Arlene Perez is a Latina software developer who is on a mission to increase minority representation in the technology industry. She was raised by two Mexican immigrants and is the first in her family to graduate from college with a degree in Political Science and Philosophy from UC Santa Barbara. Arlene joined Teach for America in Washington D.C as a middle school math teacher where she taught math in Spanish to her diverse group of students. During this time, she noticed the lack of Latinos in STEM education and advocated for more students to develop an interest in STEM topics. Arlene has been recognized for her efforts by the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence and Mayor Garcetti. She is also a recent graduate of Dev Bootcamp in San Francisco and has learned Ruby on Rails, Javascript, MySQL, Postgres, CSS, and HTML.

Currently, Arlene is a Junior Full-stack Engineer at NBCUniversal Media, LLC, where her skills continue to grow. She is passionate about creating technology that makes a positive impact on the world and helping students master math as a software developer. Her expertise lies in coding languages such as Ruby on Rails, Javascript, and HTML. Arlene's professional experience includes teaching math, research, internships, and engineering. Her skills include problem-solving, teaching, coding, and advocacy. Her interests include increasing minority representation in tech, robotics, and math education.