Newsmaker

Every Friday, we choose an alum who has been making headlines—for better or for worse.
Ico print Print | Ico email Email | Facebook | | RSS

Kaitlyn Trigger ’06: A love story written in code.

By the staff | 12:46pm April 19 2012

 

Behind every billion-dollar man, they say, stands an awesome woman. In this case, she is also Awesome—a trustee of the San Francisco Awesome Foundation, “which gives monthly $1000 microgrants to projects that bring fresh conversation and general awesomeness to the Bay Area.”

But that’s not why we are telling you about Kaitlyn Trigger ’06.

Trigger’s billion-dollar man is Mike Krieger, non-Yalie and cofounder of Instagram, the photo-sharing iPhone app that Facebook bought last week. Trigger’s part of the story is, so far, less lucrative but more heart-warming. Frustrated by the language barrier between her and Krieger (she spoke English, he spoke computer code), she secretly taught herself programming.

Her first project: an app to turn Instagram photos into e-Valentines. Called Lovestagram, it debuted as “my gift to @mikeyk for Valentine’s Day.”

“Lovestagram has made us closer,” Trigger tells the San Francisco Chronicle this week. “Learning to code has allowed me to be in Mike’s shoes a bit more and see the world through his lens. I benefited, too, though. There’s something to be said for going out on a limb and tackling an adventure that intimidates you.”

 

The comment period has expired.