In the arid outskirts of Kandahar province in southeastern Afghanistan, U.S. Army Capt. Teresa Todd led logistics operations to deliver water, ammunition and other combat equipment to an infantry battalion in the 10th Mountain Division. It was in 2011, her first deployment, and Todd helped supply US forces trying to push the Taliban out of disputed areas.
Three years later, as American troops withdrew from the area, Todd returned to pick up the remnants of war, arranging for the return of the very equipment her unit had worked so hard to push into desert area around Arghandab river.
“It's a laugh, right?” says Todd, who is a graduate student in Northeastern's Khoury College of Computer Sciences' Align program. “Same equipment!”
The places troops had roamed freely in 2011 and 2012 were no-go zones in 2014, and Todd's unit was now packed into a base at a major airport. Out of boredom, he started tinkering with coffee makers, computer keyboards and other machines he helped salvage from battle outposts.
Every day, as he walked to the junkyard to find more discarded machinery, he looked out at the desert and two mountains rising on the horizon.
“That's where my unit was,” he says. “It was almost like I was looking over those mountains every day, and I was still there. I never left. Nobody really leaves.”
Todd found an escape from those mountains in the machines and electronics she sometimes couldn't put back together. That fascination with computers led her to Northeastern in January after turning down a job at Microsoft and ending a stint at a Wall Street financial technology startup.
Todd's grandfather, Paul, had graduated with a business degree from Northeastern in the 1950s and had died during her first deployment to Afghanistan. Coming to Northeastern was a way to honor him.
“He was always proud of Northeastern, so I wanted to come here, too,” Todd says.
At Northeastern, Todd says, she's learning “how to be a citizen again.” It is now a year Align, a program that provides students who did not study computer science in college the opportunity to earn a master's degree in computer science. A member of the class of 2009 at the United States Military Academy at West Point, Todd studied philosophy and literature.
“It almost felt like I was brushing off cobwebs to use a loft that was always there for me to use and I wanted to be occupied,” she says. “My previous jobs never fully satisfied that.”
Todd estimates that it will take about three years to complete her master's degree. And he plans to push further after that, toward a Ph.D. She doesn't know exactly what her doctoral research will be, but says her passion lies in the intersection of humans, computer systems and artificial intelligence.
“These machines, these systems, these programs—they mimic humanity,” Todd says. “But what does it really mean to be human? It means being flawed, choosing not two good answers, but a messy question and a dirtier answer.”
Megan Barry, the director of the Align program, first met Todd via email when she was accepted to Northeastern in 2018. Todd, who had been told in the military he couldn't have more children, found out a week after she came acceptance letter that she was expecting her second child. Wobbly about her decision to enroll in graduate school while pregnant, Todd emails Barry to weigh her options.
“She's very good at speaking up, asking for resources, and advocating for support,” says Barry, who serves as the lead advisor for Align students on the Boston campus. “That's really important for women starting out in tech careers, where they might have to stand up for themselves and talk about the things they need.”
Todd moved into an Airbnb in a Boston suburb in the winter of 2018 with her husband, Greg Lambert, and two-year-old son, Paul. Unable to hold back a smile, Todd recalls that old rental, which had no heating system and was “definitely haunted.”
“Living in this unheated haunted house with my kid is slightly irresponsible in retrospect,” Todd says. “But how would I know the heat wouldn't work?”
Todd's second child, Elizabeth, was born on June 15, 2019. Afraid of losing her momentum, she went back to school a week after that.
And, Todd says, she's going to keep going through wars, haunted houses and whatever other challenges stand in the way of her Ph.D. She knows this is possible.
“When I came to Northeastern, I was pregnant and commuting two hours each way—I walked half a mile to the train station,” Todd says. “But that's kind of the beauty of the story, right? Life happens.”
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