Lauren Hayward Schaefer is a staff developer advocate at MongoDB. She began her career as a software engineer for IBM where she held a variety of roles including full-stack developer, test automation specialist, social media lead, and growth hacking engineer. She is a keynote speaker who is skilled in taking hard-to-understand topics and making them seem simple. Lauren holds a BS and MS in Computer Science from North Carolina State University and is the co-inventor of thirteen issued United States patents.