#138 From Brain Tumor to Teaching 500,000 Sysadmin Students with Hiroko Nishimura
The freeCodeCamp Podcast
Quincy Larson
5.0 • 549 Ratings
🗓️ 23 August 2024
⏱️ 119 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Hiroko Nishimura. She's a special ed teacher turned system administrator turned technical instructor.
Hiroko grew up in Japan and moved to the US as a kid. In her early 20s, she was diagnosed with a vascular tumor in her brain. After life-saving surgery, she had to work to regain the ability to walk and talk. She still lives with disabilities to this day.
Despite this, she's gone on to author technical books, become an AWS hero, and create the popular AWS Newbies community. More than 500,000 people have taken her LinkedIn Learning course.
We talk about:
- How Hiroko moved to the US as a kid and learned English and American culture
- Hiroko's vascular tumor diagnosis, and how she recovered from brain surgery and brain damage
- Her big move to NYC and her years working as a system administrator and ultimately cloud engineer there
- How she made the jump to teaching system administration full-time as a course creator
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1990 song by a Scottish rock band.
Also, I want to thank the 10,443 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Hiroko's article about her brain surgery: https://hiroko.io/my-words/
- Hiroko's book AWS for non-engineers: https://www.manning.com/books/aws-for-non-engineers
- Hiroko's AWS course: https://introtoaws.com
- And her AWS linktree: https://aws.hiroko.io
- My history of the 100DaysOfCode challenge: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-crazy-history-of-the-100daysofcode-challenge-and-why-you-should-try-it-for-2018-6c89a76e298d/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | the neurologist was trying to kind of be like, hey, you know, you're never going to work, |
| 0:04.7 | you're never going to be independent, and you're probably going to be living with your parents |
| 0:09.1 | for the rest of your life, and you're probably never going to have a full-time job, so you kind |
| 0:13.0 | of have to, like, come to terms with that, and we have to figure out what you're going to do. You have to figure out what you're going to do. Welcome back to the Free Coke Camp podcast. |
| 0:46.4 | I'm Quincy Larson, teacher and founder of Freakoke Camp.org. |
| 0:50.3 | Each week we'll bring you insight with developers, founders, and ambitious people getting into tech. |
| 0:56.0 | This week, we're talking with Hiroko Nishimura. |
| 0:59.8 | She's a special ed teacher turned system administrator, turned technical instructor. |
| 1:05.4 | Hiroko grew up in Japan, moved to the U.S., and in her early 20s, she was diagnosed with a vascular tumor in her brain. |
| 1:14.5 | After life-saving surgery, she had to work to regain the ability to walk and talk, and she still |
| 1:20.6 | lives with disabilities to this day. |
| 1:23.3 | Despite this, Hiroko has gone on to author technical books, become an AWS hero, and create the popular AWS newbies community. |
| 1:33.0 | More than 500,000 people have taken Hiroko's LinkedIn learning course. |
| 1:38.9 | Hiroko, welcome to the Free Code Camp podcast. |
| 1:42.1 | Thanks for having me today. |
| 1:44.2 | Yeah, I am so jazzed to talk with you and learn more about you. |
| 1:47.4 | I have known of you for many years because so many people use your learning resources to |
| 1:53.7 | prepare for AWS certifications. |
| 1:57.3 | Yeah, I mean, when I first got back into like, hey, this coding thing, like Free Code Camp was the first thing that I learned about. |
| 2:05.2 | So it's kind of like synergy moment here going on. |
| 2:09.5 | Yeah, awesome. |
| 2:10.8 | Well, yeah, we're thrilled that you found Free Code Camp useful over the years as you've continued to expand your skill and then figure out how |
... |
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