Abby Howell

Abby Howell has extensive experience as a software engineer, with a focus on building robust systems and improving performance. Abby has worked at various companies, including Perfect Venue, Reforge, Teachable, Wistia, Scholastic, Cengage Learning, Localytics, and Boston Public Schools.

At Reforge, Abby served as a Senior Software Engineer and tech lead, overseeing the overhaul of the backend code for Pricing and Packaging. Abby also led a team in automating sales tax collection. Abby enjoyed increasing test coverage, improving accessibility, and collaborating with cross-functional teams.

During their time at Teachable, Abby led a project to revamp the subscription billing system and mentored junior engineers. Abby used their full-stack engineering skills to develop features and optimize performance.

At Wistia, Abby showcased their expertise in Ruby on Rails, React, JavaScript, and GraphQL. Abby built various features, advocated for diversity and inclusion, and supported multilingual captions. Abby also contributed to marketing efforts and provided technical support.

Abby's earlier work experience includes roles at Scholastic, Cengage Learning, Localytics, Boston Public Schools, The Learning Center for the Deaf, and Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring. In these roles, they demonstrated their skills as a software engineer and teacher, developing educational web apps, interactive digital textbooks, and conducting programming workshops.

Abby Howell's education history begins with their time at Bard College at Simon's Rock, where they pursued a Bachelor of Arts degree in Linguistics and Anthropology from 1998 to 2002. Moving forward, they attended Boston University for their Master of Education degree in Deaf Education, which they completed between 2006 and 2008. Lastly, in 2013, Abby enrolled in General Assembly's program called Web Development Immersive, where they focused on honing their skills in web development.