Camille Villa

“Camille Villa played a key role in the transitional and early implementation phases of the digital humanities program at UC Berkeley. While still an undergraduate student, Camille came up with the idea for a hackathon around the Free Speech Movement collection at the Bancroft library, and was a core member of the team that put on the event only eight weeks later. HackFSM has since become a model for other archival and cultural heritage oriented hackathons at UC Berkeley. The initiative, creative problem-solving, and dedication she showed through the process of putting together the hackathon were important factors in Camille’s being hired as a Digital Humanities Assistant in Research IT after she finished her undergraduate degree. While nominally an entry-level position, Camille took on numerous roles with increasing levels of responsibility. She represented UC Berkeley’s work on tool directory building at an international software sustainability conference, developed and maintained local and regional communities of practice around digital humanities, and created and executed a communications plan that significantly raised the profile of Berkeley’s digital humanities program at a national and international level. Camille independently wrote a successful grant proposal to fund the purchase of OCR software licenses, and developed a roll-out and training plan that has been successfully implemented at UC Berkeley. While at Berkeley, Camille worked closely with a diverse group of researchers who often had unique and complex challenges. Even though their requests required Camille to research and understand areas of technology that were new to her, Camille was consistently successful in addressing their needs, within the constraints of their budget, time, and technical proficiency. Camille was a dynamic, highly capable member of the Digital Humanities at Berkeley staff, and I envision that her problem-solving, team-building, and quickly-expanding technical skills would be a valued assets wherever she works in the future.”

“It’s a delight to come across the abundance of strong technical expertise, organizational strengths, and people skills that Camille possesses. I had the pleasure of working with Camille while she supported Digital Humanities research at UC Berkeley, where she led the DH working group at the D-Lab, consulted with researchers to frame and solve research problems, successfully sought and secured grant funding for critical software, taught workshops, organized events, and brought communities together around technical solutions for humanities-oriented research agendas. She has a wonderful ability to identify key issues and concerns, and to bring her skills and the skills of others to bear on those issues – and does it with a deep pool of good humor. She was an incredible asset to our work supporting data intensive social sciences, and I recommend her highly.”