g r e b n e s Anna Ro (CLASS OF 2015)
At Singapore American School, a welcoming art community and lots of course choices helped this software engineer at Blizzard Entertainment achieve her dreams! We came to Singapore in 2009 because my dad worked for Rockwell Automation at the time, and his job took our family all over the world. I attended Singapore American School from seventh grade through tenth grade, and the best part was getting to spend time with different people and experience new things. Going to Brussels to perform in the AMIS senior orchestra, the Telunas art trip, the soccer team, Interim Semester, even just hanging out with my friends in the art studio—believe it or not, I actually even miss walking home in the rain! I believe that SAS helped me succeed because it allowed me to choose from a variety of courses that interested me, which was crucial for my learning. Whether it was art, orchestra, history, or computer science, I was able to figure out what was important to me and prioritize that for college and beyond. Also, being part of the SAS art community was a huge influence on my life. I spent all my free time hanging out in the studio, even when I was not actually doing art. Having a creative outlet where I felt accepted and understood was very important for me.
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My family left Singapore in 2012, halfway through my high school years. We moved to the United States, and I experienced a huge culture shock. I ended up going to college at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, where I graduated with a bachelor's degree in game design and development. I was fortunate to land a software engineering internship at Blizzard after my third year in college, and it must have gone well because they hired me full-time! I currently work at Blizzard Entertainment in Irvine, California as an associate software engineer working on the Shared Game Engine. I specialize in automation engineering, which provides automated pipelines and tooling for fellow developers and engineers on the team (at some game studios this is called tools engineering). I get to work with an immense technical stack—our underlying frameworks, languages, and software products—so I am constantly learning and expanding my problem-solving abilities. Automation engineering is great because it combines my love for technology with working directly with people.
