Michael Kihanya

Self-taught developer eager to leverage my multidisciplinary background, curiosity, and technical expertise to build impactful products.

Work

You can find my projects on Github . You can find brief descriptions of each project on my resume.

See each project's README for the "nitty gritty".

About

Hi! I'm a neuroscientist by training, but what really drives me is solving business problems with code. I learned as I went through The Odin Project curriculum how much I love writing commands in the terminal, spinning up a Ruby app, even using flexbox.

My story... as a writer, a neuroscience major doing research. Experience in audio technology combined with research practices led to developing novel SOP. Lead editor and writer for my school's neuroscience magazine, published yearly and distributed city-wide. After graduation, I began remote work as a technical researcher and writer for Dose Coaching, a boutique coaching and strategy partner working with businesses from 1 to over 300,000 employees. I led work around the discovery, organization, and integration of scientific evidence. How does web dev fit into this?I traveled across Europe and African from September 2023-May 2024. During a 3-month stint working on a farm on the coast of Portugal (with lots of time to kill), I decided to learn how to code. At the time it was for two reasons: 1) I want to have the technical chops to build an MVP if I have an idea and 2) the appeal of working freelance as a web developer. I started The Odin Project in January 2024. Sure, it taught me how to code. More importantly, the course emphasizes a growth mindset through the learning journey. Coming from a traditional academic background, my mentality had been "get it done (even if it kills you, even if it is a hot steaming pile of garbage)". Learning through the Odin Project gave me a space to make mistakes, learn how I like to learn, and cultivate a growth mindset. And with the time I already had, I developed a love for solving problems - big or small - with code.

Contact

Feel free to reach out for projects, collaborations, or just to say hello! Currently seeking new opportunities.