Aelia V. Email & Phone Number

For as long as I can remember, I've always had two passions: computers, and helping people.My earliest memories of computers were monochrome monitors and 5 1/4 inch floppy disks in my elementary school computer room (which was actually the school's unused kitchen), playing games like Number Munchers. Those lunch hours were the start of a lifetime of fascination with technology. When I got my exposure to programming a few years later (BASIC on Windows 95) I found my obsession. From that point on, if it had scripting or programming, I dabbled in it. Everything from writing RPG systems in mIRC's scripting language to full-fledged C++ programming, I loved the feeling of designing systems to solve problems, then building them piece by piece to completion.It's been 18 years since I started programming in C++, and I haven't stopped since. I attended a technical school to focus on programming, but graduated just as the dot-com bubble burst. I spent a couple years trying to get a programming job, but couldn't find anything. I ended up saving up to go back to University to pursue my other passion and become a teacher, hoping to combine the two and become a computer sciences teacher. My university didn't have a Bachelors of Education specialty in Computer Sciences yet though, so I used all my free options to take university computer sciences courses when I could. I even ended up giving unofficial computer science lessons to other students during lab periods because teaching computer science has always felt like my calling.Since then, I've taught courses in robotics, game design, and computer science to children and teens of all ages. But cut backs to education in Alberta ultimately pushed me out of teaching positions and onto the substitute teaching list, where I was stuck until I had the opportunity to pursue my passion in game development by joining IGT as a software engineer.Now, I make games for a living. 8-year-old me would be so proud. I've already learned so much about professional game development and real-time programming but there's still a ton more to learn. I can't wait to keep discovering new things.