Sarah Peters
Web Developer @ Georgetown University
Washington, Washington, D.C., United States
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Sarah Peters is a web developer at Georgetown University, building and maintaining web solutions for the Office of Advancement. She began her development career at Crema, a digital product agency in Kansas City, where she worked as an Application Developer. A graduate of Prime Digital Academy, Sarah brings a unique perspective to software development, drawing from her previous career as a professional violinist.
Before transitioning to tech, Sarah performed with orchestras such as the Kansas City Symphony and New World Symphony; she currently plays with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Baltimore Chamber Orchestra (when time permits!). She has been featured as a chamber musician on Kansas Public Radio Live and has appeared at festivals including the New York String Orchestra Seminar, Tanglewood Music Center, and the Lakes Area Music Festival. She received her Bachelor of Music and Graduate Diploma in Violin Performance from the New England Conservatory in Boston.
Her experience in both the arts and technology informs her approach to problem-solving, collaboration, and continuous learning. Sarah currently lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, a member of “The President’s Own” U.S. Marine Band, and their two children.
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From Concert Hall to Code Review, Symphony to Software
An orchestra succeeds when musicians listen, adapt, and communicate. A development team is no different.
As a professional violinist turned software developer, I have spent years working in two high-stakes, deeply collaborative environments. In fact, for a full year, I held two full-time jobs: one as a section violinist in the Kansas City Symphony, the other as a software developer building applications for a Top3 Consulting Firm. Now, as a full-time developer at Georgetown University, I still find time to play as a substitute with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. While they might sound like wildly different careers (and in some ways, they are!), the skills from one world to the other are transferable. In both the music and tech worlds, success isn’t just about individual skill, it’s about how people work together. Whether playing in an orchestra or working on a new feature development with a development team, I have learned that great teams share these common traits: trust, communication, adaptability, and a shared vision.
In this talk, we’ll explore:
Listening as Leadership: How the best musicians and developers actively listen and respond, whether in a live performance or a sprint planning meeting.
High-Trust Teams: Why an orchestra can perform concerts without a single word and what tech teams can learn from that level of trust.
Rehearsal vs. Iteration: The role of preparation, structured feedback, and the importance of stepping away when stuck.
Adapting Under Pressure: How performing in a live concert teaches the same resilience needed when shipping high-stakes software.
The beauty of interpretation: Just as no two performances of the same piece are identical, no two developers solve a problem in the exact same way.
Whether you're an engineer, designer, or team lead, you’ll walk away with a fresh perspective on teamwork, leadership, and collaboration from the lessons I have learned from the concert hall that are deeply relevant to software development.
Load Balancing Parenthood and a Tech Career (Or Trying To, Anyway)
When I’m at work, I’m thinking about my kids. When I’m with my kids, I’m thinking about work. The truth is, work-life balance isn’t always a balanced equation, and one side will always tip the scale. In this talk, we’ll have an honest conversation about the unspoken and unexpected challenges of being a parent in the tech world. We’ll explore the realities of imposter syndrome, guilt, and the relentless pressure to “do it all” (spoiler alert: you can’t).
Before becoming a parent, I was super focused on my career goals and obsessed with how to advance them. It’s still extremely important to me (hello super Type-A personality), but I have learned to manage and adjust expectations for myself.
To that end, we will discuss practical strategies for setting realistic boundaries, managing priorities, and, most importantly, embracing the chaos. Let’s explore how companies can better support working parents and how all of us can advocate for a healthier work-life balance, both for ourselves and for those around us. Whether you are a parent or not, you’ll leave this talk with actionable ways to help create a work environment that values people and productivity and learn some balancing skills of your own.
Lessons from a University Web Developer That Every Engineer Should Know
Tech companies value speed, disruption, and innovation, while universities value stability, process, and careful planning. Having worked in both environments, including Georgetown University and as a contributor to a Top 3 consulting firm, I have learned that each has its strengths, and each could learn a lot from the other. This session breaks down the unexpected lessons from university web development that can apply to any engineering role, from navigating bureaucracy to balancing technical debt with long-term sustainability. We will discuss:
- Why do universities prioritize stability over speed, and when is that actually a good thing?
- How do university teams manage (and accumulate!) tech debt?
How to navigate bureaucracy, legacy systems, and institutional inertia—a skill useful in any large organization
- What working at a university taught me about documentation, stakeholder communication, and maintaining long-term projects
- How the private sector’s focus on iteration and efficiency could improve university-based development teams
Ultimately, this talk is not just comparing industry and academia from afar, but about sharing what is working, challenging assumptions, and building better engineering cultures in both worlds. Attendees will leave with a fresh perspective on development in different environments and strategies for managing long-term projects and tech debt. Whether you work in a startup, large company, or university, you will walk away from this session ready with new insights to apply to your own teams.
Sarah Peters
Web Developer @ Georgetown University
Washington, Washington, D.C., United States
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