Our name is intentional. “Kin” refers to family and “Carta” refers to maps. When together, we’re Kin + Carta — a group of connected makers, builders and creators, who come together everyday to help our clients build experiences and plot a clear path forward in today’s digital world. Carta is what we do, Kin is who we are.
Kin+ is a series that uncovers the experiences, stories and lives of the people who make our collective “Kin” exceptional.
At Kin + Carta, the values of connection, courage and compassion ground everything that we do. We intentionally work to remain deeply connected to one another, to our clients and to our ‘why’. We remain courageous amidst ambiguity and challenge. And we prioritize compassion in how we interact with and impact the world at-large.
When someone’s fully embodying a value, we celebrate them. That’s why we are so excited to be highlighting Laura Izquierdo Cobos.
Aeronautical engineer turned software developer, Laura brings a creative approach to challenges because of the diversity of her experiences. She’s a self-starter with a love of learning new things. Laura joined Kin + Carta as a member of our Argentina office’s first trainee program, taking full advantage of the opportunity to hone full stack development skills.
We are honored to introduce you to Laura, our Kin whose courage has completely blown us away.
I was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and when I was a child my parents encouraged me to remain involved in several activities — from swimming teams to piano lessons to painting classes, it was a little bit of everything. One of my favorite activities involved building computers with my father. Even as an artist by trade, he is a man who’s always been interested in technology. My father gave me the opportunity to be interested just the same. He ensured that I knew the world of computers. We’d spend hours together disassembling computers just to assemble them back together again. I remember learning the alphabet only by using the letters of a keyboard. My father educated me on the layers of the physical device, then taught me how to utilize it with computer programming.
Being involved in a multitude of activities opened my mind at an early age — for computers, for the future, for being hungry to learn new things with people by my side.
Fast forward to University, it was time to focus on one area, and I narrowed in on Aeronautical Engineering. To me, it was an exciting career opportunity, as the world of aviation can simply be described in one word — beautiful. I specialized my study in aircraft design, over the years participating in competitions which challenged me to design rockets, hot air balloons and remotely-piloted aircrafts. One of my favorite memories from this time was competing in the international aero design competition — a competition which challenges teams to build remotely-piloted aircrafts, with specific hard-to-achieve requirements. To win, a team’s aircraft must carry more weight and be less heavy as compared to others. This is called payload-weight relation. I was so excited when my team not only completed this complex project together, but we ended up landing first place for project design and development. Through this experience, I learned so much from my teammates and felt energized by the challenge the competition instilled to think of new, creative solutions.
In the years to follow University, I professionally worked remotely as an aeronautical engineer. My experiences allowed me to not only design aircrafts, but to participate in the operation and manufacturing of them. Working with drones as an aeronautical engineer reminded me so much of my father, and all that he taught me of programming.
My family and I had to emigrate to Argentina and the experience came with a handful of unique and difficult challenges — a new country, new friends, even a new dialect of the Spanish language. It was a complex situation that forced me to change many of my perspectives and to courageously be secure for my son. With a desire to find a role that allowed me the experience to connect with people in-person and a desire to learn more about the programming my father taught me years earlier, I decided to begin studying programming.
Now, I’m proud to say that I’m a Software Developer Trainee at Kin + Carta — a role that has enabled me to apply my background and the knowledge in which it brings, to impactful projects. I’m a part of a trainee team of five individuals, all of us bringing diverse levels of professional and technology experience (yet all new to software engineering!) The program itself is set-up to allow for tangible technology consulting experience and the ability to invest in professional training that compliments and advances our personal knowledge. Every day, we’re given the chance to interact with and learn from various levels of Kin from across the world — something that I’m realizing as the ‘norm’ across Kin + Carta. So far, as a team we have contributed to the creation of two internal chatbots: one strengthening employee education around Kin + Carta’s IDEA initiative and the other creating an onboarding experience full of delight for Kin + Carta new hires.
I am always eager to learn something new, and that’s what attracted me to Kin + Carta. The opportunity to work with different companies, across different projects and in different industries encourages me. I know that as a consultant coming out of the trainee program, I will continue to learn a lot from the firm itself, the people I work with and my future clients.
I look back at my childhood and thank my parents for all of the activities they encouraged me to commit to. I continue to value being involved in a lot of things. To fully live in experiences and be open to where they take your trajectory. This has allowed for a more human approach to every part of my life. It’s opened my mind by giving me continuous opportunities to meet individuals who are different from me. It’s allowed me to bring a diverse set of experiences into all that I do. I’ve learned how to find value in every situation I’ve found myself in throughout life — times when I’m the expert and times when I’m the beginner. Every moment brings an opportunity for learning and for being better.