Quinn Jarvis-Holland
I'm an engineer and entrepreneur with a background in the arts. Currently in IT security and operations for a clean energy platform. I'm fascinated by interaction design and human-computer interfaces.
I enjoy
- communicating complex ideas to a wide range of people / abilities
- harnessing empathy to infer and meet user's needs
- making systems that support and adapt to people
- intersections of accessible interfaces and operational efficiency
I'm also trying to find more time to paint.
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My brother experiences Down-syndrome and when he entered school was non-verbal. Doctors had told my parents he was likely to never read, and may not speak. To overcome his challenge and help him "speak" at school I helped my mom put together a speaking photo-book. We included "prompt" photos so he could show kids at school, press a button, and have my voice "talk" a pre-recorded statement or question for him. Helping him with this assistive device proved to me early on that we can transcend our limitations to better connect with one-another given the right interface (see Universal Design)As a teen, I worked in computer repair and network installation, learning how to fight malware and set up LAN/WAN. I spent my free-time building an HTML+CSS+vanillaJS website for a small record label with a friend. The site served a reactive scrolling grid of album artwork and streamed high quality audio. A year or two later, BandCamp rose to fame and I moved my focus to publishing experimental music on the label taking advantage of BandCamp's convenient platform.Freshman year of HS I flunked all my classes except AP Chemistry, where I performed better than most of the seniors in the class. I found it difficult to succeed in classes based on rote-memorization with little application. Switching to the Leadership and Entrepreneurship Public Charter HS where I was expected to create a business plan helped immensely. I had the opportunity to intern with the founder and serial entrepeneur, Adam Reid , conducting value analysis on local businesses. My biggest learning was that businesses can often improve profitability by simplifying and focusing on their core value-delivery, but founders / owners sometimes get lost in operational complexity and features.In college my interest in audio led me towards understanding the production equipment, how to fix it, and ultimately design and build it. I picked up electrical engineering, soldering, prototyping, and computer science skills all in an effort to understand each component of a synthesizer or high-end audio effect. This enabled me to build audio devices as well as larger interactive installations.In 2019, I worked with three other engineers to develop adaptive interfaces for people with significant disabilities - with the goal of enabling them to play original electronic music in harmony. We prototyped four novel digital interfaces with a hardware budget of $400, and an executable program as the GUI for tone control.I published the results of our work in a paper titled 'expanding access to music technology' @ NIME2020 elaborating on how modern rapid-development tools like box-and-wire programming can enable adaptive product design. In 2020 I founded a company named Cyberian to provide engineering and development services, which I used for a few contracting projects. In collaboration with two other founders, we deployed secure self-hosted productivity and communication infrastructure and learned a lot in the process.In 2022 I joined Modern Energy as Information Systems Generalist - eager to apply my skills somewhere with a positive mission. While I originally wore many hats including system design, I've since narrowed in towards running IT and security operations.Recently, I developed a security program and Information Security Policy for a clean energy startup looking to comply with the Department of Energy's C2M2 standard. Our solution improved on off-the-shelf solutions and resulted in a lean and efficient security program.