About Me

Hi, my name is Etoile Boots! While I'm originally from Japan and Indiana, I currently live in Boston, Massachusetts.

My goal with this introduction to share my educational and professional journey to help fill in my motivations past what you may see on a CV!

I first moved to the US at 15, where I enrolled at the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities. This was a residential 2 year program that extended off Ball State University's campus. There, I fell in love with subjects like Calculus and Literature. My dual love for the arts and maths led me to a path of being a generalist in college.

In the fall of 2021, I enrolled at Minerva University, where I studied Computational Science with a concentration in Data Science. I was active within the Arts and Humanities college first as a student, and later, as a Teacher's Assistant. Minerva University provided me with a unique opportunity to not only study, but live and work in 7 different countries during my 4-year degree. This opportunity was a result of Minerva's global learning program, where students would move with their cohort to a new country each semester.

During college, I wore many hats. I remained interested in the arts and literature and worked my first summer as a writing tutor to help incoming Minerva University students develop their critical writing and reading skills. I did this through writing white papers and hosting writing workshops. In the second year, I developed an interest in research that would continue throughout the end of college. I worked first as a psychology research assistant at Minerva University and at the University of Buenos Aires. Upon taking a course of complex systems (CS166: Modeling and Simulating Complex Systems) I became interested in networks and complexity theory. This led me to the University of Florida for a NSF-funded Undergraduate Research Experience in my junior year summer, using network theory and deep reinforcement learning to optimize for an equity-based flood recovery system on road networks. Through this work, I began to learn how research can be used to uncover the feedback loops that occur between climate change, and inequity. This would be a guiding theme in my undergraduate thesis as I worked to identify mobility inequity using computer vision and survey data.

Upon graduating university, I worked first as an intern, and later as a Data Analyst for Topos — an AI-powered renewable energy due diligencing platform developed by the same team as Wren Climate (YC-19). Topos was acquired in late 2025 by Landgate Corporation, where I would work until May, 2026 leading the migration of infrastructure and continuing to due diligence customer requests.

In late May, 2026 I transitioned to develop a career in product and information design. This is a profession that utilizes both technical rigor and creative design — interests that I've had since high school. For more on my motivations, feel free to check out a blog post I wrote about this transition.

So, for now, I am spending time developing personal projects, and searching for new opportunities in Boston, Massachusetts! If you've got an ongoing or prospective project that you'd like to collaborate on, please reach out to tanakawren@gmail.com.