Hello,
My name is Lara Karki (also Schenck). I’m a Ph.D. student in Human-Centered Computing at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, GA, where I work with Dr. Betsy DiSalvo and the DataWorks team. Before my PhD, I worked as a self-taught software developer for a decade, and encounters with gatekeeping culture motivated my career change to research.
My PhD research focuses on understanding and shaping a future of work where people without a technical background can gain economic stability through salaried, middle-wage, middle-skill computing jobs.
Research Areas
An underlying theme in my research is broadening pathways to computing by broadening what “counts” as computing. Computing work is typically thought of as high-skill, elite roles at high-tech companies. However, today nearly all office workers are – or will be – computing workers. This work, its workforce, and pathways to/from/within this work are largely unrecognized in computing research. Further, the narrative around AI and automation suggests these jobs may disappear entirely.
Gatekeeping Culture
Subtle, socially conditioned ideas about what “counts” as programming are pervasive in computing communities.This cultural gatekeeping limits who pursues a career in computing. This gatekeeping blocks the people doing technical work in tech-adjacent roles from developing computing knowledge and career aspirations.
Career Development
In this area, I research what makes job search so difficult and how career development programs can do better to help. I worked with DataWorks to reveal how LinkedIn contains features that actively limit new users’ abilities to use the platform for networking. We demonstrated how job search technologies amplify the difficulty of job search, while claiming to do the opposite.
Work-Based Learning
Learning through work is an effective and accessible way for adults to acquire technical skills. The curriculum at DataWorks is an example of an approach to upskilling through work-based learning that integrates flexible curricula with work tasks to provide authentic work experience and exposure to new technical concepts on-the-job.
Future of Work
The industry assumes that when AI automates work, workers’ will use that time towards higher-level thinking, but research shows that automation silos work, removing opportunities for learning and strategic contribution. In this research, I aim to uncover methods for companies to counter automation’s tendency to erode workers’ growth.
Published and Submitted Works
PDFs for published works can be found on my Google Scholar page, or at the links below.
2025 (and future)
Lara Karki, Kayla Uleah, Carl DiSalvo, Sierra Traynail Ross, Jadin Butler, Selamawit Husein, Emanuel Bryant, Dana Priest, Justin Booker, and Betsy DiSalvo. “‘I get hives when I come on here’: Persisting Through Platform-Delivered Microaggressions on LinkedIn.” Accepted for CSCW 2025. 📝 Blog Post | 📄 PDF
Lara Karki, Dana Priest, James G DuBose, Zajerria Godfrey, Annabel Rothschild, Ben Rydal Shapiro, and Betsy DiSalvo. 2025. “A Window into DataWorks: Developing an Integrated Work-Training Curriculum for Novice Adults.” SIGCSE TS 2025. 📋 Conference Page | 📝 Blog Post | 📄 PDF
Lara Karki, Idel Martinez-Ramos, Sabine Verdult, Dana Priest, Asher Brown, Felienne Hermans, and Betsy DiSalvo. “There is No ‘Real’ Programming; There is Only Programming Mythology.” Under revision for ACM Transactions on Computing Education.
2024
Carl DiSalvo, Annabel Rothschild, Lara L. Schenck, Ben Rydal Shapiro, and Betsy DiSalvo. 2024. “When Workers Want to Say No: A View into Critical Consciousness and Workplace Democracy in Data Work”. CSCW 2024. DEI Recognition. Open access PDF.
2023
Lara L. Schenck and Betsy DiSalvo. 2023. “From Data Work to Data Science: Getting Past the Gatekeepers.” Poster at ICER 2023. Open access PDF.
Contact
If my work sounds interesting to you, if you are working on something similar, or if you are thinking of a career change to computing or to research, I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to email me at lschenck3[at]gatech.edu.
You can also:
- Connect with me on LinkedIn
- View my published work on Google Scholar
- See my CV
- Read more about DataWorks
- Browse content from my industry persona
