christina (or tina)

People have called me chaotic my whole life.

Fair. I'll pick up a hobby, be completely obsessed for three to six months, then drop it out of nowhere.

A lot of people see that as giving up. I see it as having fun.

The way I treat hobbies is the way I try to treat everything: lead with curiosity, do things for the sake of doing them, and don't apologize when the thing has run its course. I love novelty. I love trying something I've never tried before. I love feeling things I haven't felt yet. I chase that.

That said, some things don't move.

My family and closest friends are always first. That's not something I negotiate with myself about. I'm Coptic Egyptian, one of five girls, and I grew up in a house where showing up for people wasn't optional. It was just what you did. Growing up that way was a blessing, and it stuck. It's probably why building software aimed at rebuilding communities feels so intuitive to me. It's familiar. Take care of your people. I feel so lucky with mine that I want everyone to get to feel that.

Coding is the other constant. I found it by accident during an industrial engineering internship at John Deere. I was so bored I taught myself VBA just to automate updating a database. Got it working, felt that high, and switched my major to computer science that fall. Never looked back. I've been a backend engineer ever since. Four years at Pendo, and now full-time building Yura, a community platform bringing organizations and people together through service. I've poured everything into it the last two years. Whether that's because I'm selfishly trying to prove something to myself, or because service genuinely changed my life and I want others to feel that too. Probably a little of both. I won't know for sure for a while. But I'm proud of it either way.

Fitness is the third one. Doesn't matter what form it takes. Lifting, jump rope, handstands, backpacking, rock climbing, whatever I'm obsessed with that month, and yes it changes month to month. I genuinely see it as adult play time and I'll die on that hill. Health is wealth, genuinely.

I don't have a five year plan. Honestly I don't think I believe in them.

But I know what I care about: keep learning, keep building, and use whatever I have to leave things a little better than I found them. Technology should serve people, not the other way around. That's not a grand vision. It's just the only way this all feels worth doing.