Brittany Reedman, computer science guru, has experience at Microsoft as well
In the generation of smartphones and tablets, Brittany Reedman has found her way through the “cloud” and discovered her calling in computer science and math.
Reedman, a lifelong Williamstown resident, began her transformation into the woman she is today as a student at Williamstown High School. One of the defining aspects of her life is tennis, something she excelled at as a student.
“My mom signed me up for a camp when I was going into eighth grade and I fell in love with it,” she said. “I quit everything after tennis. I played №1 in high school and was №1 or 2 at (The College of New Jersey).”
To play as №1 means one would play against the opposing team’s top player. That’s how rankings are formed and one can move up or down the rankings.
Reedman also credits WHS for helping her find her career.
“I took a computer science class in high school and knew that’s what I wanted to do,” she said. “My mom was a computer science major and told me to look into that. I loved it instantly.”
With a love for tennis and computer science, Reedman graduated from WHS and took her talents roughly 60 miles north to TCNJ.
As a tennis player, Reedman says there’s one memory that will stay with her forever — a match against Brandeis University.
“We were usually underdogs,” she said. “It was hard for us to beat private schools like Johns Hopkins and Brandeis. We were down four to three, you have to win five. Both of our (remaining) players lost their first set. We were running back and forth between the matches. When one of our friends clinched the last point we all ran on to the court screaming. It was the most I felt like a team in my whole life.”
The tennis court wasn’t the only place the Reedman excelled, she was very successful on campus as well. She was the president of the Women in Computer Science club, vice president of the Association for Computing Machinery, a member of the National Mathematics Honor Society, International Honor Society for the Computing and Information Disciplines and a sister of the Sigma Kappa Sorority.
When asked about balancing school, social life and athletics, Reedman only had one thing to say: “The thought of having to quit wasn’t a thought that I wanted to entertain.”
One of the accomplishments that Reedman was most proud of was the 24 hour code-a-thon that the Association for Computing Machinery put together called Hack-a-thon.
Reedman said they raised somewhere between 17 and 18,000 dollars to put on the event which went to having giveaways, prizes, advertising and the venue. She said the organization became her closest friends.
Before graduating, Reedman interned for two summers at Microsoft in Seattle.
“I was a software engineering intern at Microsoft,” she said. “In college you learn skills but you don’t put them to work until you’re on the job site. I met incredible, smart people. The mentors there made us feel at home.” She described the atmosphere and noted that some days there would be ziplines outside, a rock wall, or a ping pong table.
“Everyone is comfortable being themselves,” she added.
Reedman graduated magna cum laude from The College of New Jersey with a bachelor’s degrees in computer science and math. She will relocate to Seattle in August to start her career as a software engineer at Facebook. She doesn’t know what she’ll be doing but said Facebook has a boot camp on boarding process where the new employees pick their team and the project they work on. As a software engineer she will be coding.
While she is excited to start the next chapter of her life, Reedman will miss the people in Williamstown the most.
“I’ve never lived in another house, I always had friends I could hang out with on a whim,” she said.
“It’s a great environment,” Reedman said of Seattle. “It’s not too techy like Silicon Valley where it’s inundated. I’m excited to live in Seattle where there’s phenomenal players in tech, but there are others there so it’s diverse.”
