FLIPPABLE: Simone Aiken for CO-HD44
Simone Aiken moved to the Denver area in 1997 to attend Colorado School of Mines. Her plan was to be a rocket scientist and work in aerospace. But life doesn't always work out like you planned.
One course in computer programming led to another, and aerospace needs programmers too. She switched majors and graduating with honors in Math and Computer Science with a minor in Physics. The year was 2001, just in time for the tech bubble to burst. Like many of today's millennials, she took whatever work she could find to make rent after graduation. Luckily for her the programming job market had recovered by 2003. Additionally, in 1997 you could attend School of Mines for $2,500 a semester, a third of what it is today. Dorm, food, book, and student fees are likewise much higher now than inflation can justify. Simone believes our children should have the same opportunities we did.
Simone Aiken is a fighter. She sets a goal and she pushes towards it, through thick and thin, as days become weeks and weeks become years. She goes over, around, or through every obstacle. And she will fight for you.
It took Simone over a decade to get from the IT helpdesk at the National Park Service to writing ground control software for GPS Satellites at Raytheon. Along the way she wrote code in a variety of politically sensitive industries including email security, geological surveying, health insurance claims processing, and defense contracting. Programmers get a great perspective on the industries they work for. To create the systems that everyone uses they need end-to-end knowledge of workflows at a practical level. To create the reports management consumes they have to understand the high level data and metrics used to drive decision making. They have deep industry knowledge without deep financial ties. And knowing that a mistake will anger hundreds of thousands of end users means they have to balance the desire to improve things with respect for the functionality of existing systems. Who better to deal with a lobbyist than someone who knows enough about their industries to catch them when they exaggerate? And who is better suited to craft policy than someone who seeks to understand the nuances of the existing systems fully before altering them?
Our political discourse has become consumed with hatred and spite. Every question, every issue, is abstracted away from the solvable, real-world, problem in front of us to ideological battles against some enemy. Radical politicians—on both sides—spend their time playing the blame game. They demonize a section of the population, declare them the author of all our woes, then promise that things will magically be better if we can just properly punish "those people". Who "those people" are varies depending on who you talk to. But what is nearly universal is that the proposals to punish "them" don’t actually address our problems in a meaningful way. They are a distraction from real solutions - as scapegoats always are. Responsible politicians - on both sides - are then savaged by their respective radicals for the sin of not hating "those people" enough. Simone Aiken will not play that game. She is a geek and an engineer and she just wants to fix things.
https://simoneaiken4colorado.com
