Hello everyone!

My name is Stephanie Duncker. I grew up in New Jersey but escaped to the deep south twice, once for undergrad in Tallahassee and again for grad school, in Memphis. I went south because I wanted to to experience something different, which surprised just about everyone I knew. After all, I was the most liberal person my friends and family knew- I hadn't eaten meat since middle school, I was involved in my protests since my early teens and I was probably very outspoken about opinions that were not widely shared.

As a (typically Jersey) upfront person with not a lot of social graces, I think they figured I would alienate everyone in the south and run back to the NE, frightened by the "real world". What they didn't expect was for me to thrive and grow wherever I landed, no matter how conservative, no matter how white or male dominated the environment. Admittedly I did hate places at first, but I learned two very important skills that helped me move beyond barriers- adaptability and finding community in the most unlikely places. Each time I left not only did I come back a stronger, better person, I was also somehow more sure in my beliefs and values. As a philosophy major and a woman of color in an underrepresented field, I got used to not just defending my opinions but persuading people that maybe my opinions weren't so radical after all, and maybe they themselves share the same perspective deep down, but were afraid of the consequences of embracing such a perspective.

When not studying at schools in the south, I found myself back in Brooklyn, where much of my friends and extended family live. I moved to Portland from Brooklyn in June of 2014 and haven't looked back since. I love living here because there's so much opportunity to make a difference, maybe because everything's so new. On the east coast the bureaucracy and entrenched institutions make it difficult to make change and incredibly frustrating for wannabe change-makers like myself. There are so many opportunities to make a difference here, especially in terms of racial equity, which is probably the cause most important to me.

The issue of mistreatment of tech workers (particularly workers of color) has been on my mind a lot lately (b/c of my own personal experiences and those of friends) so I'd recommend this article:

https://medium.com/process-design-thinking-for-engineering-and/does-care-work-matter-in-the-tech-industry-no-but-it-should-32134874d5e6#.hcxj8b9a5

Right now I'm reading Octavia's Brood, which I would recommend even though I've just started it, as well as Octavia Butler's whole catalog.

In terms of a video, I love Beyonce and was tempted to share a video from the recently released Lemonade album, but I think this song probably expressed my mentally moreso than any of the songs on that album:

Looking forward to meeting all those I haven't met yet!