Andrew Geisthardt
We talked to software developer Andrew Geisthardt from the kitchen he’s slowly remodeling in Woodacre, California, 26 miles north of San Francisco. Originally from Madison, Wisconsin, Andrew moved out to California in 2011 when his employer relocated to San Francisco. Andrew is part of a global volunteer tech team working with SCORES Labs.
You’re a guy working in software who didn’t start that way. You took the slightly more circuitous route. Take us through your path.
True. I got my BA in history and political science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. I love history! But I’d always been interested in technology, especially when I was younger. I remember pre-Internet times and then the burgeoning Internet – that’s my generation.
After college, I worked in a hybrid role at a small company in Madison doing website project management for medium market television stations’ news sites. At the time, television news was just transitioning to the Internet, and it was a tectonic shift. We were helping television stations to get going, setting up their news website. It was very bumpy at the beginning.
Then a couple of years later, I went back to school to get an associate's degree in computer science. When I got out of school, I took a job at an education technology company in Madison doing quality assurance(QA) testing. This took me right where I wanted to be – with people writing code and learning code. Code breaking, code working. When the company moved to San Francisco in 2011, I came out to California. Five or six years later, the company was acquired by Chegg, where I still work today.
How did you get involved with working with SCORES?
It was serendipitous. I heard about SCORES through (board member) Robert Stang. We play soccer together. I’ve played my whole life. Robert said the organization was looking for people to contribute, and that there was a lot happening, and likely something that would overlap with my interests and professional experience. The timing was right for me, and I saw it as a really good opportunity.
Robert then set me up with (program director) Paul Schaack, who explained that SCORES was creating a committee to work on an array of projects advancing the agenda of the organization. We were in the early stages of the pandemic, which was an incentive for me. I realized, hey, I can put myself to use here while SCORES prepares to get back out on the field. SCORES has a mission that people coalesce around. We’re all here to support this organization and to think about how to make it even better.
The first project involved working as part of SCORES’ Leadership Council on a new delivery system for SCORES programs doing research to better understand the challenges of setting up new programs. We developed a checklist of things that needed to be done. I ended up working with interesting, like-minded people.
Through that process, I met Pete Swearengen, SCORES CTO, who brought me into SCORES Labs, where I’m working on data collections tools. We’re creating metrics for health and fitness assessments and capturing social-emotional feedback from students on how they’re feeling during the program. This information will help inform future curricula and can help participants achieve the intended outcomes.
You’ve mentioned that you’re a soccer player, but why does the poetry component of SCORES programming resonate with you?
Anybody who loves soccer will tell you that good soccer is poetry. You can have expression verbally and expression through the body, and when it flows, it’s poetic.
And more generally, I don’t have enough poetry in my life! And I really like poetry, and I’ve been exposed to a lot of it. For me, it’s like music, which I really like. I’ve played music my whole life. Music is really lyric poetry. Poetry is so powerful, and it’s so important to convey that to kids. To make sure they know about it and are exposed to it. It gets imprinted in you, even if you don’t fully understand it right away. It soaks in and does what it’s supposed to do, whether it’s conscious or subconscious.
Do you see links between your interest in poetry and your interest in history?
Poetry has a spiritual aspect. When I studied history, I studied more contemporary history, because I thought it was more interesting. It took me up until really recently to even realize that, yes, contemporary history is interesting, but ancient, ancient history – that’s really where it’s at. There’s so much to learn and to be passed down. Poetry is that. It’s passed down, it resonates. It’s a way of telling stories. In the ancient past, everything was passed along orally. Stories were so good they were passed down 3000 years before they were written down, and we’re still talking about them. Stories, like poetry, can be very rich – there’s so much to be mined.
With your love of history, did you ever consider teaching?
Actually, I did. About midway through my tenure with the start-up, I quit tech for a year.
I knew I wanted to teach; I just had this natural desire to try it out. I was burned out, and I was questioning my direction. I needed a break to understand if I wanted to keep working in software. Software can be intimidating – there’s a lot to know and you can’t know it all. So I took a job as a substitute teacher and a soccer coach. It was really great, but I was broke. I’d love to coach a boys team again – it’s so much fun.
I know I’m only supposed to be asking five questions, but your last sentence left me needing to ask one more. Why coaching? And what makes a great coach?
I had great coaches growing up who encouraged us to push ourselves as individuals, to work as a team, engage in fair play, and pick ourselves up after a loss. These values are essential to soccer. As a coach, you try to bridge the gap and show your players how to apply these values in achieving any of their goals. I think a good coach teaches you to play the game in such a way that, win or lose, you respect your team’s efforts, your own efforts, and hopefully those of your opponent.