Where Are They Now? Connecting with Ester Zhao ’21

My internship with the botanic garden was the first time I realized my technology skills could actually be useful anywhere. Every botanic garden is going to have a database, and all of them are going to have websites. There's technology involved in every aspect of everything now, especially data. 

I was hired as an IT technician to configure a mobile app that could interface with the botanic garden’s database. While watching the botanic garden staff work with the app I was able to see some flaws that the consumer encountered and to identify several user-experience problems that I never would have thought of if I were the developer of that app. This experience that I got working with the botanic garden and seeing the actual customer experience was invaluable. That, for me, was hugely transferable to all of my work in tech after this. 

My favorite memories as an intern were working closely with Elaine [Chittenden, manager of living collections] and going on seed-collecting trips where [fellow intern McKenzie Swart ’21] and I would be out and about in the woods and Elaine would be pointing at plants and saying, ‘You can eat that’ or ‘Here are the growing conditions of this plant.’ One time, Elaine, McKenzie,  and I were tramping through the forest without a map. ‘We’ll figure out our way back. That’s a problem for later,’ Elaine said. We clearly had no idea where we were, but we stumbled upon a rare orchid and took lots of pictures. In every part of those trips, I was filled with so much joy and I was learning nonstop about something that I didn’t know anything about. I was seeing things that I never would have seen if I hadn't had that wonderful guide in Elaine.

In my work life, I just sit at a desk and type into my computer. But in my personal life, I am trying to be involved with more conservation and plant activities because I know more about them now. For example, I've been attending mushrooming classes with a group of 20 people where we go out to find edible mushrooms and take them home to cook them up. And I buy my own books about mushrooms now because I’m trying to keep educating myself about the things that I developed an interest in while at Smith.

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During her time at Smith, Ester Zhao (Computer science major, Statistical and data science minor) was a member of Smith’s chamber choir and president and music director of the a cappella group known as the Smithereens; she also ran an a cappella summer camp for middle schoolers in her hometown of Lexington, Massachusetts. As a work-study student, Ester was an assistant in Smith Executive Education, which specializes in educational programs for women in business. During the summer after her senior year, she interned at the botanic garden before moving to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she is a software development engineer at Amazon Robotics and avidly forages for mushrooms.