Hello! 你好! こんにちは！Салом! ¡Hola!
My name is Vanessa, and I’m a builder, designer, writer, and world traveler.
I am a Product Manager at Microsoft building Copilot (generative AI) features for the Outlook Calendar. I am eager to design & build human-centered tech enabling us to do our best work.
Previously, I also…
was Director of UX and designed for the American Civil Liberties Union at Harvard’s Tech for Social Good,
interned at Slack in software engineering and technical program management, and
did NLP research at Carnegie-Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute.
I also enjoy lifting, ballroom and Latin social dancing, and visiting cafes in any new city I visit.
My Work page features projects I’ve done outside of company work. My Writing page summarizes my writing publications, and you can also find my essays on Substack.
Foreign Language Proficiency
Coding Language Proficiency
2024
Product Manager at Microsoft (Outlook Calendar)
“All the Difference”: Winner of Louis Begley Prize, Harvard Advocate (judged by R.F. Kuang, New York Times bestseller)
2023
Product Manager Intern at Microsoft
Opinion Columnist at the Harvard Crimson
2022
Technical Program Management Intern at Slack
Director of UX, UX Project Manager at the ACLU (Tech for Social Good)
2021
Software Engineer Intern at Slack
Summer Researcher at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute (Women in Resistance Project)
Research/Software Engineer Intern at Carnegie Mellon’s Human Computer Interaction Institute
Director of Public Relations at Harvard’s Women Engineers Code Conference
Published in DoubleSpeak translation magazine, Spring 2021
Past Highlights
Software Engineer Intern at Keep.id
General Manager, Web Designer of The Wave, Harvard’s Asian Arts Magazine
Founder, Editor-in-Chief of New Semantics Language Magazine, featuring nearly 40 contributors and 16+ languages
US State Department NSLI-Y Alumni Representative (National Security Language Initiative for Youth), Youth Ambassador to Tajikistan
2020
TechTogether Boston, Facebook Building Community Hack Winner (moodring)
Writer, Designer for The Edible Food Magazine
Winner of 16-18 Young Writers Competition, Published in Babel Language Magazine (“People vs. machines”)
Computer Science Instructor at The Coding School (codeConnects)
Technology Fellow at Bluebonnet Data
2019
U.S. Presidential Scholar (Department of Education), National Merit Scholar
Salutatorian of Livingston High School
18th in North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO) (Invitational)
Winner of the 2019 New Jersey Hall of Fame Writing Competition
Scholastic Awards: National Silver Medal in Poetry “Five Rules (For My Grandparents)”
2018
1 of 11 students, U.S. State Department NSLI-Y Language Scholarship to Tajikistan
10th in North America in NACLO (Open Round)
NCTE Certificate for Superior Writing
2017
Team-USA Competitor (2017 International Linguistics Olympiad)
5th in North America in NACLO
Family Travel Forum Writing Scholarship (2nd in North America)
Yale Young Global Scholar (International Affairs & Security)
2016
Scholastic Art & Writing Awards: 3 Gold, 10 Silver Keys in Short Story, Personal Essay, Poetry 2016-19
