From Brain Tumor to Teaching 500,000 Sysadmin Students with Hiroko Nishimura [Podcast #138]

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Hiroko Nishimura. She's a special ed teacher turned system administrator turned technical instructor.

Hiroko grew up in Japan and moved to the US as a kid. In her early 20s, she was diagnosed with a vascular tumor in her brain. After life-saving surgery, she had to work to regain the ability to walk and talk. She still lives with disabilities to this day.

Despite this, she's gone on to author technical books, become an AWS hero, and create the popular AWS Newbies community. More than 500,000 people have taken her LinkedIn Learning course.

We talk about:

• How Hiroko moved to the US as a kid and learned English and American culture

• Hiroko's vascular tumor diagnosis, and how she recovered from brain surgery and brain damage

• Her big move to NYC and her years working as a system administrator and ultimately cloud engineer there

• How she made the jump to teaching system administration full-time as a course creator

Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1990 song by a Scottish rock band.

Also, I want to thank the 10,443 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate

You can watch the interview on YouTube:

Or you can listen to the podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Be sure to follow the freeCodeCamp Podcast there so you'll get new episodes each Friday.

Links we talk about during our conversation:

• Hiroko’s article about her brain surgery: https://hiroko.io/my-words/

• Hiroko's book AWS for non-engineers: https://www.manning.com/books/aws-for-non-engineers

• My history of the 100DaysOfCode challenge: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-crazy-history-of-the-100daysofcode-challenge-and-why-you-should-try-it-for-2018-6c89a76e298d/