Vesna Leonard is next in our ‘Meet the Speakers’ series. Get to know a bit more about her with these questions.

Vesna will be presenting her track ‘From the cubicle to the open road – chasing dreams and wifi connections’ on Monday at 4:35 p.m.

How did you get started in software testing?

I was hired as a programmer for my first Co-Op work term of my first year in Mathematics at the University of Waterloo.  They have a fantastic Co-Op program.  My first placement was a mis-match, and the employer was expecting a fourth year student.  When they saw that I had no coding experience and had to stay the four month term, they asked me to “just start testing“.  This was back in the day when bug reports were written on a piece of paper and physically walked over to the developer.  It was also long before the internet as we know it, so looking anything up had to be done in the library 😊

I spent my term self-teaching myself how to test, and wrote my final term paper on testing methodologies.

After that, I was hooked.  Every Co-Op work term after that was in a testing lab, as was every job I had after leaving university.

 

Who inspires you?

That’s a long list.  Genuine people.  People who aren’t afraid to speak their mind, but are very open to listening to opposing opinions without taking things personally, judging or berating.  I’m inspired by people who have gone through insanely difficult times (especially at the hands of other humans), but that have come out of it with clarity, love, understanding, and triumph.  People who don’t blame others, but take action and responsibility for the part that they play.  People who continuously grow and question everything.

As for specific people – my three boys inspire me.  I am incredibly thankful to have them in my life, as well as my husband.

 

What do you see for the future of software testing?

Hmmmm……that’s pretty open ended, and it would be hard to narrow this down.  I believe the future is wide open.  As with any industry, there will be huge changes as we move forward more and more towards AI, and similar areas, and deeper into the information age.  There will be no shortage of things to test, but how we test will be as fluid and changing as it always has been.