Express run the server on the backend, and React and Redux manage the user interface on the frontend. It uses a MongoDB database, and is deployed on Heroku. Socket.io is used to provide real-time communication between users, PassportJS is used for user authentication, and Materialize and ReactMaterialize are used for styling.

  Code Visit
• filter_dramaShortly
  #Node #Express #MongoDB

  Shortly is a url shortener platform, similar to bitly.com. It's a full stack application; the server run with Node and Express, while the frontend is built with Express-Handlebars. Shortly is deployed on Heroku. It uses a MongoDB database, PassportJS for user authentication with email, Facebook, Twitter, and Google, and Bootstrap is used for styling.

  Code Visit
• filter_dramaHermyz
  #Express #React #MongoDB #Slack

  Winner of Visa Hackathon April 2018
  Hermyz is a Slack bot which Keeps track of your invoices, and allows you to review and pay them, without leaving the Slack window. I built Hermyz with a group of my colleagues during the #SmallBusinesWeek Hackathon, which was organized by Visa and the U.S. Small Business Administration in Washington, DC on April 27-29, 2018. Hermyz is built in Express, React, and Go, and is deployed to Kubernetes.

  Code Visit
• filter_dramaInstallfest
  #Shell #GitHub

  Installfest is a shell script I wrote for General Assembly's students to help them install the basic applications they need to start learning fullstack web development. GA had a previous Installfest script written in Ruby; it was written in more than a thousand lines of code. I rewrote the script in Shell in seventy lines. The script I wrote runs in half the time and is far more user-friendly than the old one, which makes the process of onboarding new students less complicated.

  Code
• filter_dramaSQL For Beginners
  #SQL #Ruby #RSpec

  SQL for Beginners is a collection of code challenges (Katas) at Codewars.com. I created it to help junior programmers practice their skills in SQL. As of January 2019, these challenges have been taken more than 18,000 times.

  Code Visit

<Reviews />

Mike is a knowledgeable and very capable full stack web developer. I have learned much from Mike and value his competence, capabilities, ability to work and contribute to teams. Most of all, I value his ability to help the whole team learn and work together to accomplish the remarkable. Mike is ambitious, hard working, and committed to learning, getting better everyday, and delivering results and value. You can't go wrong with Mike on your team.

Brian Reynolds, Solution Delivery Lead at Grant Thornton LLP

Mike is a dynamo - an incisive genius whose strategic vision helped accelerate many of our projects across a wide array of issues such as immigration reform, the environment, education, human rights, humanitarian foundation support and more. He's a quick study for any topic or tech and can seemingly become an expert overnight. I'd recommend him to any team looking to enhance their success.

Cheryl Contee, Co-Founder and CEO of Fission Strategy

We were lucky to come across a unique talent like Mike. I was particularly constantly impressed by Mike's ability to multi-task with students, engage with management and maintain personal relationships with company clients. While managing a small team, executing a program of 30 students and teaching web development, Mike has proven that leadership and management are skills he inherently holds.

Sheila Kasasa, Co-Founder and CEO of FutureFIRST

Mike is an extremely reliable colleague. When faced with complicated problems, he offered simple solutions that reflected a deep and thoughtful engagement with the problem at hand. He consistently and proactively contributed valuable perspective to crucial team decisions, spotting potential problems before they arose. He is very passionate, driven, self-reliant, compassionate, and profoundly motivated to help others.

James Reichard, Cohort Lead at General Assembly

Mike is a strategic thinker, productive do-er, and problem solver extraordinaire. He always has great ideas for what can be done better, and excellent follow through with getting those things done! He does an outstanding job addressing concerns in detail with compelling stats, and thinks through the best recommendations to make. His proactive drive in pushing projects forward makes for great collaboration and teamwork.

Adriana Dakin, Vice President of Fission Strategy

Mike was an integral part of the AsylumConnect team as our dedicated Social Media Manager. In this role, he drastically improved AsylumConnect's multi-platform social media presence by increasing both our followings and level of engagement. He reliably crafted informative, timely, and engaging content. He was always responsive, insightful, and willing to offer suggestions to improve our social media performance.

Katharine Sgarro, Co-Founder and CEO of AsylumConnect