Image of Elise in a green shirt against a gray background.

Elise's Background

After growing up in the greater St. Louis area and attending school in Kansas City, I relocated to Albuquerque in June 2020. As someone who was attending a four-year university when the Covid-19 Pandemic swept the world, I quickly came to realize the importance of technology when it came to uniting people and creating a safe and accessible world. As a lifetime Girl Scout I have always lived my life by the Girl Scout Promise, especially the part that says "On my honor I will try... to help people at all times". This mission, combined with my degree in Political Science, brought me to work at Crossroads for Women, an Albuquerque-based nonprofit that serves women who are exiting incarceration and rebuilding their lives. For over two years I worked as a member of the Crossroads development team, raising funds and doing administrative tasks to support the organization. While I no longer want to work in non-profit development, and instead want to transition into the tech field, social justice and equity for all are two things I hold very close to my heart.

In my free time, I enjoy playing board games with my friends, as well as card games like Magic the Gathering and Pokémon. I also enjoy making art with a variety of mediums, everything from painting or sewing, to digital art. I enjoy outlets where I can be creative, which is why games like Dungeons and Dragons appeal to me, which has been my more prominent recent interest. I enjoy the cooperative aspect of the game, as well as the chance to practice my leadership skills in a laid-back setting. If I'm not hanging out at a local card shop playing games with my friends, you'll find me at home planning my next travel excursion, or actively out on an adventure, which is something I am hoping to do more of now that Covid is more under control.

Professional Life

I started my career in the non-profit sector as an intern at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Women's Center, as their Social Media Intern. Two months into my semester-long internship, Covid-19 caused the University to transition to online learning, and the Women's Center closed its doors to in-person events and activities. During the rest of the semester my ability to communicate to other students via the Center's social media accounts was important to furthering the Center's mission of promoting women's equity on campus and in the community. While in-person communication was difficult, I helped the rest of the staff pivot to an online presence. My life next took me to Albuquerque, New Mexico where my next career move was to get hired as a Development Assistant at Crossroads for Women, where I was eventually promoted to Development Associate. During my time working at Crossroads, I came to realize there are many tools that are either not accessible to small nonprofits, do not exist, or could be greatly improved upon. This is what attracted me to a career in technology, and one of my eventual goals as I begin my career in tech is to create tools for small nonprofits to manage day to day tasks like donor and donation management.

Most recently, I worked as a DevOps Engineer for MetsiLabs, working remotely from my home office here in Albuquerque. As part of my job I contracted with Cisco to work with their Appdynamics program and clients, running and maintaining Appdynamics on a variety of tech stacks. I have gained experience with an assortment of cloud computing technologies such as Amazon AWS, Kubernetes, Docker/Docker compose, as well as gained skills in Linux.

LinkedIn GitHub
Elise Wantling (left) receiving their Global STEM Service Award
Global STEM Service Award Winner from oSTEM

I was the 2017 Recipient of the Global STEM Service Award from oSTEM, an organization that supports LGBTQ+ people in the STEM fields.

View the Science.org Article
A stack of Magic the Gathering cards.
Full Stack Bootcamp Capstone Project: Local MTG Finder

This is the capstone project created during my Full Stack Web Bootcamp through CNM, in partnership with Daniella Rangel and Donavan Padilla.

Local MTG Finder Capstone GitHub Repository

This website was created by Elise Wantling during their Full Stack Web Development course through Central New Mexico Community College Deep Dive Bootcamp over the course of six weeks, from mid-January to late-February of 2023, and has been updated as an ongoing project to have a living portfolio and personal site.