Fencer Draws on MIT Skills as Google Engineer

Learn how you can support MIT’s Department of Athletics, Physical Education, and Recreation (DAPER), as well as many other programs in the MIT community, on March 13, 2025, during the MIT 24-Hour Challenge. 

Kristen Palmer ’23, an MIT fencer nominated for the 2023 NCAA Woman of the Year award, says that her mother was always a guiding presence in her life. “Looking back at the things I ended up doing, I see that my mother’s encouragement really helped me to fulfill my goals,” says Palmer, now a software engineer at Google. “She first found a summer coding program for me. When she saw I was spending my time watching cartoons on Saturday mornings, she instead encouraged me to join my current fencing club: The Peter Westbrook Foundation (PWF).”

Born in Brooklyn to immigrant parents from Jamaica, Palmer took quickly to coding. “I always liked math and science, and I loved doing puzzles,” she recalls. “Once I entered middle school at Poly Prep, I had access to lots of new resources—laser cutters, 3D printers, makerspaces, and complex coding. It was an ideal preparation for MIT.”

She took a little longer to realize her passion and potential when it came to fencing. “At first, I just found it fun to hit people with swords,” jokes Palmer, who began with the foil but soon moved to saber. “If I’d done that at home with my little brother, that would not have been tolerated. But with fencing, it was actually fundamental to the sport. Not to mention, doesn’t every little boy and girl at one point imagine themself as a pirate?” 

Palmer soon excelled in fencing and competed both nationally and internationally. The sport, she says, helped reinforce her discipline and time management skills. “I had to quickly learn to balance my fencing and my schoolwork,” she explains. “I would wake up at four or five in the morning to finish any work I couldn’t complete the night before. I would also get a head start on my work during study periods and on the one-hour bus ride to fencing practice after school.” Competitions, both in high school and at MIT, gave her skills that proved useful on and off the fencing piste. “Fencing helped me learn to stay in control of my emotions,” she says. “Not to let mistakes or bad calls from the referee affect my focus. I learned to avoid negative self-talk and to look for alternate solutions instead.”

At MIT, Palmer—who majored in electrical engineering and computer science, with a minor in Chinese—improved upon an important skill: collaboration. “In high school, a lot of us got accustomed to doing things independently,” she observes. “But at MIT, you quickly learn you can’t solve every problem on your own. You need to be comfortable asking for help, offering help, and to ask questions that might seem trivial. These were very good habits for all of us to develop.”

Her good habits were honored with her NCAA Woman of the Year finalist recognition, a distinction acknowledging outstanding achievements in academics, athletics, community service, and leadership. Only the third student-athlete at MIT to accomplish this feat, Palmer volunteered as a college-access and career-advisor tutor and taught high school students in South Africa and Botswana the basics of machine-learning, robotics, and artificial intelligence with MIT Global Teaching Labs. “I was able to accomplish so much at MIT with the support of my wonderful fencing coach, Jarek Koniusz, as well as my teammates, mentors, family, and friends.”

Now back in Brooklyn, Palmer continues her community service and leadership roles. Alongside her father, she volunteers each Saturday at the PWF. Founded by Peter Westbrook, a six-time Olympian fencer, 13-time national champion, and the first African-American to win an Olympic medal in fencing, the foundation works to attract and support young fencers from underserved communities. 

At Google’s New York office, Palmer writes software to improve the performance of Google’s websites and optimize the user experience. “The job is challenging enough to be engaging but not overwhelming,” says Palmer. “There are setbacks, but the solutions are almost always achievable. In college, people told me that if I could succeed at MIT, I could succeed anywhere. And they were right.”