Avriana Allen

Education:

I have a Bachelor of Science from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University where I double-majored in journalism and statistics and minored in creative writing.

Work Experience:

A web developer for CalMatters since 2021, I've taken on a variety of user-facing and internal projects. Developing expertise in PHP, WordPress, performance metrics and APIs, I built three voter guides, redesigned the homepage, shipped multiple improvements to the navigation and updated all archive pages, making it easier for millions of Californians to be informed about the policies and politics of their state. Behind the scenes, I created custom tools and features in the CMS like a featured image tracker, an override for author names, and a set of standardized CTAs to improve the workflow of the editorial, revenue, and visuals teams.

I spent the summer of 2020 as the Engineering Fellow at The Texas Tribune. Despite working remotely, I gained experience in Python, AWS Lambda and regular expressions which allowed me to create two Slack bots and three CMS helpers.

Previously, I worked for the Knight Lab at Northwestern University where I researched rendering historic stereographic images as 3-dimensional objects, learning pathways and the Census. I also spent a year as the Interactives Editor for North by Northwestern, a student publication, where I taught students the basics of HTML and CSS.

Hobbies:

Though often found longboarding, swing dancing or playing volleyball, I also love a good book. I can make a mean tamale and, given 10–15 hours with sufficient motivation and yarn, I can crochet a balloon animal.