About Me

My name is Lucas Voigt, I was born in 1990 in Berlin, Germany. I am a self-taught web developer based in Kirkcaldy, Scotland. After finishing high school, I was very unsure about potential career paths. I therefore took a year off of formal education and started working as a voluntary carer in an artisanal workshop for people with additional support needs. While this was a great experience, I always knew that I wanted to pursue an academic education afterwards. During the year of working in that position, I became very interested in politics, but decided to pursue a degree with better potential job security and started to study engineering at the Technical University Berlin. This turned out to be so far off my interests that I knew after roughly a year of working towards a degree that it did not make any sense for me to pursue it any further. I switched to a degree in Politics and Economics at the University of Potsdam and quickly realised that this had been the right decision. I was awarded the equivalent of a British 2:1 / Second class degree, spent a semester abroad in Beijing, China, and worked as an assistant for a member of the German parliament during my studies.

After finishing my degree I spent a year working as a legal secretary for the internationally renowned law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP before moving on to pursue a Master's degree in Political Theory at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. Having become a valued member of the team at Freshfields, I was offered the opportunity to transfer to their Frankfurt office. I continued working there until I left Frankfurt for another semester abroad in Rovaniemi, Finland. As it turned out, I could not have chosen a better time to study abroad, as the following semester was interrupted by the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic which brought all exchange programmes to a halt. After returning to Frankfurt I started a new job as an academic mentor at Goethe University. This role involved designing and delivering a course for first-year students to help them identify their desired academic paths as well as providing them with assistance regarding educational organisation and the University's administration. While this programme had initially been designed to be delivered in person, the Covid-19 pandemic forced me and my colleagues to adapt on the fly and redesign our courses to accomodate distance learning. During this time I also finished the last of my own University courses and started working on my Master's thesis. I finished my degree being awarded the equivalent of a British 1st / First class degree.

I decided to move back to Berlin to spend another year with my friends and family, while at the same time applying for a partnership visa for the United Kingdom as my partner and I had decided that we wanted to start a life together in Scotland. I spent this year working as a project coordinator for the Jewish Museum Berlin. This role involved being the main point of contact for all information regarding the customer experience, working closely together with many other teams within the museum and managing around 100 customer service employees during day-to-day operations. While very challenging, and at times quite stressful, I thoroughly enjoyed and excelled in this position.

Both me and my employer were aware that this employment was always set out to be temporary, and my mind was set on developing a potential career that would be easily transferrable to my new home. I had already begun to study programming in my own time. While I was not sure which direction to take within the very broad scope of possible careers within the field, I knew very early on that this was the right direction for me. Having had the opportunity to look into different routes associated with programming, like data science and artificial intelligence, I ultimately decided to pursue a career in web development. What drew me towards web development were the almost endless possibilitiies it presents. It is hard to think of a problem that can not be tackled with the help of web applications. Being able to create web applications from scratch, see them evolve and work towards their final stages while solving the challenges along the way is a process that I find highly rewarding.

Learning and developing new skills has always been, and will always remain an important part of my life. This does not only apply to professional development, but also to my own personal interests. I have a keen interest in music and have learned how to play several different instruments including keyboard and guitar. I have played the guitar in a band for 15 years, which has included many live shows, songwriting and studio recordings, and video productions. Another long term personal passion of mine is martial arts. I have practiced Shotokan Karate for 13 years, participated in tournaments and exams to the level of brown belt. Reigniting this long term interest, I recently started taking part in a martial arts class in Kirkcaldy. My semesters abroad had a significant impact on my personal interests. Since having spent time in Beijing, I developed a love for authentic south-east Asian and Chinese cuisine, which I try my best to become adept at preparing myself. Spending Autumn in Finland involved a lot of exposure to the outdoors and the beautiful woodlands of the area around Rovianiemi, which were covered with the most beautiful and interesting mushrooms at the time. This sparked a keen interest in mycology and foraging for mushrooms today is one of my preferred modes of unwinding. My interest in mushrooms intersects with another hobby of mine: whittling, which I took up as a Covid-hobby and learned to love as a mode of artistic expression. Mushrooms are one of my favourite subjects to whittle.