Lisa French Portfolio
Senior Front End Engineer
Senior Frontend Engineer in Chicago who went from learning to code in December 2012 to ten years of full-time work — including leading a 260-page healthcare website redevelopment for a Fortune 100 company and co-founding two community organisations, backed by a real "In The News" press section.
Location
Chicago, IL
Companies
Credentials
- Front-end coding bootcamp, Nashville Software School
Skills
Notable
- Co-founded Nashville Women Programmers (2013) and Nashville LGBTQ+ in Tech (2017)
- Featured in USA Today, The Tennessean, and other outlets on women in tech
- Speaker at NashJS, PodCamp Nashville, and The Nashville Technology Council's Techville event
What makes it work
A breakdown of the choices that make this portfolio stand out.
A non-traditional path told with confidence
The hero banner — a photo of her at the Golden Gate Bridge under a teal color block reading "Hello. I am a Senior Front End Engineer based in Chicago, IL." — establishes who and where before a single credential is listed. The story of a marketing-and-healthcare professional who started learning to code in December 2012 and completed a front-end bootcamp is presented as the feature it is, not apologised for.
Healthcare domain expertise as a differentiator
Most frontend portfolios compete on framework knowledge. Lisa's portfolio signals 11 years of healthcare industry context — content management for a Fortune 100 company, hospital website support, and big-data-adjacent work. Domain expertise in a regulated, high-stakes industry narrows the competitive field and attracts employers who need engineers who understand the space.
Community leadership backed by real press, not self-reported claims
Co-founding Nashville Women Programmers in 2013 and Nashville LGBTQ+ in Tech in 2017 isn't a footnote — the portfolio backs it up with a dedicated "In The News" section: eight press clippings from USA Today, The Tennessean, WSMV News Channel 4, and Southern Alpha covering women in Nashville tech, the city's tech job growth, and the groups and events she helped run. That's external validation, not a self-assessment.
Enterprise-scale project as the portfolio anchor
Leading front-end development on a 260+ page redevelopment of SarahCannon.com for HCA Healthcare, shown in the portfolio grid with a real screenshot of the actual site, establishes seniority immediately. Scale, real clients, and named outcomes matter more to hiring managers than polished weekend side projects.
What Frontend Developers can take from this
Specific, actionable tips to apply to your own portfolio — no generic advice.
If you changed careers, lead with it rather than hiding it. Prior domain expertise — in healthcare, finance, legal, or any regulated field — makes a frontend developer significantly more valuable than a generalist to employers in that sector.
One large, named project at a recognisable client beats five smaller personal projects. "Led frontend development on a 260-page website for HCA Healthcare" is a single line that says more than most portfolios communicate in their entirety.
Community co-founding signals initiative and staying power. If you run a meetup or organise events, put it front and centre — and if local press covered it, add an "In the News" section so the claim is externally verifiable, not self-reported.
You do not need a CS degree to reach senior level. Ten years of consistent professional work, progressively larger projects, and domain expertise outweigh academic credentials in most frontend hiring decisions.
Enterprise experience (Fortune 100, regulated industries, large-scale CMS) is a differentiator most bootcamp graduates never acquire. If you have it, make it the headline — not a bullet point buried under your tech stack.
Case studies
Lisa French's portfolio grid puts two HCA Healthcare jobs side by side: lead front end on a 260+ page SarahCannon.com rebuild that launched two months early, then widgets for a template platform behind 800+ facility sites. Hand-coded exercises and a hack-day Twitter bot sit alongside them.
SarahCannon.com Full Website Redevelopment
Lisa French's first role at HCA Healthcare: lead Front End Engineer on the full redevelopment of SarahCannon.com, a 260+ page website. Templates used Apache Velocity (a Java-based template engine) inside dotCMS (a Java-based CMS), with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, and Bootstrap on the front end.
Owning the front end of a 260+ page site at a large healthcare company, then going back after launch to measure and fix performance, is the full lifecycle, not just the build. Delivery ahead of schedule and a specific post-launch number are what a senior screen looks for.
Lead front-end role across 260+ pages, not one component on someone else's project
Live two months ahead of the projected launch date
Post-launch performance work with a stated result: an 87 percent page-load-speed figure
Enterprise Java-based CMS stack (Apache Velocity + dotCMS), which is rare in frontend portfolios
HCA Healthcare Unified Template Platform — Facility Website Widgets
Lisa French's second role at HCA Healthcare: Front End Engineer on the team responsible for the platform and applications behind 800+ facility websites. She implemented new designs and built several flexible widgets, including ER wait times, leadership, news and blogs display, breadcrumbs, and social media links.
Building configurable widgets for a platform that powers hundreds of sites is component-library thinking. Every widget has to work across content the author never sees, which is the same skill design-system and platform frontend roles hire for.
One template platform, 800+ facility websites: build once, render everywhere
Concrete widget list (ER wait times, leadership, news/blogs, breadcrumbs, social links), not a vague 'built components'
Pairs with the SarahCannon.com project to show a move from a single flagship site to platform work
Projects
A Nashville Ladies' Hack Day project for learning the command line, Python, and the Twitter API. The bot searched Twitter for "coding is hard" and replied with encouragement for people studying programming, written in the voice of her cat, Hampton.
A tiny, shipped, good-natured project outside your main stack shows curiosity and range. It also gives an interviewer something memorable to ask about.
Built at Nashville Ladies' Hack Day, an event she also volunteered at
Stepped outside the day-job frontend stack into Python and a third-party API
Clear, human framing (the cat persona) makes a beginner project memorable
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