Brienna Herold is a data engineer at The New York Times, where she and a small team manage massive amounts of behavioral data streaming in from millions of people who read the news online, use apps such as NYT Cooking, or play games like Wordle. Bri currently lives in Minneapolis with her partner David Uzzell and their fluffy, fussy rescue cat, Winterfell.
Bri grew up just across the border in the small farming community of Spring Valley, Wisconsin, which has about 1,000 residents. Born profoundly deaf due to Connexin-26, Bri’s parents and older sister started learning Pidgin Signed English and later ASL. Her family was highly invested in being able to communicate with her through sign language, playing brain stimulating games, and participating in other activities that supported Bri’s early language acquisition.
Bri started her education by attending the Deaf/Hard of Hearing (DHH) Program at Rondo for preschool and at Como Elementary for kindergarten. She transferred to a program for the deaf in Somerset, Wisconsin for first through fourth grades. In fifth grade, her family moved to Spring Valley, Wisconsin, where she was mainstreamed as the only deaf student in the school district, until the tenth grade, when she decided to transfer to Metro Deaf School, which allowed her to both socialize with deaf peers again and to continue living with her family.
After high school, Bri moved to Washington, DC to attend Gallaudet University on a full-ride scholarship. She graduated with Honors in biology and chemistry, and went on to work in a biochemical pharmacology wet lab at the National Institutes of Health for several years. “At the time, I loved biology, but then one day I realized that I had grown to enjoy something else more,” Bri says. “The fun thing about life is that you can change your mind about what you’re doing. I have changed direction a few times since then, and it is exciting, that moment when you realize you’re about to go off on a new adventure.”
During down time in the lab, Bri taught herself how to code in Python, JavaScript, and Java, before enrolling in a master’s program at the Rochester Institute of Technology to further develop her computer science skills. After this program and a summer working in Germany in disaster risk reduction, Bri continued on to a PhD in computer science at the University of Minnesota. She enjoyed doing research, and she published a first-author paper examining audism in artificial intelligence, in addition to teaching at Gallaudet. In her third year of the PhD program, Bri accepted a job offer as a data analyst at Netlify, a startup based in San Francisco that provides a serverless platform to empower more efficient, elaborate web projects. While there, Bri worked to help define internal product direction using insights from data. After two years at Netlify, Bri moved on to her current role at the New York Times.
“I’m very fortunate to have been able to work from home or anywhere with both Netlify and the NYT,” Bri says. “Though I’m looking forward to visiting the headquarters in Times Square and meeting my team in person.” She uses Slack, a collaborative messaging app, to communicate directly with her co-workers in written English. She also has about 10 meetings each week over Zoom, and the company provides ASL interpreters for them. “Since I hear nothing and don’t speak, I do struggle in meetings where the primary mode of communication is spoken English. I prefer online meetings over in-person meetings, because I can use the auto-captions to help ensure I’m being interpreted correctly. I can also record the meetings, so if I missed something, it’s possible to go back and rewatch.”
Bri encourages folks to never stop learning. “The world around you is constantly evolving, and learning new ideas or skills helps you stay relevant.” She mentions that in software engineering, the average learned skill has an expected shelf life of only five years, because technology is always improving or changing. “I think it’s also fun to learn new things just for the joy of learning. It’s also okay if you realize, like I did, that you want to quit what you’re doing and go do something else completely different. You can do it when you’re 20, 30, 50, whenever. Try not to believe the sunk cost fallacy.”
Outside of work, Bri enjoys running and doing things with family and friends. She also spends some time in the kitchen cooking. “I really like umami and savory flavors, and Asian-inspired dishes are often rich in those, so you can find me cooking them a lot.” Bri is also excited to have moved back to Minnesota last fall with David, and she is enjoying being able to reconnect with her roots here in the state.
The #CanDoAnything campaign showcases people who are deaf, deafblind, or hard of hearing at work, giving them an opportunity to share what they do at their jobs and explain how communication access works for them. This campaign shows what our community can do, which is anything!
