AsKin Questions to Marinellys Figueroa, Senior Technical Consultant

I‘m a Full Stack Developer based in Bogotá. I’m originally from Venezuela but I've been living in Colombia for seven years. I just recently received my Colombian citizenship. A fun fact? Well, I like to sing but since I sing so much my family and friends often make jokes by saying that I could be doing it better.

Currently, I’m on a project for a client in the banking sector and we’re trying to help them to do everything more efficiently. For example, the client deals with a lot of data and my job is to help them manage it and use it more effectively. This will enable them to improve the service they provide to their customers.

I really enjoy being able to provide our clients with simple solutions. Quite often they’ll have a repetitive task that takes up a lot of their time and we can automate that process allowing them to focus on other things.

What’s been most surprising is how closely I’ve been able to work with people from different countries and cultures. My colleagues and client partners live across the countries of India, the USA and Argentina, as well as those from Colombia. We don't worry about where we’re based, though, because the language of technology is universal. Although we’re in different timezones, there are a few moments in the morning when everyone is available to talk through solutions and find answers.

This is a subject close to my heart. I have participated in several communities around women in technology and recently had the opportunity to be involved as a mentor at a workshop focused on inspiring women to pursue a career in the technology field. There are still not enough women in this area, but we’ve proven ourselves as being as capable as men in doing the job. All I can say is that at Kin + Carta, me and other women have always been welcomed and there are lots of opportunities and career pathways available.

For me, hybrid working is a really good benefit. The traffic in Bogotá is pretty bad and I can save time by staying at home some days rather than commuting into the office. It also means I can spend more of my time with my daughter. When she comes home from school I can be there for her. Before joining Kin + Carta, I had to work every day in the office, which meant I’d often get home really late and she would already be sleeping.

Hybrid work also has meant more time for myself, and I often use this to go to the gym to do exercise. There are a lot of things I can now do while working hybrid that make my days better.

Working at Kin + Carta is awesome because the purpose of building a better world is more than just a motto. It’s something you can feel and breathe all the time. I try to do everything, to the best of my ability, to contribute to that. That means I’m always learning, increasing my knowledge and using my experience to help our clients. I’m also inspired by working in the community. It was something that I used to do before the pandemic and now I can once again help others and also learn from them.