Kelly Fesler

Kelly’s first foray into hacking began when she joined Girls Who Code’s Summer Immersion Program in 2017, which she entered with absolutely no knowledge of coding. After a few weeks of exploring and applying basic programming concepts, Kelly and her peers were challenged to put their new skills to the test by building a creative project themselves. Kelly brought an off-the-cuff idea to the table: a video game with no graphics. She had a Raspberry Pi, a laser cutter, and a week to bring the project to life. After spending days in the Microsoft Garage, Kelly emerged with a working prototype. She had never felt so inspired, and from then on she had the hacking bug.

With Kelly’s return to school that fall, she longed for opportunities to let out her creative energy –  anything to bring about that same unique motivation she felt during her last week of Girls Who Code. After a quick search, Kelly found that these creative outlets existed, and that there was one happening near her next year. Kelly had discovered the MLH hackathon, and promptly signed up.

It was a small, all-female hackathon that opened Kelly’s eyes to the possibilities of pursuing a vibrant future in tech. Inspired by the event, Kelly took a leap of faith and switched her major from literature and music to computer engineering. She spent the next three years traveling to hackathons, building original projects, and expanding her technical horizons. Among the 12 hackathons that Kelly has participated in, her favorite project was built at LA Hacks in April 2020. Taking her chances with her first solo hack, Kelly built Pragma Once, a SoundCloud rap track made entirely with artificial intelligence. The song featured four AI voices, whose verses were generated using Markov chains from a large body of pre-existing rap songs. The intersection of music and AI has been a longtime interest of Kelly’s, so she took that weekend as an opportunity to explore as much as she could about both in a short amount of time. After spending a majority of the weekend tinkering in GarageBand and syncing the lyrics with the beat, Kelly had a full song, which she demoed on an MLH livestream.

To Kelly, the greatest joy of a hackathon is pushing her creative boundaries within the confines of the weekend. The freedom and opportunity to learn technologies that seldom appear inside the classroom makes every hackathon an entirely unique experience. During tech interviews, the one constant that has allowed Kelly to bond with her interviewers, who have gone through similar experiences, is her stories of her favorite hackathon projects and memories. These memories and project experiences directly helped her blossom into her role as a Microsoft intern, where she has continued to bring her creative flair.

Beyond the joy of fulfilling her creative goals through hackathons, Kelly also learned how to be fearless in intellectual and social settings. She had finally found a place where she could list off her wild project ideas and people around her would listen and jump in; it was creative chaos and Kelly thrived. These newfound friends supported her as she pitched her projects to judges weekend after weekend, helping her gain confidence as a public speaker. The energy she feels from these hackathon experiences is an energy that Kelly strives to take with her wherever her career may lead.

From hacker to organizer to hackathon president, Kelly has gone through the gamut of the responsibilities and perspectives within a hackathon. As president of CruzHacks, she implemented her past experiences from all over California to ensure that the event was organized to the best of her ability, with the wants of hackers at the forefront of the event's plans. By keeping an ear open and being receptive to perspectives from other hackers and organizers, she could best determine what the community wanted from her and her planning committee. After listening to these perspectives, Kelly kept the tenets of the original hackathon spirit in mind while planning CruzHacks.

Those tenets are learning, building, creating, and collaborating. Kelly and her team wanted recent trends of unhealthy competition and business-oriented events to stay far away from the ethos of the competition, and worked to encourage the team-centered model that helped bring Kelly where she is today. Kelly has come a long way in her hacker journey, from a programming novice to a returning Microsoft intern with a desire to change the way her community views hackathons – a transformation fueled by her love for these niche events.

Kelly is empowered by seeing women and queer folks in tech bring their unique, creative perspectives to the table. As the hacker of her community, Kelly encourages her peers to never stop starting. There’s a home for Kelly in hackathons, a vital step in her path that she’ll forever be grateful for, and can always return to.