In this week’s episode we sit down with Una Kravets to talk about emigrating from the Ukraine, falling in love with tech, and being the youngest person in the room.

Una works for IBM's Design Lab, as a front-end developer on the cloud platform team in Austin, TX. We talk about how she became interested in tech, and the influence that her father and family's culture had on her future.

Una fell in love with tech at a pretty young age. She joined her first online community at the age of 9 through The Palace - a chatroom for dolls, and then learned ActionScript as a teenager from a teacher. We talk about what it's like to be young in the tech-industry and the challenges and benefits that come with that.

Una has an infectious attitude towards learning and teaching. She's given a bunch of amazing talks at conferences, and has a podcast. We talk about how everyone's qualified to give a talk, because their perspective is unique and can teach others. In the same vain, Una founded the DC Sass Meetup, where she encourages people of all skill levels to meetup and participate in a presentation, Q&A and some hacking.

Having a background in both design and developing, Una and I discuss the relationship between the two. She encourages designers to get involved in developing, and talks about the benefits this has on both sides of the tech industry. Una believes that "everything is a teachable moment", even mistakes.

• Una Kravets
• Follow Una on Twitter
• IBM Design
• IBM BlueMix
• Una’s Blog
• Tools Day Podcast
• Sass
• Una’s Talks
• Video on Guitar Oscillations
• Thread on Guitar Oscillations