She turned her passion for animals into a path of coding
Northeastern bioinformatics student Andrea Orozco turned her tech job into a co-op, helping build a cloud platform for Puerto Rico’s EBT program.
Andrea Orozco found her way to bioinformatics through an unexpected path — her love for animals.
A graduate student at Northeastern University who grew up in Puerto Rico, a place with no natural predators, Orozco often saw stray cats and dogs roaming freely. Her dream was to one day open a clinic that would neuter and release stray animals to help control the population.
To pursue that goal, Orozco moved to the United States mainland to attend veterinary school, she said. She studied animal science, completed pre-vet courses and worked as a veterinary technician for a few years. But the cost of veterinary school proved to be a major barrier.
So she decided to pivot and enrolled in Northeastern’s graduate program in bioinformatics, hoping to eventually work on medical research for animals.
“I thought it would be cool to do some research and help the animal community,” she said. “Maybe work on new medications, because there’s not a lot of medications for them out there.”
When it came time to choose a co-op, Orozco, who lives in Michigan and studies remotely, decided to take a chance and approach her employer, Knowledge Power Group Inc., to see if they would consider hosting her for a co-op.
KPG is a consulting and development company that provides customized technological solutions to clients in public, private and nonprofit sectors. The company is headquartered in Puerto Rico with offices in Colombia, Miami, India and Spain.
Orozco has been working at KPG in IT customer service. She had no prior tech experience when she applied for the job, but she was eager to apply what she was learning in grad school and to learn new skills on the job.
“I thought, ‘This would be a good bridge,’” she said.
KPG had taken a chance on her once before and agreed to do so again, this time supporting her co-op.
“They were really good with trying to help me out with that,” she said. “I gave them a whole list of things that I would like to be doing.”
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Orozco wanted to try her hand at project management. KPG identified a fitting opportunity and offered her a project coordinator role on a government project in Puerto Rico. The goal of the project was to build a cloud-based platform to monitor the use of Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards issued to low-income customers in the Nutrition Assistance Program. EBT cards can only be used to pay for approved food items, and the government regularly tests retailers to ensure they follow the rules.
As project coordinator, Orozco served as the primary point of contact between the client and the development team. She helped ensure the new platform met the government’s needs.
She communicated client feedback to developers, applied her data organization and coding skills, and personally tested different iterations and features of the platform. All the data that were previously on paper had to be digitized and stored on the cloud.
“I’m a very independent person. If I understand the process, I will do it unless I have a question,” she said.
Her Northeastern training gave her the technical vocabulary and confidence to navigate the project.
“That was really exciting — to be able to actually put some of what I’ve learned and get some results in the real world,” she says.
She worked on the project remotely, but KPG flew her to Puerto Rico twice for some in-person time with the team.
By the time her co-op ended in August, the platform was in the final stages, with only a few final tweaks remaining. The team, she says, will continue maintaining the system for the client.
Her supervisor conducted a full recap and evaluation of her work, offering feedback and communication tips. Orozco also prepared a presentation about her co-op as part of her co-op course.
“That was a nice recap for myself — seeing how hard I actually worked on everything and how this is actually a real thing and it’s going to help everyone,” she says.
Her advice for students hoping to do a co-op at a specific company is simple: ask.
“Even if the company doesn’t really offer a co-op, just try [asking] because sometimes it might start something new for the company,” she said. “And maybe in the future they might have more offers for co-ops and internships.”
