Kelly McLaughlin

Background

About Kelly McLaughlin

I am an undergraduate student of Computer Science graduating May 2021. I am a 2nd degree student, originally completing a bachelor’s in political science. Prior to continuing my education, I worked for 7 years as a paralegal for one of the largest and fastest growing real estate law firms in Charlotte, where I helped grow the firm from a small team of 4 to a multi-state company. My strong analytical skills made me a great fit to manage the post-closing and funding operations across the company, where I was responsible for analyzing the executed closing documents for quality assurance and compliance with real estate law, as well as ensuring that the mortgage lender’s requirements were met. As the firm continued to grow, my role evolved into managing the high-volume real estate trust accounts where I gained additional skills and experience with 3-way reconciliation, fraud prevention, and daily excel reporting. Managing client data and accounting for the multi-million-dollar daily volume of real estate transactions required very specific software to be successful. I have always been interested in technology at the hobby level, so I naturally was drawn to the process of working with our technology vendors to design and implement these solutions. I wanted to help others solve their problems with technology, and this led to the exciting decision to pursue a degree in Computer Science. I cultivated technical skills in object-oriented programming languages, SQL, and web development, along with in-depth knowledge of the software development life cycle. I have particularly enjoyed studying agile methodologies and the importance of software quality assurance. I am looking forward to using my professional experience along with my computer science education to help others solve problems with technology.