About


Looking for information about our workshops?  Go here!


Our Mission:
To Teach You About Electronics Without Gatekeeping

We are passionate about representation in electronics - the field is still overwhelmingly white and male with only 10% of electrical engineers identifying as women.  Having worked in the field for over 20 years, we know how much gatekeeping and hostility there can be.  We aim to provide a welcoming space where adults can learn about electronics without judgment or any previous experience.  Electronics are like any other skillset - it can be learned at any time, it can be a fun hobby, or it can develop into an engaging career.  It's no different from woodworking, cooking, knitting, or gaming.  We encourage anyone with a desire to make things with their hands to learn how to solder, learn some basic electronics concepts, and add electronics to their toolkit!


In support of this goal, we make a variety of entry-level kits that get you started with twisting together circuits, or basic soldering.  We also want to support people who are a little further along and want to skill up, and for those folx we make surface mount soldering kits and programmable kits to keep it fun and engaging.


Where do the lasers come in?  We recently got one in order to make our solderless kits and yarn tools, and had a lot of fun making our custom sign and engraving some swag.  We can use our electronics experience to create great wall art and unique logo signs for your business.  Maker electronics are great and remain our mission, but we like paying the bills and keeping ourselves in health insurance too.


About Carrie

Alpenglow Industries is founded by Carrie Sundra. Carrie grew up on the island of St. John in the US Virgin Islands, then attended Harvey Mudd College where she proudly scored a 19 on her first electrical engineering exam. Electronics felt esoteric and unrelatable, so she subsequently chose to pursue more mechanical and manufacturing courses. But shortly after starting her first job, she got thrown into fine-pitch SMT soldering and sensor research for a 6” micro air vehicle (and this was in 1999, this stuff didn’t exist yet). Suddenly, faced with a super cool application and concrete “thing” to build and make work, electronics got a lot more interesting. Ever since, she’s designed custom PCBs and helped develop products for a variety of applications - from avionics for small UAVs that are now in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, to livestock thermometers, to waterproof power scrubbers, to assistive devices for freezing-of-gait Parkinson's symptoms, to her own yarn-winding and twisting devices. ​She now lives in San Luis Obispo, a coastal California town which is home to a burgeoning tech and maker community. She climbs, snowboards, knits, makes stuff, and teaches soldering to anyone who wants to learn.