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ABOUT

Anna Jean McDougall

A headshot of Anna Jean McDougall: she is smiling and wearing dangly earrings

Anna McDougall was born in Sydney, Australia. She attended Fort Street High School before completing a Bachelor of Arts (Media and Communications) with a double major in Journalism and Spanish and Latin American Studies from the University of Sydney.

 

Following several years working in project management and marketing, she then did her first major career change, completing a Masters of Music (Opera Performance) from Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Between 2013 and 2019 she worked as a classical singer, performing opera and concert works in three continents. She moved to Germany in 2015 and became an alto chorister and occasional soloist at Hessen State Theatre. 

After the birth of her daughter Mathilda, she reconsidered her career choice and made her second large pivot: using the pandemic lockdown of 2020 to learn programming, eventually completing a German certification in Web- and Software-Development from Digital Careers Institute in Leipzig. 

Following her successful work as a software engineer at Novatec Consulting GmbH, she was headhunted to lead the Projects and Organisation team at Axel Springer National Media and Tech, where she consults on project teams spanning AI, ML, web development, data science/analytics, AR/VR, DevOps, and more. Her work involves lifting up other engineers to better advocate for their work; representing the company's technical teams at conferences, meetups, and events; and also promoting diversity and inclusion initiatives for technical staff.

 

She also still gets to code, which makes her geeky heart very happy. 

 

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