Lawrence Weru
Consultant & Digital Storyteller
- Dean's Scholarship recipient @ Harvard Medical School (SM '23)
- "Notable Nole" alumnus @ Florida State University
As Seen In
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Before we had smart phones, laptops, or even wifi and broadband, when we had to go to the library to surf the web, Gmail, YouTube and Facebook didn't exist, and AOL and Yahoo! were the cool tech companies — basically before I was a teenager — I coded my first website.
It was just for fun at the time, a digital art project, but I owe my 18 years of web development experience to this early curiosity at the intersection of technology and art. My programming skills matured during my undergraduate years at Florida State, where I studied full-stack web development with the Program in Interdisciplinary Computing while completing my interdisciplinary training in Studio Art and Biology.
Nine of those development years are in a professional environment, beginning with a software engineering internship at Datamaxx Group in Florida, and then becoming an independent consultant. As a consultant I've managed multi-month e-commerce development projects for medium-sized clients such as Tropic Isle Living, coordinating online storefront development with their in-house design and marketing teams, consulting with stakeholders and executives, and making sure projects finish on time and within budget. I've consulted for boutique branding agencies such as Understory Studio, and designers such as Ben Rummel. I've also developed my own apps — one that is currently available for purchase on Apple's Mac App Store.
Since 2018 I've helped multiple Shopify-based merchants better serve their customers as an e-commerce development consultant. I come from a full-stack background with a strong understanding of client-server interaction, and I specialize in front-end Shopify development. I'll often partner up with designers to collaborate on large-scale site-wide redesigns that require custom sections (Liquid theme development), app integrations, and Shopify Plus features (Custom checkout, Scripts). While my primary activity in this space is programming, I find that my Studio Art background makes it easy to collaborate with those who have a strong design background. I have experience with industry tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Figma, etc, and I have a good eye for the "little things" like margins, font weight, visual hierarchy, etc, resulting in less need for back and forth when a design has to be pixel perfect.
When I'm not growing my consulting business I write stories at the intersection of society and technology, usually for my blog STEM Lounge, but sometimes for Slate, Vox, and other mainstream publications. I completed my postgraduate certification in Media and Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS) to explore how storytelling and digital media can be used to impact public health, and am entering HMS's Master of Science degree program in fall 2022, concentrating in Media, Medicine and Health. My contributions are cited in computer science books published by the No Starch Press, highlighted by Fast Company, and are the subject of my TEDx talk.
