I'm Nicole Archambault, and I'm an Educational Technology specialist and entrepreneur. My background is in Front-End Web Development, as a self-taught Web Developer. I directed my own education in order to learn the skills required to deliver a personalized and engaging experience for our users.

As kind of a TL;DR: I work largely in the intersection of technology, education, and psychology—it's super sexy to me, and I honestly can't see myself doing anything else!

Fueled by my passion, I create online courses for people teaching themselves to code. I love teaching and learning along my students. And these courses I make... have no actual code in them!

Being able to teach technical topics to web developers without boxing them into a specific technology is a skill that not many tech course creators have, but I LOVE the challenge. I want people learning to code to understand the fundamentals, which never change—not just the tech itself.

But of course, I don't just limit myself to my "work" (which is actually more like play, if we're being honest).

Why do I do this, though?

Well, I struggled with learning as a child, teenager, and adult. When I was 31, I was diagnosed with a Non-Verbal Learning Disability, as well as Autism Spectrum Disorder.

As I dug into what these diagnoses meant for those life, those learning struggles began to make so much more sense to me, as I realized that I would struggle with any aspect of learning, as long as I couldn't mentally "model" it. I needed to be able to "see" a concept in my mind's eye in order to make it click. This realization led me to share my experience with others... and sure enough, there were SO MANY PEOPLE being affected by this same challenge.

In May 2015, I launched La Vie en Code—my passion project!

It started as blog run by a baby dev fresh from being let go from my last job in customer service. Lots of people found my blog for whatever reason and began giving feedback and telling their own stories.

I can tell you that it gets lonely working through the experience of teaching yourself to code. It can feel really isolating. We get nervous when we interact with others in the industry, and that damn imposter syndrome kicks in hard.

The result? We end avoiding the community that we so desperately need, especially in these trying times of the pandemic.

I'm also a:

• Black/Native American woman in tech
• Autistic, queer weirdo
• Bomb-ass problem solving and career change coach
• Tech conference speaker
• Self-taught front-end web developer—which is how this all started!

I'm also an award-winning instructor and community leader!

I love guesting on others' podcasts, too!

Developer Tea

DevTea host Jonathan Cutrell and I engaged in a wonderful 2-part discussion, where we covered topics like emotional intelligence, negative emotions, and programmatic problem solving.

Also on Spotify and iTunes!

Front End Happy Hour

My first panel podcast episode! Equipped with my cocktail of choice (Deep Eddy Grapefruit vodka), I engaged in lively discussion with Big Tech software engineers to hear how they value programmatic problem solving. It was an enlightening discussion for all involved!

Also on Spotify and iTunes!

Hanselminutes

My good friend Scott Hanselman (who has his own excellent podcast) and I sat down and chatted about programmatic problem solving... for over an hour! This episode is packed with value—definitely check it out!

Also on Spotify, iTunes, and Simplecast!

#causeascene

Kim Crayton was a previous guest on the La Vie en Code podcast, and she's an amazing powerhouse in the tech industry. In this episode, we discuss the inequity marginalized groups in tech face, and framing the issues as liabilities as opposed to optional projects. A fun one! Also on Spotify and iTunes!

IT Career Energizer

What a strong episode title: "Don't Let a Degree Get in the Way of Your Ambitions"!

A fast-paced, fairly short episode with Phil Burgess, where we look into the programmatic problem solving work I do. There are some super valuable tidbits you can use right away. Also on Spotify and iTunes!