I’m Carol Brands, and I’m from New Orleans, LA, but I’ve been living in Corvallis, OR for about 12 years now. I started my professional career in technical support at a small company where Support was responsible for testing and documentation as well, which is how I discovered software testing. Once I realized software testing was my favorite activity, I moved into my current position as a Software Tester at DNV-GL Software (nee Digital Inspections). It’s been nearly 5 years since taking that position, and I still enjoy software testing as much as I did when I started.
Volunteering for AST is new for me, as I only started this year when I joined the Grants Committee. After joining AST and speaking at CAST for the first time last year, I was asked if I’d like to get a little more involved in AST through volunteering. Before accepting, I asked so many questions about how volunteering worked that I realized I was much more interested than I originally thought. The best part about being on the Grants committee is that we get to directly help testers by funding their ability to establish and grow communities of testers, which means more participants, more ideas, and more collaboration to increase the knowledge and practice of our field. It’s extremely exciting to be a part of that process, and I’d encourage anyone to look into ways they can help AST as well, as I’ve found it more rewarding than I ever expected.
OK, at this point I’m supposed to answer fun questions, but I decided against trying to work them into a narrative so I’m just going to answer the suggested ones bullet point style.
Favorite book or a book you would recommend right now: I’m currently reading Quiet, which is a book about introverts, and it’s like reading the story of my life. I’m totally an introvert.
Hobbies: I feel like everyone else has clever hobbies. I pretty much read the internet and watch TV. Currently watching the original X-Files series for the first time, because it was too creepy for me when it broadcasted, and it’s still a little too creepy for me, so I do a lot of fast-forwarding.
Three adjectives that describe you: Silly probably tops the list. After that it varies and is highly dependent on my current mood and objective.
Who do you admire and why? I admire lots of people: my family, people I work with, people in the testing community, just people really. Humanity can be pretty fantastic, at times.
If you had a warning label, what would yours say? Electric Shock Warning. (Pretty sure accumulating static electricity is my super power.) Alternatively, Warning: May Cause Headache.
What technology interests you right now? I feel like I’m the least technologically advanced person in the software industry because technologically doesn’t just innately interest me. I’m not a visual geek, not an audio geek, not a hardware geek, not a mobile geek. I just really like all the ways we can use various technologies to solve problems (like apps to find sushi and good doctors and safe drinking water). Technology is only as interesting as it is useful, to me.
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