Student Spark Story

Jordan Chew 

Software Engineer
Amazon – Kindle Publishing
Ignited Teacher: Derrall Garrison, 5th grade math and science teacher

Student Spark Story

Jordan Chew, a software engineer at Amazon Kindle Publishing, started coding in elementary school. His confidence in career choice is tied to his early exposure to cutting-edge technology in Ignited alum Derrall Garrison’s 5th grade class.

Derrall Garrison taught Jordan science, math, and English at Meyerholz Elementary School’s Mandarin Immersion program. Over the course of four Ignited fellowships with Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, and Lockheed Martin, Derrall worked on projects ranging from producing graphics for technical presentations to conducting outreach that connected educators with HP’s education resources, including Google tools widely used in classrooms.

“I remember that Mr. Garrison had some kind of connection with Google or something,” Jordan says. “And I remember that really influencing the way that our classes operated because we had a very technologically focused experience in elementary school, which felt like a pretty unique and interesting way to be learning.”

While the specifics of his 5th grade curriculum have faded over the past decade, Jordan distinctly remembers corporate brand names mentioned in class–like Google–and compelling classroom activities like learning to code in Scratch, which helped him recognize his interest in building things. Derrall’s class also created stop-motion claymation using an overhead camera, which was especially appealing given Jordan’s interest in video games. “I think it really was the spark that was like, wow, this is something that I didn’t even realize was an option.”

Jordan went on to pursue coding camps and clubs in middle and high school, where he learned HTML, Python, Java, and APCS. He was accepted into Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s competitive computer science program, where he completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. 

He ultimately came to Amazon through the Cal Poly Lion Dance Team, a meaningful college experience that allowed Jordan to share his Chinese culture with the community. A fellow team member told him about Amazon’s Junior Developer Program in the city of San Luis Obispo. Jordan started working in the program part-time during the school year, eventually converting to full time and moving to Seattle for the city living experience.

Jordan is now a full stack developer for Amazon, where he supports publishing houses in ingesting their book files to make them available in the Kindle catalog. He enjoys the focus on building a sustainable web service and writing high-quality code that not only functions but is easy for others to understand, maintain, and test.

Looking back on Derrall Garrison’s class, Jordan laughs: