My family’s from a farming community in Haiti. When my parents moved to Boston in their mid twenties, they had children pretty immediately. At the time, me and my 3 siblings lived in mostly illegal communities. It’s interesting because you don’t know that you live in that sort of community until you start meeting Americans who live a bit differently. We were very “green.” We used buckets of water to bathe instead of running shower water. Our front lawn was a garden. My parents were not accustomed to refrigerators so they became a pneumonia scare in our household. In fact, to them everything caused pneumonia and everything could be cured with a cup of tea.

“At the time, me and my 3 siblings lived in mostly illegal communities. It’s interesting because you don’t know that you live in that sort of community until you start meeting Americans who live a bit differently. We were very “green.” We used buckets of water to bathe instead of running shower water.”

Growing up I was a very, very inquisitive child. I constantly asked questions, and context clues meant everything to me. It always confused me how people would do things without asking why? My parents had a lot of difficulty answering my questions due to the language and culture barriers. They encouraged me to read more, with the mindset that the bigger the book, the smarter I would be. The older and dustier the book, the smarter I would be. The harder the cover, the smarter I would be. Really interesting context when you really think about it. I eventually started reading dictionaries and encyclopedias, searching for answers.

When I was 11 years old, I noticed an advertisement on the back of a magazine with the words, “Do you have questions?” I took this as a sign to get tons of questions answered. I ran away from home in search for the magazine headquarter, which happened to be in Boston. Upon arrival, there was a massive exchange of questioning and they soon realized that I had no idea what my address, phone number or birthday was. They sat me in front of a computer and taught me how to play solitaire until my mother eventually found me. My question started to shift from day to day questions, to questions around machinery, interface and context. That began my path into the world of User Experience.

How were you were first introduced to Computer Science and/or UX?

Well my mom brought me back to the magazine HQ the following Monday and told me not to tell my father. In our household, the girls were very protected. I was supposed to go to school and get home as quickly as possible. I was not allowed to make friends. But my mom was a bit of a secret feminist and encouraged me to outsmart the boys and teach her all I had learned in school. Staff at the magazine were pretty impressed by me and encouraged me to continue learning about technology. They eventually were able to take me to a place called The Computer Clubhouse while my mom worked. The Computer Clubhouse was a free technical after school program designed by professors and students at the MIT Media Lab. They targeted inner city kids as young as 8 years old and taught us how to use industry level technical tools. They believed exposing underrepresented individuals to a number of technical skills early on, could help bridge the digital divide. The additional blessing was the frequent visits from people of color at MIT pursuing PhDs in Computer Science and Media. At age 12, I played with actuators and sensors. I also was introduced to coding and programed the very first driverless lego cars.

When I was 14 years old, I ended up in foster care due to a variety of reasons including domestic violence and cultural friction. I ran away a lot and was very depressed through those middle school and high school years without my family. Despite all the personal struggle, I always found my way back to the computer clubhouse. I had all these cool tech skills and loved teaching. By the time I was 17 years old, I was teaching girls how to make their own web pages and remove the proof watermark off photos they had not yet purchased from school. I shortly became an assistant manager at the computer clubhouse, a Tech coordinator at the local YWCAs, the Museum of Science’s technology courses instructor and an IT risk auditor at Harvard University all while I attended undergrad.

“When I was 14 years old, I ended up in foster care due to a variety of reasons including domestic violence and cultural friction. I ran away a lot and was very depressed through those middle school and high school years without my family.”

Despite all of my technical ability, I was too scared to pursue a computer science degree. I believed it was a man’s job despite the fact that I was already doing it. So I went to school for Information Systems and sociology while teaching computer science on the side. When I was in my junior year at undergrad, I decided to take a java course and was pleasantly surprised. I already knew how to do a lot of this stuff. The wave of questions began again. “Does that mean I can code? What’s the point of the degree? Do you need a degree to be a coder? I’m confused. Can you just learn this stuff on your own? Are you not an engineer unless you learn to be engineer in school? Are Haitians who build bridges without degrees not engineers? Wait, what do I do with this sociology degree?” Sociology was the field that touched my heart and technology was the field that stimulated my mind.

I took several psychology classes and professors really felt that it might be my calling. But I could not imagine humanities paying back school loans. By the time I graduated I decided I wanted to do it all. I took to the Google search engine and typed in all my passions, “sociology, psychology, computer science, engineering, hands on, love, forgiveness…” And two fields popped up—human factors engineering and human computer interaction.

How did you make that transition?

I went to Michigan to pursue both degrees: a masters in human computer interaction and a PhD in Human Factors Engineering. It was EVERYTHING. I had somehow found fields that connected culture, engineering, empathy and compassion. And I got to doodle all day to top it off. The wonderful thing about the Computer Clubhouse is that it was funded by Intel. I was able to work my way through the network and worked as a human factors engineer while attending grad school.

At Intel, I met an amazing woman and Intel Fellow known as Genevieve Bell. Genevieve was an anthropologist and a human factors engineer who focused on cultural practices. That was the moment my entire life started to make sense. I had grown to a place where I truly appreciated cultural differences and empathized with day to day struggles of Keeping Up with the Silicon Valley Millennials. I knew I could help make life a little more easier. I wanted to help design products that showcased empathy. And I knew it was my destiny.

Walk me through your work and what you’re working on now.

I eventually went on to work on international projects as either a developer, engineer, or designer across many industries; from government to medical devices to worldwide leaders in IT. Today, I continue the great work at Google in the consumer operations space. I get to measure my work impact globally. I am also launching a personal global passion project called Tech Social Impact Conference in the first quarter of 2017. The conference sparks conversation about developing intentional awareness in product development. In Silicon Valley, we get to see how design and technology can provide social and ethical benefits (and sometimes consequences). I’d like us to share principles and approaches to contribute to a better tomorrow for the next billion users.

“Another goal I am working on is changing the way we do research in the tech industry. I want to make that our research takes into account social and economic backgrounds. Are we designing towards the average income in the United States? Are our studies mix gendered? Have we paid attention to accessibility? I’m all about making a difference in this world, and I know I am in a very privileged position to influence that change.”

Another goal I am working on is changing the way we do research in the tech industry. I want to make that our research takes into account social and economic backgrounds. Are we designing towards the average income in the United States? Are our studies mix gendered? Have we paid attention to accessibility? I’m all about making a difference in this world, and I know I am in a very privileged position to influence that change.

It’s so cool to see all of the ties to your work from your childhood to now. What parts of your work as a researcher really activate you? What do you love the most?

I get super excited when I get in front of people, and I mean real people (no offense to Silicon Valley folks), I’m so passionate and empathetic towards the people I design for. When they’re in front of me, I want them to be comfortable. I want to hear their truths. I want them to tell us how we suck. I want them to know that I appreciate it, and I want to make a difference for them.

It’s one of those things, when I’m in front of somebody, when I’m in front of an actual human being, to know that, “okay, maybe you don’t have the same technical abilities as I, or maybe you feel a little scared, but I’m going to change this for you. I’m going to make this easier for you.” It empowers me. I just ran eight studies today with folks, and every last one of them said, “I’m not really good at tech. I feel like I’m messing up.” I say, “This is exactly what I need. And you’re perfect. I need you to tell us everything we could be doing wrong, so we can fix this for the lot of you that may feel the same. It’s not about looking for a tech genius. If that was the case, we’d make no money. And we need you to keep paying us, so I need to know everything that makes you cringe and what makes you happy.”

I’m curious to know, in your eyes, the potential of research in tech and what are the problems that we should be solving with research? What are we not doing to approach this correctly?

The reason research is so beautiful is because it’s data. When folks try to say “This is how I feel this should be designed,” I can say “Well, 80 percent of people we tested won’t go through it.” Or when I hear, “Can these users really speak for the rest of the country?” I’ll say, “Well, you know there’s this little thing called sample sizing. Pretty dope stuff.” It’s just really empowering to influence people with research.

“We’re not building for just ourselves anymore. We’re a global society. Everyone is using our technology. There is a huge culture shift and focus on design for the next billion users and I think it’s a great direction. And guess what? Sometimes design requires contrast. That means we may need to have different people seated at the table to help us design. You might just have to hire that super poor person in the village you’re building for. It might just mean spending time living in the communities you are serving. It might mean better design for our products due to diversity of thought.”

The problems we should be solving for is cross-culture design. We’re not building for just ourselves anymore. We’re a global society. Everyone is using our technology. There is a huge culture shift and focus on design for the next billion users and I think it’s a great direction. And guess what? Sometimes design requires contrast. That means we may need to have different people seated at the table to help us design. You might just have to hire that super poor person in the village you’re building for. It might just mean spending time living in the communities you are serving. It might mean better design for our products due to diversity of thought. I see nothing but wins when you consider research as a primary practice to help think more critically about the ethical and societal implications of the technologies we design in this world.

Let’s go back to your personal narrative. Tell me about some of the bigger roadblocks and struggles, in your career that you’ve had to overcome.

Being yourself in a world where being yourself seems wrong. In the last year mentors have been telling me that I can fully be myself and be accepted. I never believed that. It wasn’t because no one was telling me I couldn’t be myself. The culture just didn’t seem to want me. So I faked it. I fake laughed at jokes, I fake pretended to see movies I hadn’t seen. I faked drinking beer when I thought it was disgusting. I tried to be a bro when there’s not an ounce of bro in me. It’s pretty draining because I would spend 80 percent of my day pretending to be somebody else­­ or I’d sit in silence when I’m not a silent person. There’s some parts of me I just cannot hold back, like when I disagree.

“In the last year mentors have been telling me that I can fully be myself and be accepted. I never believed that. It wasn’t because no one was telling me I couldn’t be myself. The culture just didn’t seem to want me. So I faked it. I fake laughed at jokes, I fake pretended to see movies I hadn’t seen. I faked drinking beer when I thought it was disgusting. I tried to be a bro when there’s not an ounce of bro in me. It’s pretty draining because I would spend 80 percent of my day pretending to be somebody else­­ or I’d sit in silence when I’m not a silent person.”

It’s still a work in progress but I’m trying to be unapologetically myself no matter where I go. I’m now about 70% myself which is pretty amazing. I would never have imagined that. And I have experienced so much good because of it. A mentor once told me that the Valley was a strange enough place where I could fit in and be appreciated for my differences because everyone is so different. Another mentor told me, “I don’t know if you know this, but when computer science first came out, it was considered a woman’s job. It was like secretarial work. But all of a sudden because somebody told us women we can’t do this­­ or that— that perceived ability has disabled some of our powers. It’s insane. And we as women are fully capable of doing any and everything in tech, if not better.” These words definitely helped.

When did your attention start turning towards educating minority communities?

I’m very passionate about that because someone took the time to show me that I wasn’t forgotten and look how far I’ve gone. And it’s important to know that it also took someone that looked like me. So I serve that truth right back.

I also truly believe this—if you want to hire somebody, look at their story. The story matters to me. That’s how you find out actionable potential. That’s how you know that you can take this kid off the street, show him a few lines of code, and all the sudden he’s the inventor of a killer startup. It’s about finding folks that are hungry. So I set up the environment, and the folks who are hungry, come to eat.

“If you want to hire somebody, look at their story. The story matters to me. That’s how you find out actionable potential. That’s how you know that you can take this kid off the street, show him a few lines of code, and all the sudden he’s the inventor of a killer startup. It’s about finding folks that are hungry. So I set up the environment, and the folks who are hungry, come to eat.”

How do you think the combination of your background and your life experiences impacts the way that you approach your work?

Everything I’ve done has been because of experiences I’ve had. At one point I wanted to prove my value because I felt tossed away by the world. Now, it’s about making people know they are valued and impacting the world that way.

Last question. What advice would you have for young women, young people of color who are really hoping to get into tech but just don’t know where to start?

Look at several LinkedIn profiles for individuals who are in the career you want. Write down all the things that interest you and the common themes/skills. Teach yourself those skills. Put said skill into practice. Slap new skill on resume. Rinse. Repeat.

The majority of the things I know came from tinkering, searching for free education online, and application of that education. Don’t believe the hype that you have to be in school to learn new things. Now I don’t mean drop out. College is awesome. Go to college if you can. What I mean is that you can teach yourself almost anything these days. if you allow for a little discipline. What kept me motivated was knowing that the short term sacrifice of taking the time to learn something on my own, was going to lead to longterm rewards.

“Look at several LinkedIn profiles for individuals who are in the career you want. Write down all the things that interest you and the common themes/skills. Teach yourself those skills. Put said skill into practice. Slap new skill on resume. Rinse. Repeat.”

And please, don’t be like me for the majority of my life and not ask for help. The world is so much better when you stay open and vulnerable about learning through others. Lastly, sounds cliche, but no such thing as a dumb question. Get your education on.

I was born and raised in Boston. My parents are immigrants from South America, and I am the first generation American in my family. I grew up in acity called Somerville, a really nice area outside of Boston that’s been getting more attention lately. Mostly, it’s experiencing gentrification, partially led by Harvard, but ia nice diverse city made up of immigrant and working class families.

When my parents left Brasil for the U.S., they left behind interesting lives and successful careers there. A lot of people assume that every immigrant who came to the US was looking for a better life or to chase the “American Dream,” but my parents didn’t have much of a choice. My older brother needed open-heart surgery and the only hospital successfully operating on children was in Boston. So my parents came to the US so he could get the life-saving surgery and care that he needed.

“When my parents left Brasil for the U.S., they left behind interesting lives and successful careers there. A lot of people assume that every immigrant who came to the US was looking for a better life or to chase the “American Dream,” but my parents didn’t have much of a choice. My older brother needed open-heart surgery and the only hospital successfully operating on children was in Boston.”

Not knowing English or knowing anyone here, they realized pretty quickly that it was really hard work. With few options, they started their own house cleaning business. They made flyers that read, “We put your house to shining.” I was too young to really understand but when I found a copy of the flyer when I was about 13 or 14, I thought it was amazing. I showed my mom and we laughed for a moment, but we then talked about how hard it was for her to be a domestic worker.

After my parents divorced and my mother switched careers, I saw her blossom into this really awesome woman. She started her experiences and background to make positive changes around her. She became an advocate for immigrant women, survivors of abuse, domestic workers and became a bit of an organizer.  As a kid, I didn’t fully appreciate what she did. I just assumed, “Oh, this is my mom. This is what all kids do. They go to these rallies, right?”

In your pre-interview that by the time you were 18, you already dealt with depression and experienced homelessness, you survived domestic violence, and you’ve given birth to a child.

A lot happened in my young life and I think when young people share their tough experiences, society’s first instinct is to blame their parents. My parents loved me, cared for me, and worked hard to do a lot for me. The issues I faced were complex and layered and the reality is that they were struggling too.

Sometime in my journey through middle school, I became depressed. I wasn’t sleeping, I was anxious, and I was having a hard time finding myself. My doctor was hesitant to label it “depression” and convinced my mom to take me out of my current environment to see if a change of scenery for an extended period of time would help me. She did. I spent 2 ½ months in Brasil with her and my brother learning more about my culture, visiting family, riding horses, and being away from what felt like a negative and toxic environment. But the trip had to end and I eventually had to come back home.

I think my parents were convinced that my peers were driving me into a downward spiral so they decided at the last minute to enroll me into a private catholic school in the next town over. Horrified, I spent days crying in my room. The new school was supposed to be a new chance for me to be around people who were smart and driven. The problem was that dozens of other parents felt that way too and sent their kids to this school thinking it would resolve all of their core issues. It ended up feeling like a space, a breeding ground, for young people with complex issues who were turning to drugs for relief.

“Since it was a Catholic school, we definitely did not receive information about making healthy choices around relationships, dating and sex. We weren’t provided with information on how to keep ourselves safe or recognize signs of abuse. We, the girls, were just expected to keep our legs closed.”

And since it was a Catholic school, we definitely did not receive information about making healthy choices around relationships, dating and sex. We weren’t provided with information on how to keep ourselves safe or recognize signs of abuse. We, the girls, were just expected to keep our legs closed. And the message at home wasn’t much different. I was the only girl among my siblings and often felt the burden of supporting my mother to help provide for the family. I did a lot of cleaning and cooking and my mom reminded me that as a kid, she was already the head of the house, hand-washing everyone’s laundry, cooking dinner every day and responsible as the head caregiver for her own 4 siblings. Her expectation for me was not to be an adult, but I was expected to be responsible.

“Having a lot of responsibility and never really getting the help I needed to cope with my issues made me a vulnerable target.”

By the age of 14, I was in school full-time, involved in a ton of extracurricular activities, babysitting and working as a hostess in a local restaurant so that I could help pay bills. Every month, I would help my mom sort through the bills and make phone calls to service providers to dispute charges or request help. My mom knew how to do this, but she explained to me that she felt her english was so bad that people would never take her as serious as they would take me. That even though she was a woman in her 40s, her broken english meant a child with no accent would have more respect in the US. And she didn’t get this idea from nowhere, it came from years of people telling her that they couldn’t understand her or that she should leave the country if she can’t learn english properly.

Having a lot of responsibility and never really getting the help I needed to cope with my issues made me a vulnerable target. During a very troubling time in my life, I met  someone a little older than me who maneuvered his way into my life by offering what a young vulnerable girl needed at the time: support. And this isn’t an uncommon tactic. People can sometimes sense when someone is going through something or feeling very vulnerable, but there are certain kinds of people that feel that and use it to prey on them.

“During my junior year of high school, I found out that I was pregnant.”

During my junior year of high school, I found out that I was pregnant. I thought, “Oh my God! This can’t be happening to me. I go to a Catholic school! My parents will hate me.”

To of add a layer to that, I knew that my mother was also a young mom and then my grandmother was a young mom, that my aunt was a young mom, and it continues across several generations. And since they are Latinas, I like to talk about the reality of teen pregnancy in our culture. In our communities, young motherhood isn’t framed as a negative outcome. At the same time, young motherhood isn’t the expectation. But in a culture where women are denied access to quality education and/or prevented from pursuing careers, the next step in life for young women is marriage and/or motherhood. And that was the story for a lot of the women in my family. There was no reason to wait until 30. If you didn’t intend on going to college or establishing a career, what are you supposed to do for over 10 years between your high school graduation and the “ideal” age of motherhood. But what happened, at least this is how I see it, my parents assumed that because I was born in the US, that I would adopt American cultural norms and beliefs.

But I got pregnant at 17 and the first adult I told was my school nurse. In theory, you would think the school nurse would understand, what is essentially, your health condition and provide you with unbiased advice. You assume that as a medical professional, they will help you. Being in a Catholic school made my pregnancy a little more complex. What I heard was, “You already made a mistake so you can’t make another one.” Of course, this was the discussion around my reproductive choice and instead of providing me with all of my options and going through what the best choice was for me might be, I didn’t have a choice. Despite that, I walked away thinking about the reality that I could still get an abortion and no one would know. I could just do it, tell no one, and start all over. But I think my nurse knew that, so she told all of my teachers about my pregnancy. So here I am: pregnant, junior year in a Catholic school and I had nuns and teachers pulling me aside to tell me what decision I should make and shouldn’t make. “Oh, one sin can be forgiven but not two.”  

“But I got pregnant at 17 and the first adult I told was my school nurse. In theory, you would think the school nurse would understand, what is essentially, your health condition and provide you with unbiased advice. You assume that as a medical professional, they will help you. Being in a Catholic school made my pregnancy a little more complex. What I heard was, ‘You already made a mistake so you can’t make another one.'”

I was young and really relied on the acceptance of the people around me. And I really believed that if everybody knew that I was pregnant, then noticed my belly wasn’t growing, that they’d know what I did. I thought they would judge me and I thought I would end up regretting the decision. I was stuck in a position where I couldn’t make the best choice for myself. And maybe the choice would have still been the same in the end, but at that time my judgment was so clouded. So, I decided to continue with my pregnancy.

I told my mom first and she couldn’t believe that her daughter was pregnant. And I don’t blame her. There’s an assumption and a false stereotype about what kind of girls get pregnant. And I didn’t “fit into” that stereotype as a responsible daughter, honor roll student, and class representative. My parents were upset and I can understand why. They worked really hard in a new country and fought so hard to shed themselves from the stereotypes that Latinos face in the United States. Then they discover their teenage daughter is pregnant. It felt like the ultimate stereotype and they didn’t support me. They kicked me out that day and I had to pack my things and move in with my boyfriend.

Oh my gosh.

That period was really hard for me, because I was leaving a home where I felt safe and in with someone who I barely knew. I was isolated from the only support system I ever had.

“My parents were upset and I can understand why. They worked really hard in a new country and fought so hard to shed themselves from the stereotypes that Latinos face in the United States. Then they discover their teenage daughter is pregnant. It felt like the ultimate stereotype and they didn’t support me. They kicked me out that day.”

To make things more complicated, he was a marine getting ready to leave for training. Before my first trimester ended, he was already gone and for the next 6 months, I was completely alone. And since I was no longer living with my parents, I finished my junior year of high school and enrolled as a senior in a new public high school.

In September of 2005, I started my last year of high school as the new pregnant girl. To top off the experience, my new guidance counselor learned of my pregnancy and decided to remove me from my honors classes and put me in slower-paced classes. When I asked her to put me back into honors, she told me that I probably wouldn’t even graduate and that I should just try to get by in the lower classes – as if she was doing me a favor. But my pregnancy wasn’t impacting my ability to function in class, and I wanted to learn and I wanted to feel challenged. I wanted to continue on the path that I was on, and I couldn’t do that if people were making decisions for me without involving me. Luckily someone else in the school knew about the situation and really wanted to be an advocate for me, and so she stood up for me and said, “Put her back in honors. If it gets to the point where it’s not going well then that’s a whole different story, but put her back in honors.” And they did.

The assumption is that our peers are the ones who will pick on teen moms or give us the hardest time, but they were actually the most supportive to me. My classmates were amazing. They brought me snacks, they carried my books, and they let me cut the lunch line. They asked me questions about what my experience was like, they offered to babysit, and they spent time with me so I wouldn’t feel so alone. In school, it was teachers who were judgmental and mean.

“Older women are celebrated, supported, and the people around them will help in any way they can. That doesn’t happen for teenage girls. When we are in pain or afraid, we don’t get help. We’re told our pregnancies are punishments and this is the consequence.”

These small gestures helped so much. I was too proud to ask for any assistance, because I didn’t want to be the stereotype of what a teen mom was. I wanted to prove people wrong because I often heard, “You became a teen mom because you wanted free stuff, you wanted handouts.” That fear of judgment actually put me in worse situations because– when I should have asked for help and when I should have gone to people to tell them what was going on, I didn’t want to, because I was afraid they were going to say, “I told you so.” or “You’re just like all teen moms.” People really don’t know what it’s like for a teenage girl to be pregnant, unless you were one yourself. Older women are celebrated, supported, and the people around them will help in any way they can. That doesn’t happen for teenage girls. When we are in pain or afraid, we don’t get help. We’re told our pregnancies are punishments and this is the consequence.

My daughter’s father returned four days before I went into labor. During my daughter’s delivery, there was a moment when I started panicking. Her birth was recorded so I can still watch the moment when I went from grunting to crying to staring at the ceiling. See, throughout my entire pregnancy people said things like, “This child’s going to ruin your life. You’re life is over. You’re not going to be able to do any of the things you ever wanted to do. This is the worst thing that could happen to you.” So as I was giving birth to her, I started panicking, because I realized I was giving life to the person who would end mine. And how do I love someone who is meant to ruin my life?

Because of that experience and internalized belief, I had a very negative journey through the first few years of motherhood. I was diagnosed with depression and prescribed anti-depressants. To make matters worse, I was in a horrible relationship and was constantly told that teen moms like me are never taken serious and that no one wanted to love a woman with stretch marks and a baby. There was no one cheering me on, no one who believed in me, and I felt entirely alone.

At the same time, I was constantly facing barriers in school. The school was only required to offer me tutoring in 4 of my 7 classes during maternity leave. It was the minimum required to help me simply pass the school year. But I didn’t want to just pass, I wanted to do well in every class and graduate with a good GPA, like I would have before my pregnancy. So my psychology teacher volunteered to come to my house every week and tutored me in all 7 courses. She brought my exams and quizzes and held my daughter so I could take them. She held my textbooks while I breastfed and was always proud of my progress. Returning to school was tough, the other teachers weren’t as fond of me or my “situation.” They would refuse to meet with my after school for help and embarrass me in class. One teacher told me in math class that there was no way I could catch up, so I proved her wrong by acing the class.

“I even had to fight for things like the right to pump breast milk twice a day. The school didn’t want to let me because they thought I was trying to find excuse to get out of class. Right. Because what every 18-year-old girl wants is to like skip her lunch break so she can be sit in the nurse’s office pumping milk and nibbling on crackers.”

But I even had to fight for things like the right to pump breast milk twice a day. The school didn’t want to let me because they thought I was trying to find excuse to get out of class. Right. Because what every 18-year-old girl wants is to like skip her lunch break so she can be sit in the nurse’s office pumping milk and nibbling on crackers. That is so much fun.

I dealt with a lot of people who constantly tried to limit my choices and my future. Then closer to the end of that semester, I went back to my guidance counselor’s office to ask if she could help me look over college applications. Most of my friends had already applied and had already found out where they were going, and I was late but wanted to do make it happen. Her response without even making eye contact with me was, “Well, let’s see if you even graduate high school first.”

God.

I walked away from that and thought, “Oh, she’s probably right. I probably won’t be able to do this, and I should probably take things one step at a time.” So I didn’t apply for college. Now, the good news is I did graduate high school on time and I did walk the stage with my class. I did get to stay in my honors classes throughout the whole year, and I did well in all of them, despite being a teen mom. I think, actually, I did better in school because I was a teen mom and because I had something else motivating me to do even better.  But people outside of me and my daughter’s life didn’t see that.  

So, you graduated, you didn’t go straight to college—what were those next few years like for you?

When I was in high school I really, really wanted to go to med school. I wanted to become a psychiatrist. Having been a young person who coped with depression, I knew what people like me needed and I understood the differences in cultural understanding of depression. For example—parts of my family are really religious and there have been times people said things like, “You’re not depressed, you’re just dealing with something. Pray to God. You’ll be fine.”

“No one in my family filled out a college application. I had no idea of what that process was like, I had no idea of what you were supposed to do, when you were supposed to do it, what was normal, what wasn’t.”

I knew at a young age that this was not right.  I just couldn’t articulate or figure it out, but I wanted to become a psychiatrist so that I could serve and help young people, like me. Now, the idea of going to med school was really overwhelming because again, my parents were immigrants and they weren’t citizens, and they weren’t in the best financial places, and no one in my family had ever gone to college. So I knew that first, they wouldn’t able to co-sign loans for me and I felt overwhelmed at the thought of the expense. And even if I chose another career, I didn’t know how to navigate the process.

No one in my family filled out a college application. I had no idea of what that process was like, I had no idea of what you were supposed to do, when you were supposed to do it, what was normal, what wasn’t. The idea of a young mom with no support becoming a psychiatrist felt way too overwhelming. It felt unattainable. So what I did was, after I graduated, that summer I looked at local state and community colleges that would accept late applications.I might not be able to become a psychiatrist right away but I can start the process  by becoming a nurse. It seemed a little more attainable and promised a guaranteed job.  So I applied for college, started in the fall, finished off my prerequisites, and prepared for a career in nursing.

“I entered college with a new identity. I didn’t tell anyone that I was a mom, including my professors. I just so badly wanted to be treated the same as everyone else.

I entered college with a new identity. I didn’t tell anyone that I was a mom, including my professors. I just so badly wanted to be treated the same as everyone else.  The problem was that I was still facing unresolved issues and an internalized belief that I was not valuable. So I didn’t ever explain anything to my professors and by my second year of school, I dropped out. I didn’t have reliable childcare, I was still coping with depression, and I was working a full-time job and living on my own.  I decided that if I was going to accomplish anything, I needed to take care of myself. That I was going to focus on being a good mom and practice self-care.

Wow. How did you end up in tech?

That’s a great question. It’s quite a little bit of a journey from that point to getting into tech. I don’t have a traditional tech background, as I think a lot of people do out here. After I took this break from school I started focusing on myself. I started to deconstruct and redefine what it meant to be a young woman and single mother in today’s society. I started talking to other young moms—which was life-changing—because it really helps when you don’t feel as isolated.

I started realizing that thousands and thousands and thousands of young women across the country are dealing with the same exact thing. 100,000 teens give birth every year—more than 80% were unplanned—and so many of them drop out of school, or feel pressured to leave or didn’t receive the support that they need to stay. Yet, many some of them share that it’s not actually pregnancy and parenthood that makes their lives hard, as we often hear, but it’s actually the way people treat us. It’s the way that our educators treat us. It’s the way a lot gate-keepers treat us. It’s the ways in which people invalidate who we are as just women and humans in society. The minute we become young parents we’re labeled as irresponsible, and told we’re awful people, and that we should just be isolated and not exposed to the general public because we’d cause an “epidemic.”

So I began looking at ways to counter-message the false reality that young mothers are not productive members of our society by leveraging the power of new tech, like social media. My first time trying out this theory was with the Children’s Hospital in Boston, where I developed a comprehensive strategy for using new tech to eliminate the feeling of isolation among over 500 young parents in Boston. That opportunity led to a hire at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital where I expanded the program to make an impact on reducing health disparities and improving health outcomes in the lives of young mothers of color in Boston. Then I was hired by  the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy where I worked on a $5M dollar grant from the CDC to reduce the teen pregnancy rate in two cities by 10% in five years. In a few months, I helped develop a social marketing campaign for two cities. We reached our 5-year targets before year 3.  

“Initially, I thought, ‘There is no way I want to work in tech. I can’t give into that culture or space because, well, it’s tech.”  I thought, ‘I can’t do that. I can’t be for racial justice and reproductive justice and work in tech. That doesn’t make sense.'”

While all of this was happening, I also started a grassroots campaign called #NoTeenShame to change a terrifying message that organizations like the Candies’ Foundation and multi-millionaire CEOs like Neil Cole share with teenage girls about sexuality and choice and I partnered with six other young moms from different parts of the country for its launch and within a week, it went viral and we were being featured in everything from Ms. Magazine to Business Insider.  It was exciting for people to see seven young moms of color across the country were starting a campaign against this multimillionaire CEO. It went viral to the point where he caught wind of it and wrote a response on The Huffington Post about it. It was not the response we were hoping, but it was a win for us none the less. Once that happened, we started getting contacted by just about every organization in the United States that was working with young people to get our insight on how to do the work better and more effectively. We got really busy really fast and people just started reaching up to us and asking, “Well, how can we replicate the models that you guys have used in your respective organizations to help young people? What should we be doing differently?” The series of all those events led to me developing strategic frameworks for using new technology for social impact and finally presenting at a tech conference here in San Francisco last year.

For a long time I envisioned tech as the enemy—I’m a reproductive justice activist. I’m a racial justice activist.

When I wased in San Francisco, I met someone on the executive team at a startup called Honor (where I work now) who was interested in the work that I did,how I accomplished it and how creative I was in using very little resources to accomplish a massive goal. And so we started talking, and I met other people on the executive team. Initially, I thought, “There is no way I want to work in tech. I can’t give into that culture or space because, well, it’s tech”  And so coming into this space, I thought, “I can’t do that. I can’t be for racial justice and reproductive justice and work in tech. That doesn’t make sense.” I had this assumption that social justice didn’t fit into tech, but I think that’s because I based my opinions on the negative stories I heard on the east coast. But once I met the people that were leading the company, I realized that so much of what I assumed about the people in Silicon Valley were wrong. But also that someone like me can still be in tech and be a valuable asset to the work. And as weird as this sounds, I do think I found that special startup that actually developed a really good frame from the very beginning of how they do work. So, I waited a while and I thought about it, went back to Boston, and decided to pursue the opportunity. I thought to myself, “Oh my god. I was 27 years old. I have a daughter. I’m a single mom, and the only family that I have in the US are just four people who live in Boston. And now I’m accepting the  opportunity to move to San Francisco to work in tech.” And that was hard to wrap my head around.

It was actually my mom who said, “Natasha, you can do this. You’ve overcome way harder things in your life.” When she was 27, she was on her way  to the US for a completely different life. And so she said, “I did it, and I’m not saying that we’re the same. But you can move across the country to pursue this. You can do this.” She also reminded me that I had to think about my daughter who’s really interested in science and has been going to all these science clubs. I now have an opportunity to actually be in this field, to actually be in tech, and provide her with an inside view of what this world is really like. She can watch me go through this process and this journey, and she’s going to see how hard it is. She’s going to see the good and the bad, but she’s going to see it. And she’s going to appreciate it. So, it was a combination of those things that made me decide to say yes to the new field and the big move.

So, what was Silicon Valley like for you when you first got here?

There’s been positives and negatives. One of the things that I actually had to overcome when I came here is how fast everything moves. It’s really fast-paced. Everybody told me it was like this, but it was ten times faster than what I’d prepared myself for. And initially, it was really hard, but I also had a really supportive group of people here where they were willing to help me adjust.

“I love that when I’m having lunch and sitting at a table with people who are amazing engineers, or accomplished healthcare professionals, and talented organizers. And we all sit at a lunch table enjoying each other’s company and discussing the very different experiences we’ve had—and how those diverse experiences shaped such an incredible company.”

The other difficult transition is coming from a space where I talked about racial and reproductive justice 24/7 without filtering myself. Prior to this role, I went to networking events where we introduced ourselves by identifying which pronouns we prefer, the issues we’re working on and how we identify. It’s much different here where I’m often asked to introduce myself by position, educational background and accomplishments. And even when I went to events centered on inclusion, I didn’t feel included. How are so many companies  hosting an event on improving inclusion in the tech sector, hosting in spaces that are difficult to access, and not offering things like child-care?

What has been most exciting of activating for you in your work here?

What’s been most exciting is the people that I get to work with. I love that when I’m having lunch and sitting at a table with people who are amazing engineers, or accomplished healthcare professionals, and talented organizers. And we all sit at a lunch table enjoying each other’s company and discussing the very different experiences we’ve had—and how those diverse experiences shaped such an incredible company.

Despite growing up 5 minutes from Harvard and 10 minutes from MIT, I felt so disconnected from people in tech. They seemed so unreachable and different. And I didn’t always see them as the people I wanted to aspire to become. The Harvard grads were the ones moving into our community, pushing families out of homes, so 5 or 6 students could move in, bumping up rent from $1000 to $3000, a profitable idea for landlords. So I witnessed how the growth and expansion of schools like Harvard led to the immersion of grad students into my community, which meant the immigrant and working class families had to leave.

“Despite growing up 5 minutes from Harvard and 10 minutes from MIT, I felt so disconnected from people in tech. They seemed so unreachable and different. And I didn’t always see them as the people I wanted to aspire to become.”

That played a role in how I perceived tech, even though I was using platforms like Facebook. It didn’t occur to me that someone not too distant from me created this. To the teenage me, it was just something that was created by someone somewhere. It took years before I learned that it was created 5 minutes from my house.

It was cool, but it frustrated me because I felt like there were so many issues impacting young people in Somerville and Cambridge and no one seemed to care. And it was frustrating to see people come from all over the world to study here, learn from the community, then leave forever. Now that I’m on the inside, I see how difficult it is to create tools that are genuinely helpful to people—especially if it’s for people of low-income. And it’s frustrating.  

I’m curious to know how that experience, seeing that tech ecosystem in Boston affects the way that you feel about the state of tech here right now?

Boston’s tech scene is very different than it is on the west coast. It’s thriving, but in a very different way. So although I was involved there, it didn’t help much when dealing with imposter syndrome. I think we often frame and consider imposter syndrome as a one time occurrence that we overcome. But what I learned is that it’s a life-long issue that you’re constantly battling. See, when my Boston friends learned the news of my move to San Francisco to work for an Andreessen-Horowitz backed startup, they were amazed. To them, I was doing what so many wished they could do and I was supposed to feel like “I did it!” And I did, but there’s still the reality that you’re constantly needing to be ahead of everyone else and doing incredibly well. I love the field and where I work, but there’s internal self-created pressure to make sure I’m outdoing myself.

“When everyone around you has very similar background, you can sometimes still feel like an outsider. I didn’t have the typical college experience, I didn’t have those amazing internship opportunities, and I didn’t have parents who could introduce me to really cool people or get me jobs or even read over my essay to see if they were grammatically correct. Growing up, I had to do and figure out all of those things on my own.”

But when everyone around you has very similar background, you can sometimes still feel like an outsider. I didn’t have the typical college experience, I didn’t have those amazing internship opportunities, and I didn’t have parents who could introduce me to really cool people or get me jobs or even read over my essay to see if they were grammatically correct. Growing up, I had to do and figure out all of those things on my own. So part of the culture shock is being lost in the conversations centered around privilege.

The other thing too that I notice out here that never happened to me before is we meet people and they’re constantly extracting from you. “What are your thoughts on this?” and “What are your thoughts on that?” And I’m hesitant to share information because also as a woman of color and having done really great work over the past decade I’ve constantly experienced situations where people with power will take a little bit of information from me and then turn it into something that they get credit for. And so, there’s this constant erasure that happens to young woman of color, so I’m hesitant to engage based on this historical experience. Especially if they’re not being transparent with me.

“I’m hesitant to share information because also as a woman of color and having done really great work over the past decade I’ve constantly experienced situations where people with power will take a little bit of information from me and then turn it into something that they get credit for. And so, there’s this constant erasure that happens to young woman of color, so I’m hesitant to engage based on this historical experience.”

The other piece is that I have internalized stigma as a teen mom and it pops up from time to time. I tend to find myself avoiding conversations that might turn into a discussion about me being a single parent that turns into facing a series of invasive questions. Because it happens. Too often. And it’s not intentional, but their unconscious bias just starts surfacing, and they ask, “Well, how old’s your kid? How old are you? Oh my God, that mean’s you were in like…” You literally see them every time look up, do the math, and they’re like, “Oh my god, you were 17! What was that like? What did your parents say?” And it just turns into this whole dialogue that I don’t want to be a part of. Interested in my story? Go read about it or watch Gilmore Girls. I don’t want my struggles to be the center of discussion, especially in a society where we were made to believe that teen parenthood is a bad thing.

How has everything we’ve talked about, both your experiences in tech so far, and your upbringing, and all of your cumulative experiences, how does that effect what is priority to you here? What is priority in a job, what is priority in what you’re trying to get out of Silicon Valley?

So it’s actually really interesting, because I feel like a lot of people out here are really focused on long-term planning. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s necessary, but I feel like my goals are very different than a lot of people in my position. And that has a lot to do with the reality of how much progress I’ve already made in the past decade. I’ve met and exceeding so many of my own expectations for this period of time and I wanted to spend time acknowledging that and perfecting and improving everything I do now. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to push myself to grow more. I’m focused on ensuring what I do on a daily basis is amazing and meaningful—I’m focused on leaving behind a legacy that my daughter would be proud to share with her grandchildren.

I think a lot about how my mother’s move to the US changed the entire future of our family. So I can’t help but wonder what amazing choices I can make that will continue to do that. If I have the power to shape an incredible future generation, I will do that. And I want to be present today, enjoying my life and my daughter’s life—not waiting for happiness in the form of monetary success.

I’m curious to know how much you’re balancing what you’re working on now and the activism that you’ve been involved with so long, and what it’s like being a part of both of those worlds, especially in the context of San Francisco.

After accepting a position in tech, I thought that I could still be an activist and a writer. But I realized that it was going to take a lot of my mental capacity and energy to adapt to startup culture and do my work really well. Although my personal work is always with me, I knew that I moved across the country for this amazing opportunity and I wanted to dedicate as much a possible to meeting my expectations. Prior to my move to San Francisco, I was presenting at different conferences and organizations across the countries and being asked to do a lot of consultant and advisory work. I had to start declining a lot of those opportunities. And I had to adjust to the realization that nobody in this sector knows me, which is different than Boston.

“Prior to my move to San Francisco, I was presenting at different conferences and organizations across the countries and being asked to do a lot of consultant and advisory work. I had to start declining a lot of those opportunities. And I had to adjust to the realization that nobody in this sector knows me, which is different than Boston.”

Outside of work, my only priority is being a really amazing mom. That can be challenging when you’re working in an environment where working moms aren’t the majority. The ways in which you use and prioritize your time is different and participating in after-hours anything is often a challenge, even though they’re usually necessary and important. Childcare is an obstacle when you’re a single mom in a state where you have no family and feel like you’re already spending too much time away from your kid.

How’s your daughter liking San Francisco?

She loves it but hates the hills. I hate it more than she does honestly but she likes it here a lot. Ha!

She’s really thoughtful and friendly so she made a new best friend within her first week in school. It’s been super easy for her in that way. And like I mentioned earlier, she’s now really interested in Science. Back in Boston, she participated in many different science clubs and programs. It helped expand what her understanding of science was and she became really excited about the opportunity for me to work in tech. And I’m glad she felt good about the choice because I hope she can face an obstacle one day and remember that, “My mom went through this too.” And we have deep conversations about girls in STEM and what it’s like to be a girl in a lot of the science programs. It was interesting to me that she wasn’t interested in the field because of the cool “perks” but because she sees this space as the space where she can do amazing things. Her mission is to promote eco-friendly lifestyles and find a cure for Alzheimer’s. After my grandmother passed from Alzheimer’s, she felt deeply connected and spent a year asking me countless questions. She knows we’ve created tech to do some amazing things and hopes she can do something amazing too. And I’m going to nurture her interest in science until she does exactly what she wants to do.

“I think a lot about tech’s impact on marginalized people, and not just how they use the service but how they actually can be included in the development of new tech.”

How do your friends and family from home feel about how far you’ve come and all you’ve accomplished?

They’re really happy for me. Actually, I had one friend who she really said, “Natasha I think you did everything you could here. You literally accomplished everything and there wasn’t a better next step than this.” My mom is really proud.

How you feel about the state of tech in 2016? What excites you, what frustrates you, what would you like to see change?

I think a lot about tech’s impact on marginalized people, and not just how they use the service but how they actually can be included in the development of new tech. This is where my previous experience overlaps with what tech is missing—the ability to always center the needs of the people they’re targeting. When we’re talking about young people, I’d love to see them getting the support and resources they need to turn their innovative ideas into reality.

“As a mother in tech, I also faced the reality that so many of the programs meant to nurture girls’ interest in STEM are not easily accessible. The programs are often replicating the very same systems that worked for people already in tech. I’ve found myself feeling like the burden falls on parents to fix the pipeline issue and get girls into STEM.”

As a mother in tech, I also faced the reality that so many of the programs meant to nurture girls’ interest in STEM are not easily accessible. The programs are often replicating the very same systems that worked for people already in tech. I’ve found myself feeling like the burden falls on parents to fix the pipeline issue and get girls into STEM.

One example is my daughter had science club on Saturday mornings, and it was at a college campus, which has its pros and its cons. The pro is that it’s great to send girls to a college to see what that environment is like. The con is that it’s often inaccessible for a lot of parents and families and it requires a lot of commuting. And then the classes are so short that parents, can’t just drop off their kids at the program and then go home or doing something else and then come back. They must sit there waiting. So parents are asked to spend a few hours every weekend getting their kids to this program, waiting for them, and then commuting back home. And that could be a barrier to some. The other barrier, of course, is a lot of these programs are really expensive, so if you’re creating programs that are supposed to improve diversity but they’re really expensive, only the people who make enough money to afford it it will be able to get their children into it. There’s usually a financial aid or scholarship application, but it puts the burden on parents who are now of low income to prove to the program that their children deserve a chance. Now you have moms and dads or grandparents, being asked to fill out applications that ask invasive questions about their finances.

“They’re asking parents who are already dealing with a lot to prove and to open up about these issues with people they don’t even know, so that their kid can have an opportunity that they deserve. What if parents don’t even speak English or what if they’re undocumented and don’t have tax documents proving they are of low income?”

They’re asking parents who are already dealing with a lot to prove and to open up about these issues with people they don’t even know, so that their kid can have an opportunity that they deserve. What if parents don’t even speak English or what if they’re undocumented and don’t have tax documents proving they are of low income?

This is probably related to gender diversity, but you wrote in your pre-interview that you think men should lean out.

Before I joined tech, the concept of “leaning in” surfaced onto my radar. Initially, it felt like this was being proposed as a new idea, something that’s rarely been done before. It frustrated me. I’ve spent most of my life leaning in for survival. And leaning in is simply what marginalized women across the nation have been doing for their basic human rights for decades.

“Before I joined tech, the concept of “leaning in” surfaced onto my radar. Initially, it felt like this was being proposed as a new idea, something that’s rarely been done before. It frustrated me. I’ve spent most of my life leaning in for survival. And leaning in is simply what marginalized women across the nation have been doing for their basic human rights for decades.”

And when I look at the core issue, it’s equity in the workforce. Women aren’t paid fairly, but women didn’t create the unfair ways in which women are compensated. And women of color make significantly less than white women, and face higher rates of discrimination at work. Women leaning in can help change the ways in which women are perceived and treated, but men leaning out create genuine opportunities for women to rise. Leaning out as a man can mean giving up your spot on an all male panel to offer a woman on your team the opportunity, or giving press ops to women, being vocal about the important roles women hold in the company, and of course, paying them a fair and equitable salary. Because the burden of making the workforce fair and equitable shouldn’t be ours to carry.

“Leaning out as a man can mean giving up your spot on an all male panel to offer a woman on your team the opportunity, or giving press ops to women, being vocal about the important roles women hold in the company, and of course, paying them a fair and equitable salary. Because the burden of making the workforce fair and equitable shouldn’t be ours to carry.”

What advice would you have for those of similar backgrounds hoping to get into tech?

We’re all facing different obstacles or adversities, and there are periods in our lives where we may feel like we can’t do what we want. And when we live in a negative environment, you’re not just internally facing challenges, but you’re getting that external negative validation. Whether you are a teen mom or a young person facing any of the many obstacles that make our lives unnecessarily harder than it needs to be, stay focused on your own dreams. Find a mentor or two who are smart and kind, and only trust them for advice and guidance.

And constantly work on yourself and making you the best version you can be. We like to believe that at some point in our lives we reach our full potential, but what if it’s a life long journey where we’re constantly learning and constantly changing and improving? Don’t feel like you have to be the final version of you at this very moment, just be willing to learn. Stay true to who you are and accept that you are a work in progress.

“Don’t feel like you have to be the final version of you at this very moment, just be willing to learn. Stay true to who you are and accept that you are a work in progress.”

I was born in Thailand in 1980 in a refugee camp near the border of Thailand and Cambodia. It was the aftermath of the Killing Fields where a million Cambodians died during the Khmer Rouge’s communist regime. My parents never talked much about that time, since it was so traumatic for them. And I don’t remember anything because I was so young. I do know that both of my parents lost their first spouses during that time.

“I was the poorest person in class, and one of the only Cambodians. At the time, I didn’t realize everyone else was actually pretty poor. But there was still a hierarchy even amongst the poorest of the poor. Like it was hard getting teased for wearing the wrong type of shoes or the same shirt several days in a row.”

My mom did tell me about how I had gotten pneumonia as a baby and almost died. She still has the X-rays. It was very, very hard for her, but she loves telling me that the early sickness boosted my immune system because I rarely got sick after that as a child. Too bad it didn’t last into my 30s. I get colds all the time now.

In 1984, we immigrated to the US as refugees as war. Our airfare was sponsored by a Mormon family, whom I don’t remember ever meeting, but it’s why we converted to Mormonism. We landed in Oakland and I’ve been in the Bay Area ever since.

You may not have super early memories but I’m curious to know what it was like arriving at the States for your family and what adjusting to life in Oakland was like?

My earliest memory is us living in cramped apartments around the Lake Merritt area with my grandmother and cousins. I went to a year-round school called Franklin Elementary, which was predominantly Asian. After the first grade, we moved to West Oakland, and I attended Hoover Elementary which was mostly African-American.

“It  felt completely normal to live together with eight or nine people in a tiny one bedroom apartment. It was really communal, and we survived on very little—24k a year of government assistance, which my mom miraculously made work somehow.”

In both settings, I felt like an outsider. I was the poorest person in class, and one of the only Cambodians. At the time, I didn’t realize everyone else was actually pretty poor. But there was still a hierarchy even amongst the poorest of the poor. Like it was hard getting teased for wearing the wrong type of shoes or the same shirt several days in a row.

My parents also didn’t speak English, so it was a constant struggle to switch between different cultures between home and school.

What did your family expect of you? What kind of pressure did they put on you to excel or be something when you grew up or that sort of thing?

My mom was particularly emphatic about education, and doing well in school. That was the top-most priority. She would always say, “You don’t need friends. They’ll just bring you down. Just focus on school.” I just assumed it was an Asian mom thing. But later, I learned she had an uncle who paid for her to attend school back in Cambodia. That experience must have made her acutely value education, because it’s not free in many countries.

“Food is interesting. People I meet love to say, “wow, you must have had delicious food growing up”, as if every meal was a dish from their favorite Thai restaurant. It’s always weird to be exoticized. What was normal for us was actually an extremely basic diet of rice with a small side of protein. McDonald’s and Chinese take-out was like the “fancy” treat for special occasions.”

With my dad, he was hands-off about education, but he cared a lot about appearances. He learned to be a barber in the refugee camps and was very meticulous about it. He cut my hair growing up until his hands failed him. He was also very particular with the shoes and clothes he bought for me, even when they came from The Goodwill. I have a fond memory of him saving up money so that he could get pants made by a tailor in Chinatown. It was really fun to see him pick fabrics. I definitely got my eye for design from him.

What aspects of growing up to you obviously felt normal at the time? Now that you’re in Silicon Valley you’re like, “Man. My upbringing was different than a lot of people’s here.”? What memories stick out to you?

I have a lot of siblings, six younger than me and one older half-sister. It  felt completely normal to live together with eight or nine people in a tiny one bedroom apartment. It was really communal, and we survived on very little—24k a year of government assistance, which my mom miraculously made work somehow.

Nowadays, I hear complaints about how small the apartments are in SF and how making 175k/year isn’t enough. I totally get that in this market, but everything is much more luxurious than what I grew up with.

Food is interesting. People I meet love to say, “wow, you must have had delicious food growing up”, as if every meal was a dish from their favorite Thai restaurant. It’s always weird to be exoticized. What was normal for us was actually an extremely basic diet of rice with a small side of protein. McDonald’s and Chinese take-out was like the “fancy” treat for special occasions.

I remember one of my first “American” meals. A woman from our church invited me to her brother’s family for dinner. Everything was so plentiful, and I remember this giant salad bowl, and I immediately asked. “Oh, there’s no rice?” That became a running joke every time I ate dinner there. I also remembering getting to high school and eating a bagel for the first time. I was like, “Whoa, delicious!”

It’s amazing to think back, because I’m such a foodie now and really enjoy the spectrum of food available in San Francisco. I hate bagels now, though.

Oh man. What were school years like for you? Did you have any technical inclinations or creative inclinations? When was that first developing for you?

In first grade, we had a computer lab, which I took to very naturally. Creatively, I was obsessed with origami and could make very intricate pieces. My mom thought it was an incredible waste of paper, so I would rip out endsheets in books and use that for folding.

In middle school, I took both art and computer classes. What was really cool, was that my art teacher was married to my computer teacher. Later when my art teacher, Ms. James, found out that I’d become a designer, she was thrilled.

Walk me through those later years of school and then eventually getting into college.

High school was awesome. Many people talk about their high school years as the most horrible time in their lives, and I actually had a really wonderful time. I went to Oakland Technical High School—which I had to work really hard to enroll in, because it wasn’t my assigned school.

I had a great education because I was equally exposed to the sciences, liberal arts, and creative arts. I was in a Magnet program called the Health & Biosciences Academy, as well as a humanities program called Paideia, which was taught using the Socratic method. Both of those programs really taught me to think critically and very deeply about the world.

“I started studying for the SAT’s when I was in the seventh grade because I was just like, ‘If I don’t go to college, then I’m never leaving the ghetto.’ I had this great fear of being in a cycle of poverty that I saw my peers get trapped in.”

At the same time, I was also really involved in the journalism program. I was co-Editor-in-Chief of the school newspaper, which is where a lot of my inspiration to become a designer came from. We were designing the newspaper by hand, actually cutting out printed columns and doing paste-ups for the printers. I also worked on our high school’s first video yearbook, which introduced me to Adobe products for the first time.

Was college something you thought that was possible for you financially? Or like as a kid, did you think it was basically possible?

I always believed it was possible. I had both incredible faith and anxiety around it. I started studying for the SAT’s when I was in the seventh grade because I was just like, “If I don’t go to college, then I’m never leaving the ghetto.” I had this great fear of being in a cycle of poverty that I saw my peers get trapped in.

I didn’t worry too much about the financial aspect of it, because I was pretty aware of loans, scholarships, and grants. If I had worried too much about the finances, I think I would have been paralyzed to act.

In the last couple of years of high school, my grades ended up being really shitty, so I didn’t apply to the Ivies or UC’s like most of my Paideia classmates. I had been too focused on everything else that interested me non-academically: helping to run the school newspaper, starting a gay-straight alliance, leading our high school’s Sierra Club program, learning radio journalism at Youth Radio, and performing in plays and dances. And, at the same time, I was trying to come to terms with being both gay and Mormon. It was a lot, and my grades got pretty shot. In the end, I knew I wanted to do design and applied to just one school, the California College of Arts and Crafts. It’s now just called California College of the Arts. I was relieved when I was accepted, and I remember telling my best friend, Ben, “My future’s going to be okay now.”

At that point, did you have any idea that you’d end up working in Silicon Valley. Was that on your radar?

I don’t think so actually. The dotcom boom was still nascent when I entered college, and I was very interested in motion graphics because of the work I did on my high school’s video yearbook. Of course, the dotcom boom reached its peak quickly after I started school. CCA was mostly print-based, but a professor named David Karam started a program called New Media, which I quickly enrolled in. It was a mix of motion graphics, information design, programming, and interaction design. I fell in love with the classes and knew I wanted to work on very technical, internet-related projects.

What was going to art school like after coming from a big high school in Oakland?

I’d been exposed to so many different cultures and types of people early on in life—Asians around Lake Merritt, African Americans in West Oakland, and wealthy white Mormons in the Oakland hills and beyond—that adapting to art school was relatively fluid. You just learned to weave in and out of different groups.

On the other hand, I felt a lot of otherness. I met so many kids that came from an enormous amount of wealth and privilege, who weren’t serious at all. They didn’t know what they wanted to do and had parents who funded their experiment with art school. The majority of students truly wanted to be artists or designers and they were very serious about it, but others were just there to play.

Walk me through your tech career. What happened from there?

In college, I got a really awesome internship at a company called Move Design. It was started by two former IDEO designers, Peter Spreenberg and Samuel Lising. My friends, Dain and Kim, were also working there, so we just did a range of fun, interactive projects. I learned ActionScript, Lingo, JavaScript, PHP, and Perl during that time. That’s what really got me super excited about the internet, programming, and interaction design.

When the boom went bust, I went to work for Youth Radio in Berkeley as a teacher and designer.

After that, I was hired as an intern by Conor Mangat at MetaDesign, which is one of the top branding agencies in the world. The San Francisco office had been started by a favorite professor of mine, Terry Irwin, along with Erik Spiekermann and Bill Hill. I was lucky to get that job because it was the nadir of the dotcom bust. The San Francisco office had just downsized from over 100 people to less than 10, so I’m very grateful to Conor for believing in me early on.

“I joined the Gmail team. When I started, there was only one other full-time designer on Gmail. The way we ended up splitting it, was that my colleague, Jason Cornwell, worked on desktop, and I worked on mobile. It was just really cool to have that much responsibility and impact. Mobile Gmail was supposed to be my 20% project, but that quickly became my 120% project.”

My work at MetaDesign was mostly visual design for brands and websites, but eventually, I wanted to branch out into UX. I was really inspired by Hugh Dubberly, a former design manager at Apple who’s ridiculously smart and knowledgeable about design history and theory. He eventually became my mentor and hired me at his studio, Dubberly Design Office. I was super happy working there and stayed for 5 years.

One day a sourcer from Google emailed me out of the blue. I remembered when I was at MetaDesign, a recruiter from Apple had contacted me. I blew it off and later regretted it. So this time around, I decided to follow up on the email, even though I was very happy at Dubberly.

I had a few phone conversations with Google, then went down for a day of interviews. I was so impressed with everyone I talked to, and the opportunity for learning was so huge, that I decided join. It was an amazing experience, though when I first joined, I felt like I didn’t really belong there.

“It’s a big psychological shift to be a founder. Our employees depend on us to feed their families and themselves. They depend on us for helping them grow professionally and personally. I take it much more seriously because of that responsibility. It’s not a hobby. It’s a real business where the success or failure of the company has huge impacts on everyone.”

Expand on that.

I just felt like everyone was so much smarter or so much more accomplished. During orientation, they were like, “Oh, here’s some amazing people that work here.” They profile all these ridiculously-accomplished people. I’m like, “Uhh. What? Why am I even here?” Eventually you get over that a little bit, partly because you talk to other people who say, “Oh yeah, I felt the same way.” Later on, I read about impostor syndrome which describes this phenomenon.

What did you work on while at Google?

I joined the Gmail team. When I started, there was only one other full-time designer on Gmail. The way we ended up splitting it, was that my colleague, Jason Cornwell, worked on desktop, and I worked on mobile. It was just really cool to have that much responsibility and impact. Mobile Gmail was supposed to be my 20% project, but that quickly became my 120% project. Now the Gmail team is huge and it’s really awesome.

So crazy. What has it been like transitioning from a tech employee to tech-founder?

It’s definitely very different. There’s a lot more responsibility because of who is dependent on you. At Google, I was an individual contributor, and even though I had a lot of impact, no one was dependent on me for their own livelihood. It’s a big psychological shift to be a founder. Our employees depend on us to feed their families and themselves. They depend on us for helping them grow professionally and personally. I take it much more seriously because of that responsibility. It’s not a hobby. It’s a real business where the success or failure of the company has huge impacts on everyone.

What are some of the struggles and roadblocks that you’ve had to overcome both as employee and entrepreneur?

My biggest struggle is social anxiety, which progressively got worse as I got older. There were times when I would have panic attacks in public streets or just walking into a room. It was a huge barrier to becoming a leader. That probably held me back a little bit, actually probably a lot, at Google. I overcame it when I stumbled on a research program at Stanford that was comparing methodologies for treating social anxiety. I was accepted into the study, and went through 12 weeks of treatment and cognitive behavioral therapy. It worked, and it’s much less of a problem now, even though it’s always there.

“My biggest struggle is social anxiety, which progressively got worse as I got older. There were times when I would have panic attacks in public streets or just walking into a room. It was a huge barrier to becoming a leader.”

Awhile back, I read about how Nightmare on Elm Street was inspired by Cambodian trauma survivors who died in their sleep from nightmares. And I later read about how trauma, especially amongst survivors of genocide like Cambodians, can be passed down biologically to their children. It really helped explain why depression, stress, and anxiety is so prominent in my family, so it’s something I continuously watch out for in myself and my family.

What has working in tech been like knowing that you don’t have any financial network or safety net?

It’s hard and it’s fragile. I talk to a lot of other entrepreneurs who have families they can fall back on if they fail. And if their families aren’t wealthy by income, they own property and have accumulated value, so they still have another plan B. Many other entrepreneurs also have fewer financial obligations, meaning they don’t have to support their siblings, parents, or extended family. I get that everyone struggles. But clearly, some struggle more than others. A lot of people take for granted the network and privilege they have, and they don’t realize how incredibly lucky they are. For me, it’s always precarious. I’m on a founder’s salary, which is less than half of what I was making at Google, and I still need to support family members as well as myself. It’s very tough when you don’t have much of a plan B, but it makes me more driven to make the business succeed.

“I talk to a lot of other entrepreneurs who have families they can fall back on if they fail. And if their families aren’t wealthy by income, they own property and have accumulated value, so they still have another plan B. Many other entrepreneurs also have fewer financial obligations, meaning they don’t have to support their siblings, parents, or extended family. I get that everyone struggles. But clearly, some struggle more than others. A lot of people take for granted the network and privilege they have, and they don’t realize how incredibly lucky they are.”

Yeah. I feel you. Do you ever feel isolation in the industry? For me personally, when I worked in tech, I felt a sense of otherness and isolation a lot. Not from being a white chick, there are plenty of white chicks—but socioeconomically. I came from a small town, went to public state school, moved here with no money, also did not have a financial support network. I just never met anyone that I could really relate to. I’m curious if you ended up feeling those senses of isolation during your career? Just based on being different?

Yes absolutely.

At Google, I remember sitting at work and overhearing a conversation where someone said, “Oh yeah, I have a couple of houses and my partner has a house too, but it’s just too hard to manage.” She was literally complaining about having multiple houses, and I was just like, “Wow, what world is this?” It was definitely not a world I came from.

When you come from poverty and you’re also gay, Cambodian, Mormon, and a refugee of war, there’s always an inherent isolation. Of not fitting in anywhere. Of not knowing anyone else like you. Until my 20s, I was even stateless, and couldn’t get a passport from any country. So I felt a very deep sense of isolation. You have to cherish your own uniqueness, but you also have to learn how to adapt in order to survive. It’s exhausting.

Let’s get more into identity. What is your experience been as a gay man on top of everything else? I’m especially curious about being gay in the context of being Mormon.

That was really tough for me, because I was very religious in high school and earlier. I was a Boy Scout, I went to Mormon summer camps in Utah, and I planned to go on a mission. I tried very hard to be the perfect Mormon boy. And it took me a really, really long time to reconcile that. When you have this belief system that doesn’t include you, you have to figure out how you fit in or not. Eventually, I realized I didn’t fit in, and I became a much healthier person afterwards because I didn’t hate myself. In San Francisco, we still have some diversity left, so I don’t really feel too separate in terms of the gay facet of my identity. I feel lucky about that.

“When you come from poverty and you’re also gay, Cambodian, Mormon, and a refugee of war, there’s always an inherent isolation. Of not fitting in anywhere. Of not knowing anyone else like you. Until my 20s, I was even stateless, and couldn’t get a passport from any country. So I felt a very deep sense of isolation. You have to cherish your own uniqueness, but you also have to learn how to adapt in order to survive. It’s exhausting.”

On the flip side, I don’t know how active you are socially in the gay community, but what is it like being a techie in the gay community? Total other side of the coin.

Ah, this is an interesting topic. What’s sad is the mainstreaming of gay culture. I talked about this recently with my partner, Harold. When I was growing up, being gay was synonymous with being rebellious and iconoclastic. You were expected to be different. It was still taboo, but it afforded you a great amount of freedom and space to express yourself.

The world has made a lot of progress in acceptance of gay people, but a side effect is that assimilation has happened. Gay folks are in the mainstream, but they fit into what is acceptable. In media, they’re usually normalized into caricatures of what’s expected: wealthy white men who fun, attractive, and inoffensive. Yet there’s a full spectrum of people who still aren’t represented—there’s poor gay people, there’s gay people of color, there’s lesbians, there’s trans, there’s gender non-conformists, there’s gay people who are angry, and there’s people who have sex with the same gender but aren’t “gay.” So I’m saddened by the mainstreaming of gay culture, because I wish we had a greater representation of difference and all of the in-between states.

Most sad of all, is how mainstream San Francisco has become. One of my best friends, Sean, moved to the East Bay recently, and he was like, “Yeah, I wondered where all the people with the weird haircuts went. They’re all here in the East Bay!”

My next question, which we’re already touching on—what’s it like being both a techie and local?

In some ways, it’s really fun because I feel like I’m getting to do what I love in the place I grew up in. But, San Francisco has changed a lot. Oakland is changing even more. Many things have been lost because of how much tech has transformed the area. I miss that.

I’m in a rent-controlled apartment in San Francisco, and I can’t actually afford to move back to Oakland. It’s just really crazy because I spent all this time trying to escape Oakland, and then I can’t actually afford to go back. It’s very ironic. I touched on it a little bit when my friend made the comment about haircuts in the East Bay—San Francisco just isn’t as diverse as it once was. It’s very homogenous, and that’s increasingly getting harder for me to accept. It’s heartbreaking.

“I’m in a rent-controlled apartment in San Francisco, and I can’t actually afford to move back to Oakland. It’s just really crazy because I spent all this time trying to escape Oakland, and then I can’t actually afford to go back. It’s very ironic.”

I used to think I’d live in San Francisco for the rest of my life because it’s just so open, diverse, and you can live how you want to live. But when toast is $5 dollars, it’s kinda crazy. I actually love the $5 toast, but when that’s the norm, and there is not much deviation, it’s obscene.

Can you expand on what’s been lost?

My partner is much more conscious about social justice, diversity, and oppression. He’s definitely made me more attuned to those issues. For example, the queer arts in San Francisco is dying because it’s getting pushed out by rising rent prices, evictions, and a lack of studio spaces.

My techie side says, “Oh, well. It just means, as an artist, you have to adapt, and try to figure out who the audience is and cater to your audience”. The other side of me is like, “Wow. That’s a really shitty thing to say. These are people that have a particular point of view and a particular statement they want to make, and you’re telling them they need to suppress that?”

The fact is, their way of expression is being taken away from them. I have to constantly ask myself, “Am I part of the problem or am I not?” It’s very, very complicated and I’m not sure what the answer is.

How do your friends and family from growing up feel about how you turned out?

I think they’re all super excited for me. My mom still doesn’t really know what I do. She doesn’t have an understanding of technology but my siblings do. And I feel good in that I can set an example. I wish I could write an autobiography that was like, “I grew up poor, then bootstrapped myself, and did it all by myself,” but the reality is that I had a lot of help and people who believed in me. I had mentors, I had family that watched out for me, I had amazing teachers. I feel like it was definitely like a group effort, and so, I hope I continue being a good example for others. More importantly, I strive to help others in the same way others have supported me.

What would you say are your biggest motivators? What drives you?

Well, I had this experience growing up where I had to do a lot of translation and filling out of forms for my mother who didn’t speak English. That made me aware of things that may be invisible to others, like the design of forms, for example. So there’s a notion of service design that I get really interested in. How do you help others accomplish what they need to get done to survive or excel? Answering that question is a huge motivation for me. It’s partly why I started Mixmax with my friends, Olof and Brad. I wanted to make something that would actually help people do their own work better in order to succeed.

My life with my family and partner is also a major motivator for me. I’m driven to help support them. I believe when you succeed in your personal life, you also succeed in your professional life. It’s not about “balancing” work and life, but about creating flexibility in each so that both areas can succeed.

Let’s go macro for a second. How do you feel about the state of tech in 2016? What excites you, what frustrates you?

I’m extremely excited about software for professionals. It’s so cool to see how people use existing pro tools for their work. The current tools are really, really awful. It’s just amazing to me how much we focus on consumer products, but there’s this world of professional software that needs great design. So it’s very exciting to think about those possibilities.

What’s frustrating? Everyone is so entitled. It’s definitely a bubble in the Bay Area where people feel like they deserve the world, because they happen to be an in-demand tech person living here. Super, super frustrating. It’s refreshing to talk to people outside Silicon Valley, who are also hungry to learn and grow, but have a lot less entitlement.

“Always ask yourself, ‘How can I exceed expectations?’ Set explicit goals and push yourself to achieve more than what was previously asked of you.”

Lastly, what advice would you give to folks from similar backgrounds to you who are really interested in tech but just not quite sure how to get into it and succeed?

Gosh, let’s see. Well, one tip is to don’t be afraid to approach the people you admire and recruit them as mentors. You might be hesitant to reach out to people, because you think they’ll flat out reject you. For the most part, I have found that many people are willing to help and are awesome about it.

Another tip: always ask yourself, “How can I exceed expectations?” Set explicit goals and push yourself to achieve more than what was previously asked of you. I learned this from Google and from my time at Dubberly. Hugh phrased it as “pulling a rabbit out of a hat.” Overachievement increases the chances for success and learning.

My last advice is to foster a wide variety of interests that make you happy. Tech might not be what fulfills you in the end, so consider other things that could also make you happy, and at the same time, viable as a living. Even within tech, there are many hats to wear, many subjects to explore, and many products to design. It’s super open.

So I’m from Virginia originally. I have always done fine arts my entire life, as long as I can remember. Then, in high school I was introduced to graphic design. I think illustration will always be my first love, and I thought design would be a good route to follow for that. I went to college for graphic design, the program I was in was very print-design oriented. After college, I worked at a pretty small creative agency in Richmond, Virginia. Pretty much within a year of being in the industry there you work with everyone you’re ever going to work with there because it’s just so small. At some point, I visited the Bay Area with some friends. I really liked it and I was like, “At this point I could go to New York or San Francisco, I guess I’ll try San Francisco [chuckles].” I really wanted to live in a big city and NY and SF felt like the only options to me. I also wanted to live far away. I didn’t really understand the implications and impact of moving to the Bay Area. I knew that “tech” was happening but I was very isolated from the culture of tech. I didn’t know anyone in tech but I guess that’s really my bad for being naïve and not doing my research. By the time I was in it, it was too late. I was like, “Oh, shit. I’ve spent so much time and energy breaking into this new industry and now I’m in this industry that’s really problematic.” Not that any of the other ones are any better, but, I don’t know, if you want to be doing big work, I feel like in design, tech is where you want to be. That’s how I guess I ended up where I am at now. It’s not to say that I don’t like tech, I really like designing and illustrating for screens and tech brands but the culture around it is so toxic.

“I knew that ‘tech’ was happening but I was very isolated from the culture of tech. I didn’t know anyone in tech but I guess that’s really my bad for being naïve and not doing my research. By the time I was in it, it was too late.”

I definitely want to dig into that with you. I’m curious, as someone who also grew up in a small town in the south, what it was like for you growing up? Especially as someone who eventually came out as queer?

My dad was a pastor. I grew up going to Christian school. I had to go to church every Sunday and Sunday school with all the youth groups and mission trips. I was really heavily involved in the Christian community and lifestyle. My parents really threw me into it when I was super young and continued to make me participate as I got older. When I was younger it was the only thing I really knew, all my friends were in the church, it was my whole life. I went to this school where they told us your skirts have to be a certain length so you don’t distract the boys in the class and all that kind of stuff. It was super conservative and old school.

I really hated it and I became really disenchanted in middle school and high school, and I think I absolutely carry that with me as an adult, I really have a chip on my shoulder. I don’t know, ideally I wouldn’t have come out in my twenties, but I just internalized so much of the queer-phobia and homophobia around me that it was just for me not a possibility at all. I was in denial and really “othered” anyone queer I ever knew. I mentally categorized queerness as a perversion as a young child as a result of what I was being taught and that really stuck with me. Then when I lived in a small town called Roanoke. This is like southwest Virginia.

“Ideally I wouldn’t have come out in my twenties, but I just internalized so much of the queer-phobia and homophobia around me that it was just for me not a possibility at all. I was in denial and really ‘othered’ anyone queer I ever knew. I mentally categorized queerness as a perversion as a young child as a result of what I was being taught and that really stuck with me.”

So Roanoke is like, I mean, there’s a lot of nice things about it, but there’s a lot of pretty shitty conservative culture there. Once I got to Richmond it was better, but it’s still like, I don’t know, people there are not forward thinking at all. Richmond is better but it’s still pretty bad there too. So I feel like I didn’t really get to make my escape ’til I got outside that area, I think.

So what was it like first getting here? What were your expectations of Silicon Valley?

I think I was pretty naive about Silicon Valley. I had never been. No one around me did anything in tech, and in college my program was very focused on print design. I spent a lot of time making print mocks and doing book crafts. I didn’t even have anyone in my life who knew anything about it. So I think that I came out not really having any idea, and being kind of optimistic, and like, “Oh, it’s a cool environment to work in. It’s fun, it has all these opportunities.” So I think that’s what I thought to be the case. And obviously there are a lot of opportunities, and there are fun environments sometimes, but yeah, I had no idea that it’s ripping San Francisco apart. The community and people, and it’s such an intense rift here. So I didn’t know that, and I was basically getting into tech around the same time I was coming out. So I was meeting all these queer people, and building that community, and they all really hate tech. So I feel like every time I meet a new queer person, I have to come out about working in tech. It’s super strange, it’s like existing in two different worlds, and I had no idea it would be like that. And they’re upset, and rightly so. A lot of my friends are getting displaced, it’s really weird. I just had no idea [laughter].

“I was basically getting into tech around the same time I was coming out. So I was meeting all these queer people, and building that community, and they all really hate tech. So I feel like every time I meet a new queer person, I have to come out about working in tech. It’s super strange, it’s like existing in two different worlds, and I had no idea it would be like that. And they’re upset, and rightly so. A lot of my friends are getting displaced, it’s really weird.”

What excites you about tech, and what activates you work-wise?

There is a lot of opportunity in tech. I consider myself to be a pretty hungry and ambitious person to make change, and do things that affect people. I think that has always been exciting. I also feel like it’s happening, and I can either avoid it or I can ride the wave, and do good for myself and try to make the space less toxic. I mean tech is happening and I really believe that technology can save lives and do incredible things, but unfortunately a lot of tech companies are focused on solving rich people problems. I just want to be around when the focus switches.

“Tech is happening and I really believe that technology can save lives and do incredible things, but unfortunately a lot of tech companies are focused on solving rich people problems. I just want to be around when the focus switches.”

Okay, let’s go into the dark side. What have been some of the biggest struggles for you?

Yeah, I was hesitant about this interview, because I feel like I have some more bad things to say than I do good things, unfortunately.

It’s okay.

Yeah, bad things. It just feels like, in office environments I’ve made a conscious effort to try to make the workplace safe. Safe for myself and safe for other people, and it just feels like an uphill battle. And I feel like I really want to be someone who’s being active about things and calling people out for problematic behavior. But that’s really exhausting, and so then when I don’t do that, I just feel like I’m internalizing all these bad feelings. It’s pretty soul-sucking. For me it’s really toxic for my mental and emotional health. It’s very bro-y. I walk around and see women getting interrupted and being shut down, and all sorts of people feeling shut down.

It’s these people coming from other cities and they went to some Ivy League school and they immediately get a job. They don’t have any sort of idea of the privilege that they have and all of the sudden they have so much money. It feels like college. All these people live in these fancy apartments right where they work and they’re all best friends. All of a sudden they’re planted in the heart of a community that is experiencing violent gentrification and they just step around its citizens and order fancy food from an app to their apartment. And they don’t even have to really go outside ever. I was having a conversation with someone from San Francisco one time and they said that in San Francisco, life really happens on the streets, and if you’re never on the streets how can you possibly respect that? I feel like that’s really true. It’s just weird. It’s really like it feels like a sci-fi novel sometimes.

“I feel like I really want to be someone who’s being active about things and calling people out for problematic behavior. But that’s really exhausting, and so then when I don’t do that, I just feel like I’m internalizing all these bad feelings. It’s pretty soul-sucking. For me it’s really toxic for my mental and emotional health. It’s very bro-y. I walk around and see women getting interrupted and being shut down, and all sorts of people feeling shut down.”

You’ve kind of touched on this a little bit, but what’s it like being queer and working in tech and straddling those two worlds, one of privilege and one underrepresented?

It’s really weird. I feel in a way out of place in both environments. I actually met someone at work and we ended up dating. And we were dating very obviously for a while. And people were just like, “Besties.” And they just did not at all see it as a relationship. And beyond that with a lot of my friends, like I said, I’ve known people to get displaced. A lot of my good friends are social workers and artists, it’s just an entirely different experience. So, it’s super weird. I feel like I have to be really careful and intentional in how to talk about my work in my queer community. And I have to be really careful and intentional about how I talk about my queer community at work, because people don’t understand it. I end up doing a lot of educating to folks in tech. I have many times become the point of contact for trans and queer issues. Or rather, cis/het people having issues with queer and trans folks. People will just throw their confusion at me, and it’s not typically malicious but they just expect me to explain all queer/trans experiences. I’m not even trans… but people will be like “I know this trans person, why did they do this thing I don’t understand?” I don’t know every trans person and even if I did, no one owes you an explanation. I am definitely happy to educate people most of the time but folks so frequently aren’t even respectful of my time or the fact that I may be feeling tired or burnt out that day.

Only share what you’re comfortable with. But, can you share more about your experience with anxiety and PTSD in the workplace?

So, that’s something that is really hard for me to deal with. I think there’s a bigger problem with just the conversation around mental illness and mental health in America. I’ve had so many days where I’m just having a really bad anxiety day. I call in sick. I’m allowed to do that. But then I feel like I have to lie, you know? Because for some reason I feel like I’m not allowed to say, “I had really horrible nightmares all night. I’m exhausted. I need to think about myself, do some art, and then chill out.” I’m always like, “I have a cold. I have food poisoning,” or something. To have to lie about things like anxiety and PTSD, things that are already shameful or shame-inducing for me personally, and I think for a lot of people it’s just this big shame spiral. It feels really inauthentic to talk about it like that. That’s always really tough for me. And I know for a fact that a lot of tech offices and companies are taking really intense initiatives to promote physical health. They encourage people to take sick days for the flu, to genuinely rest and recover. I’ve never heard anyone encourage mental health days. I mean vacation is one thing, everyone needs a break but there is a special kind of rest and retreat needed for folks with mental illness and no one talks about that. I don’t know.

“To have to lie about things like anxiety and PTSD, things that are already shameful or shame-inducing for me personally, and I think for a lot of people it’s just this big shame spiral. It feels really inauthentic to talk about it like that. That’s always really tough for me. And I know for a fact that a lot of tech offices and companies are taking really intense initiatives to promote physical health. They encourage people to take sick days for the flu, to genuinely rest and recover. I’ve never heard anyone encourage mental health days. I mean vacation is one thing, everyone needs a break but there is a special kind of rest and retreat needed for folks with mental illness and no one talks about that.”

Getting to work in San Francisco and being in an office with a bunch of people, and particularly men, make me very anxious.  I don’t know. I’m super jumpy, and people will tap me on the shoulder to tell me something, and pretty much nine times out of ten, I jump. That’s just part of my anxiety and my trauma. And always people are like: “Oh, [chuckles] didn’t mean to scare you.” I mean, people think it’s kind of funny that I’m jumpy. I guess I understand that, but at the same time, I don’t know. That’s really grating, and that’s really hard, and it’s frustrating that people won’t see that and maybe understand to approach me in a different way. I know it’s ridiculous, but if someone jumps up, if someone startles me, I get really, really freaked out.

People have intentionally startled me as a joke. For me, most days are struggling with a sort of ongoing fight or flight response. That’s what my brain feels like. Of course I’m jumpy. I’ve asked people to be respectful about it and some people are really great and other people… just don’t listen. So then I have to sort of consider outing myself as someone who struggles with this stuff. Like, will someone be more respectful if they understand I’m struggling with PTSD? Maybe I don’t want to talk about it. Maybe I don’t trust this person with that information. It’s frustrating that I’m put into this situation instead of someone just respecting my request in the first place.

Little things like that, I don’t know. Not knowing how to address these stigmas in the workplace has been something that’s caused me to really back out and internalize this. And it manifests in a pretty bad way. Actually, Riggins (my dog) is my emotional support animal. He’s been my little anxiety helper. So, he’s really great. I would like to bring him to the workplace. And I know a lot of offices are dog-friendly, but some aren’t. I think there could just be a lot more accommodations for people struggling with mental illness.

Knowing that this interview will launch after you quit your full-time job job, what was the thought process behind leaving to go freelance?

Specifically what happened was I came back from Christmas break and I was like, “I’m great. I’m feeling so good.” I went back in the office and I was like, “Oh, this is bumming me out.” So I got in touch with Ryan Putnam to see if he had any tips or anything. He was like, “Oh, you should come work with me.” Basically the timing worked out really well, but more specifically as a contractor and a freelancer, people are much more intentional with your time. For example, if you’re a full-time designer, you’re probably going to end up designing ads every day regardless of how experienced you are. And I’m like “I don’t want to do ads. I want to be illustrating.” So that’s something that I’m looking forward to, having my time being more valued, specifically. And also, I just want more flexibility. I’d rather be home more.

I will say, as someone who is now freelance, it is amazing to have control of your time, and who you work with, and what you choose to get better at. As long as you’ve figured out how to first create a savings account. Once you have a little bit of savings, then it’s good. At first, it’s really scary. But then it’s like the most wonderful decision you’ve ever made.

I’m starting this. I don’t know what is going on, but I’m not worried about it at all, for the most part. I’m just sort of letting it set over me and I’ll figure it out. I will be okay. And it just sort of creates this nirvana that I’m ready for. I’d rather take the uncertainty and the control over my time and my life.

Have you found mentors, or people you’ve looked up to for inspiration?

I think that I’m still finding that. Working right now with Ryan Putnam has been great because he has shared a lot of wisdom with me. It’s really nice working with him because I feel like he has been really successful as an emotionally aware and vulnerable person as opposed to shouting the loudest. It’s really nice to see that work out well for someone.

What are your biggest motivators, like, what do you think drives you?

I don’t know that I really know how to do anything else. Illustration is all that I really want to do. Sometimes I think about what it would be like if I went in a different direction with my career and I don’t even know what that would look like.

Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely tough as a creative who wants to make art that feeds your soul but also has to survive financially. That’s hard to do in this city.

Yeah. It’s really tricky. I definitely do a lot of fine art on the side, but I still really enjoy the visual design that I’m doing. And it is really nice to be doing what you love for money. It’s like the ultimate hustle, I really enjoy it.

How do your friends and family from home feel about how far you’ve come, and the work that you’ve done, and how you’ve turned out? How does your pastor father feel?

[chuckles] They’re actually really supportive. They have come a long, long way. They voted for George W. Bush, and now they’re voting for Bernie Sanders.

Really?

Yeah. It was a big change. I mean, when we were growing up, at some point when we were kids, my little sister was diagnosed with epilepsy, and they really, really had to fight to get her health insurance. So, they started to see the light of socialism [chuckles]. And that was kind of the tipping point. And then over the years I’ve just seen them grow. I mean, they’re still the same people, but they think really, really differently now. So yeah, I came out to them, and they have been really great and supportive. I get along with them really well. We have a lot of tough talks about their religion, because they’re still Christian, and the things that I believe in. But they are supportive and we get along really well. My mom sends me job listings that are in New York. She wants me to be on the east coast again. They really want me to come back and I don’t think I’m going to go, ever hopefully [chuckles], but it’s really nice to have their support.

That’s really great.

Yeah, it’s nice.

How do you feel about the state of tech in 2016? How have you seen it change in your short time here? What is exciting? What is frustrating? What do you want to see change?

Why do I feel bad now? I personally feel really, really, very torn about it. As much as I am in the camp of tech is happening, whether or not you’re in it. There’s all these ridiculous apps that get funding and fall through. It’s super weird. I don’t know. I see some good efforts happening and I see also really shitty things. I have a few friends in tech who are women and they have had okay to awful experiences. So I don’t know. I feel not too optimistic at this point. I think that the whole culture needs to shift for any of this to actually be sustainable work. I think the only reason I’m going to be freelancing with tech companies, and the reason I’m continue to freelance with tech companies is because I kind of do it on my own terms, and I think you have to make it work for you, for it to work. But I really hope that it changes, I just want it to be a safe place for people like that. So, not optimistic.

How do you think tech could be more accommodating to folks who are suffering from PTSD or anxiety, or other mental health issues, just based on your own experience?

Yeah, it’s a great question. I think just being able to talk about it. I think that it seems so much of work, even at happy hours, people are talking about work. I think that bringing some shift of people being willing to talk about what’s really going on with them. I just think that mental wellness puts me at my best in the workplace. People are working long hours and it’s demanding work, and I think companies need to create structures and places for people to be able to talk about that.  I think if companies are willing to talk about, it would sort of open the floodgates for people to be able to talk about their own experiences and make it easier. I think just facilitating where to talk about it.

Where do you see yourself in five or ten years?

I would like to be able to get over my fomo enough to move somewhere that’s a little less intense than the Bay area. I don’t know. I think like, ideally, I see myself freelancing or working with like a small dedicated group of really rad designers or creative people. I don’t really see myself in any tech companies.

What about 2016, are you working on any projects either for work obviously building your freelance business, but like personal goals or anything like that?

I’m taking a break from doing artwork outside of work. So I think my focus right now is to do my work and then focus on some more of my crafty hobbies. So nothing big coming up, no projects. I think this year I want to learn how to garden and I’m going to learn how to do woodworking. Those are my very chill goals.

I’m all about it. Learn how to not work for a minute [chuckles], it is its own discipline. Let’s see, my last question for you would be, what advice would you give to folks from similar backgrounds or who have gone through similar struggles, and are getting started in tech?

I know we talked about mentors. I think what’s more important than mentorship or anything like that, and what’s always been more helpful to me, is finding peers and building your community. Just finding other women at work, or finding them outside of work, and really building that community to go back to and have a safe space. I think it is super important. I think at the end of the day, if you’re struggling with something, or having a bad day, or wanting more overtime, I think the most important thing to always remember is you are number one, the company isn’t. It’s so important to focus on yourself and not lose yourself in the noise that is all of this stuff. I think that those two things have really been what’s kept me going.

“I think at the end of the day, if you’re struggling with something, or having a bad day, or wanting more overtime, I think the most important thing to always remember is you are number one, the company isn’t. It’s so important to focus on yourself and not lose yourself in the noise that is all of this stuff.”

I was born in a small suburb in New Jersey, in Central Jersey, a town called Flemington…near Princeton. It’s about an hour and twenty minutes from New York, and an hour on the dot to Philadelphia. Nice little suburban oasis, I suppose, in New Jersey, where like you know, all of our parents worked in one of those cities and that was kind of it. It was extremely homogenous. I’ll make sure that that’s known. [laughter] And to give you a sense of to what degree, I went to a high school of about 3000. My graduating class was 760, and in that class of 760 there were ten African-Americans, male and female.

Wow.

But, I grew up in close proximity to massive cities that had tons of culture, so it never felt—I don’t know, the lifestyle wasn’t as representative as you might think from those numbers. It was pretty urban, as much as it could be from a culture and lifestyle standpoint.

That’s interesting.

It was a lot of fun.

When did you first get interested in tech?

I think elementary school. I have a great aunt and uncle that live in my hometown, and my uncle worked for AT&T. As early as I can remember. We had a computer at the house. Like most people my age, I was the reason that we got AOL in the house [chuckles]. It was always very close and accessible for me. I was super curious because I had never seen anything like that in terms of a physical computer. Elementary school had a computer class, I’m thinking first or second grade, and we’d just play Oregon Trail and things like that. From an accessibility standpoint, I think it was elementary school and that led me to programming my own role play game in the TI-86 when I was in sixth or seventh grade. There was a whole other world out there that I wanted to see, and there was access to it through the internet and that was—and still is to some degree—the allure to me.

That’s amazing. I can’t even imagine. I didn’t know tech existed until I was 20 [laughter]. Describe your experience actually getting into tech, then starting your own company.

I went to school for economics, so growing up close to New York City, at least in my town, the majority of kids are prone to either go into business or finance. Definitely during the late 80s and early 90s, things were going very very well from an economical standpoint so a lot of people were drawn to that industry. I finished college in 2008 and worked on Wall Street for less than 30 days [laughter]. I knew that it wasn’t for me. It just wasn’t what I wanted to spend the majority of my time doing. Thankfully, a sales job opened up at a startup called TheLadders.com. The job market was tough, so I said yes to the position and did B2C sales for about a year, then transitioned over into operations…and that was my first job within tech. Things started to not go so well at The Ladders a couple of years later, and I saw it coming. One of my co-workers left and moved out to San Francisco to work for SurveyMonkey. He sent me over to the job opportunities site and said, “Hey, if there’s anything you’re interested in, let me know.” There was, and before I knew it, I had put my life in three bags and I was flying across the country to live in San Francisco, a city that I had never visited before in my life [laughter]. But I was twenty-five at the time and I was like fuck it, I’ll take this risk. I was feeling complacent in New York anyway.

“I think the analogy of jumping out of an airplane and pulling your chute and hoping that it opens is completely accurate, because you’re not trained for the things that you’re going to encompass in trying to launch something.”

How did your family feel about you just up and going?

I’ve always been that way—free, self sustaining. I’m sure they thought  “This is just what Danny’s doing now.” I always make my own decisions, and I’ve always been independent in that sense, so there was nothing they could really say. I was going to go regardless.

Okay. So you got to San Francisco, you’d never been.

Yeah.

What was it like when you first got here?

Honestly, it was great. I had a really, really positive experience. The same friend that referred me for the job—I moved in with him. We lived in Pac Heights, right off of Clay and Gough, and I lived in Prospect Heights in Brooklyn in New York, so I moved from Brooklyn to essentially the Upper East Side, which was interesting. It was so new. I was in the honeymoon phase, and visually nothing that I was seeing in terms of the topography and all the parks was comparable to anything I had seen in New York or on the East Coast, so it was amazing to me when I first moved out.

How were your early years working at startups, before you became an entrepreneur?

You know, I think they were net positive in terms of…there was definitely a learning curve, a pretty significant learning curve because—

How big was SurveyMonkey when you joined?

50.

Yeah. Still pretty small.

Super small. Yeah. But as it pertains to—I don’t know, this might sound a little crazy but the tech companies that were in New York at the time, weren’t doing amazing work, in my opinion, and SurveyMonkey was great, because it was product focused. TheLadders had a large sales force. We had like 50+ sales people trying to make money for the company, and SurveyMonkey was my first time being exposed to extremely amazing senior leadership, and everyone was so bright, energetic, and passionate about what they were working on, which was an amazing experience for me in that the first bay area company that I got to work for, was this amazing company. But for me, I chose to spend a lot of time outside of work learning, so I could be competitive in the workplace. And it was amazing because they had speakers come in like Sheryl Sandberg and Eric Reese, and that’s definitely not common [laughter]. Having access to that type of tutelage from those types of folks was amazing, and being able to read things like The Lean Startup helped me learn what the business was like at a product-focused company. That was good.

What was the impetus for you deciding to go from employee to entrepreneur? It’s such a major jump.

Yeah. I think the impetus was that I had launched a t-shirt line in college. We’ll have to go back a little bit. That was my senior year of college, and during that business, myself and my cofounders recorded a mixtape to cross-promote the t-shirt launch [laughter]. We were recording this mixtape and–

I wish more people did that.

[laughter]

So my other friends, they had gone to school for music management and they knew the business—they had a record label, they had artists that they were managing, and they had recording studios. That was my first introduction to studios and studio operations, et cetera. I’ve been a lifelong musician and I loved it and—

What did you play?

I play the alto saxophone.

Nice.

Yeah, because of Bill Clinton [laughter].

Oh man.

Actually I think it was Arsenio Hall at the time.

Anyway, after we recorded this mixtape, I moved to Brooklyn, but I wanted to continue to either write songs or record a little bit and the process of finding a studio is just ridiculously difficult. And there’s just tons of friction from the artist side to the studio owners. And at the same time I used this service called ZocDoc, which is a site that allows anyone to book their next doctor’s appointment. I figured there should be something like that for musicians, but at the time I had no idea what I needed to do to build a company, let alone a tech company or something that would connect musicians with studio owners. So, that was the driving force behind my startup.

Fast forward to when I was at SurveyMonkey—so about 2 and a half years later—I had reached a kind of glass ceiling I’d say, within SurveyMonkey. I wanted to get into writing my own research, and that was not in their business model at the time. So, you were either an engineer or owned products or business intelligence or sales, and that was kind of it at the time.

What year was that ?

2013.

So I knew that I was looking for something else. Luckily I found a position at Forrester Research, which kind of offered me that. So I was able to work with clients as a consultant and write my own research. That was nice. I was there for about six months, and got poached by SalesForce to do the same exact thing, just internally. And I hope I’m not infringing on my safe harbor [laughter]. So I went to SalesForce and did exactly that, just internally. It was myself and my boss and we helped manage all of the internal and external market research, which was awesome and a dream job. But I had been quietly working on my startup that entire time. About six months, seven months into Sales Force, it got to a point where the most important input into the startup—Freshsessions—was my time. Things were increasingly—well, my time was increasingly getting marginalized because the gig at SalesForce was a very demanding position.

“You figure out how to manage it, and what to focus on. But at the time, you’re just so overwhelmed and you’re trying to like bring in so much information. And you’re reading every article on Inc, TechCrunch, or whatever. And not knowing what to spend your precious attention and energy on, was a huge challenge.”

So you were running both at the same time.

Yes. It was crazy. We had just raised a little bit of money from some friends and family and I had a little bit of an exit, so I had some money from working at SurveyMonkey. Luckily at the time I was dating a girl who was also an entrepreneur and she just kind of told me to take the plunge.  So that was the inspiration, that was the impetus and how that happened.

Walk me through what it’s like to take the plunge into entrepreneurship and the struggles involved, the amazing parts and the bad parts.

I think the analogy of jumping out of an airplane and pulling your chute and hoping that it opens is completely accurate, because you’re not trained for the things that you’re going to encompass in trying to launch something. All of a sudden you have this free time, you have no manager, [laughter] you don’t have co-workers, so you have to adjust. If you were someone that worked independently or in a field where you were making your own decisions, I think that it becomes more comfortable for those types of folks, but I didn’t work in industries or companies like that. For me I had to figure it out while I was in the air. I had to learn how assemble my own parachute. It was interesting because my other two co-founders were still in New York, so I was managing that relationship and all of a sudden my friends went from people that we would just go out and have beers with with and talk about dumb stuff to people that had to inspire and manage. We were inspired to work towards a common goal. So, what I did was spend time reading. I asked all my friends that were in MBA programs what they were learning, what books they were reading, and asked for all the materials I could get from them, and had a little staycation that didn’t end [chuckles]. I just started reading, and that’s been part of my process up until now, honestly. I’ll have to think a little bit more on some specific stories, but the challenges were, for sure, managing friends that now were co-founders, right? But also like figuring out, “Who’s building this?” We had some talent gaps. We had to find contractors to build some front-end work for us.

Seems just like a daily battle, but exhilarating.

Yeah, for sure. You figure out how to manage it, and what to focus on. But at the time, you’re just so overwhelmed and you’re trying to like bring in so much information. And you’re reading every article on Inc, TechCrunch, or whatever. And not knowing what to spend your precious attention and energy on, was a huge challenge. And that took me like two years to learn, [chuckle] honestly.

Related to learning and soaking in all that knowledge, have you had mentors or people that you’ve looked up to for inspiration along the way?

Yes. But I think the most important source of inspiration has been my other contemporaries—like other friends I have—that have launched companies and learning from them. Even if they have launched a company that was six months ahead of mine, or a year ahead of mine—they still have so much information that could help me save time—most importantly—and money, and help me navigate the landscape more thoughtfully.

I don’t have an official mentor that I check in with consistently. I did have advisors for that first company, so I would check in with them on a monthly basis. But that was it.

Where did you build your support network of other entrepreneurs?

Events. Just getting out and showing face. Undoubtedly, you bump into people that are really either interested in you, or what you’re building, or you just connect on a personal level. And those relationships are extremely important when you’re trying to do something that either has never been done before, or you’re doing something that you’ve never done before and having that support system and people that can relate and either buy into your vision, or offer some feedback is extremely important.

Yeah. Where do you think your risk appetite came from? Like, where do you think your motivation comes from? Because not everyone has that, you know?

Yeah. I think it’s twofold. I’ve been a lifelong athlete, and I think competition is just in me. But in a healthy way, like I don’t need to be competitive in all aspects of my life—

Like the game is fun.

Yeah, for sure. For me it’s fun to exercise that, because it’s been a part of me since I was five. The second piece is that, although I grew up in a nice area, my family’s not extremely well off, and things were good when I was growing up—as the oldest—and I was given a lot of opportunity. And I’ve taken that duty—I guess that opportunity, that access to opportunity as a duty to do as much as I can, take it to the zenith, and try to support my entire family—certainly my immediate family but if I can, cousins, uncles, aunts, etc. So that’s what motivates me. And I’ve been gifted in a lot of things. I’ve figured out how to navigate a lot of different landscapes, so I’ve been successful in a lot of different areas, and I think if I’m able to leverage that to help a lot of other people, then I’ll do so.

How do your friends and family feel about the work that you’ve done and where you are now, all the way on the other coast?

Yeah, yeah. So they’re certainly sad that I’m all the way in California. I see them maybe three times a year now. But, I think they’re blown away by what I’m doing, which is amazing! I think that’s definitely something I’ve been conscious of. But I don’t think they fully understand the path that I’ve chosen to walk down or folks like me that I’ve chosen to walk down. My aunt was a teacher, my mom works in a bank, my dad’s a teacher. It’s not the same. So I don’t think they fully comprehend, but I try to bring them up to speed as much as possible and stay in touch as much as possible so they can get more of a glimpse into what’s happening.

So tell me about what you’re working on now.

Yeah, so I recently launched a mobile tele-health app called Level, that provides access to psychotherapists. So through our mobile app you can have a session with one of our therapist. The inspiration came back in March or April of 2015, when I used one of our competitors and had a terrible experience—with the service as well as the therapist—that left me feeling like a number. At the time there was a lot of chaos going on in my life and I just needed to figure out how to get to some sort of baseline so I could manage it all. After having that negative experience, I walked away thinking I could build something better. I started doing some research about the industry, what kind of barriers existed, what would work with the current legislative landscape, etc. and it seemed to be a pretty smart time to start a business like ours. So I went out, assembled a team. We have a licensed therapist on our team, and an amazing CTO. Starting in August we’ve just been churning away and started seeing patients a couple weeks ago.

“I was feeling pretty depressed and definitely experiencing acute symptoms of anxiety. The first start-up wasn’t going so well and managing that along with life in general was doing damage that I could not see until it affecting my everyday life. I was trying to do too much and brute force something that wasn’t working and I should have known to fold a little earlier. But through trying to brute force a business back to life, I started to experience symptoms of different mental health disorders.”

Do you have a lot of clientele in tech?

Oh yeah.

I feel like mental health is such an issue and so stigmatized for entrepreneurs.

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. That’s what was going on in my life in early 2015. I was feeling pretty depressed and definitely experiencing acute symptoms of anxiety. The first start-up wasn’t going so well and managing that along with life in general was doing damage that I could not see until it affecting my everyday life. I was trying to do too much and brute force something that wasn’t working and I should have known to fold a little earlier. But through trying to brute force a business back to life, I started to experience symptoms of different mental health disorders, I suppose. I believe a lot of entrepreneurs take the plunge because they have a safety net, and/or an abnormally high tolerance for risk. For me, it was the latter. I think this tolerance for risk stemmed from being able to survive—often thrive—in most circumstances life had thrown my way up to that point. Malcolm Gladwell would probably describe me as a “remote miss” in his book David and Goliath. This…survivors exhilaration, I believe, is what was driving me to continue to push the business forward, while things—around me were unraveling. And I don’t think that’s uncommon in the valley. I think there are a lot of entrepreneurs that are feeling the same way. This is certainly something entrepreneurs should be conscious of.

“I believe a lot of entrepreneurs take the plunge because they have a safety net, and/or an abnormally high tolerance for risk. For me, it was the latter. I think this tolerance for risk stemmed from being able to survive—often thrive—in most circumstances life had thrown my way up to that point.”

Yeah, I still feel this way, where we’re all pressured to have our peer-face on and be like, “Everything is great. Everybody’s great. I’m great. Look at my Instagram. Look how good my life is. Look at my lifestyle.” I think it creates a lot of people who feel lonely.

Yeah, I can see that.

It’s like everybody’s pretending.

But how do you manage that? Because you’re the face of a company. So when the face of the company is so close to what you’re actually experiencing because it’s the same person. What parts do you show, right?

Yeah. Knowing that people have so much access to you.

Yeah. I don’t know the answer.

Yeah. I think some people just either get off the grid, right? They’re not on Twitter. They’re not on Instagram.

Yeah.

Right. And they don’t do events, things along those lines. And they just kind of pop up with products.

Yeah.

But yeah. I don’t know what the answer is.

In a similar vein, what has been kind of the hardest or lowest points for you in this whole tech journey? It might be work-related, it might be personal.

Definitely it was personal.

So my ex-girlfriend that kind of like gave me this inspiration to take this plunge—it’s interesting because that part of my life was progressing pretty quickly, and the first start-up was great and going well, reasonably well…but for about the last six months of the business, it was certainly not going well. And figuring out how to be a good partner and not bring pretty stressful work circumstances into the house was hard to manage, and I didn’t manage it well, if I did at all. So that was a part of it, but I think ultimately just managing when things aren’t going well and knowing when to fold, and knowing how to manage a decline because there are things more important, like family and relationships.

“We’re all pressured to have our peer-face on and be like, ‘Everything is great. Everybody’s great. I’m great. Look at my Instagram. Look how good my life is. Look at my lifestyle.’ I think it creates a lot of people who feel lonely.”

Yeah. Well, having gone through that myself, it’s like when your work is your life and it’s your baby, and your heart, and your soul, and it’s going really hard, how do you separate yourself? I don’t know if you can.

I don’t think you can either.

How do you not bring that home because you are your start up.

Exactly. Yeah. I think you try to figure out how to communicate through it. And that’s probably the largest lesson I learned. How to clearly, objectively communicate—not communicating to prove a point, but to gain understanding and share information the right way. And, yeah that’s been valuable for me not only in my personal life, but professional as well.

Yeah. It’s so nice to have a support network of people who get you, who understand why you’re an entrepreneur because they’re similar. I’m personally very grateful for friends who understand why I would do a hundred interviews [laughter] for some random project in addition to my own work.

If you don’t, what else do we have? I’m sure you feel this way—I don’t want to speak for you, but I feel this way—if this is something that came into your head and you figured out a plan on how to do it and you think it’s a worth-while cause, do it. To not to is like…

Exactly. You just got to do it.

How do you feel about the state of tech in 2016? You’ve been in it for a little while and you’ve seen change—what are you pumped about and what are you frustrated with?

I am pumped that there is a huge push into increasing accessibility to different groups of people, I won’t even say minorities, I think it’s just people in general. Not only from the standpoint of getting access into jobs at certain companies, but learning different skills, or even having internet for the first time in their lives—when you start to think internationally. I think that is going to breed amazing opportunities, products, and services that are not only useful, but are just really really cool because so many different types of people have access to the tools to create things.  so that’s what I’m most excited about. And I’m excited that there are a lot of companies that operate on massive scales to actually make an impact—like Facebook or Google for, example. What I’m most frustrated with is—I think it’s a product of people being able to quickly create products or solve problems—but I don’t think people are working on great things. And maybe that’s some kind of bourgeois comment, but I see a lot of BS companies getting getting worked on. This is valuable time. I would much rather spend time thinking a little bit more and working on something that impacts people’s lives versus the next sophomoric Uber for X app. There actually is an Uber for puppies going around. Yes, people love puppies, but at the same time, spending a little bit more time in trying to create something that increases a lot of value or injects a lot of value into people’s lives is far more worthwhile to me.

“This is valuable time. I would much rather spend time thinking a little bit more and working on something that impacts people’s lives versus the next sophomoric Uber for X app. There actually is an Uber for puppies going around. Yes, people love puppies, but at the same time, spending a little bit more time in trying to create something that increases a lot of value or injects a lot of value into people’s lives is far more worthwhile to me.”

Are there any companies that you’re really excited about who are doing meaningful work?

I think Good Eggs is a great example. I know they just had to lay off a decent amount of folks, but increasing access to sustainable foods, and employing a lot of people in the process, is pretty cool to me.

And I think they did a good job from a branding perspective as well. The whole package is pretty cool.

What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned while you have worked in tech?

Ask, “why?”

And this is—I’m just really interested in getting to the root of things, and the more that you ask, “why?” , the less time there is for the opportunity there is from miscommunication and I’ve already mentioned I’m pretty big on communication now.

Secondly, act fast and ask for forgiveness not for permission.

Lastly—this is a life motto—find your passion and inspire. I believe fulfillment is inevitable with this motto in mind. That has certainly been true for me. I’ve always had a passion for helping people and I think that is what led me to launch this second company.

Yeah, I love that. I love that both of your projects are autobiographical in a way you know it’s like—

Yeah, they are.

—it’s like you’ve created something essentially for yourself, like to resolve a problem within yourself and so like you’re kind of your own primary case study. I just feel like, I wouldn’t do this project if it didn’t have something to do with me. I just feel like the really high-quality work comes from personal experience.

Absolutely I agree.

Where do you see yourself in five or ten years? Do you think you’ll still be here? You seem to love San Francisco.

I like San Francisco. No, I do. I love San Francisco but I can’t spend all of my time here. I just know what it is and I love it for what it is, but at the same time it leaves me yearning for things that it’s not—and instead of speaking in the abstract—and it leaves me yearning for diversity in my day-to-day life. Not just racially but socio-economically as well. Although I love the area and all that it can offer in a three-hour radius and all the amazing things that I can do. There are very few places in the world that you can have access to that type of stuff, those types of opportunities. I’d like to have a home here, but probably not stay here year round. So then I start to think about where else I might go and I don’t think there’s anywhere else in the US, I’ve done New York, I love New York.

Me too.

But I’m not ready to get back yet. Europe I think is probably next.

I totally understand where you’re coming from. In this project even I feel very prompted to just talk about how it’s not just a problem of recruiting. It’s a problem of keeping, in terms of diverse folks. It’s not just the pipeline problem. It’s that people come, and then they leave because it doesn’t feel quite right and I don’t know what the solution is, but I just feel like it’s worth talking about.

You’re right. I think it’s certainly changing because—I was vocal about this when I first moved here. Just having access to the lifestyle I had when I lived in New York took a long while to find. When I moved here there weren’t bars that played amazing music. A lot of the bars, if they played music, it was super corny [laughter].

New York restaurant music is astronomically better.

And people don’t dance here. Well, they do now, but not as much. Exactly, you know [laughter]! But I think people are recognizing that and there are amazing companies like Toasted Life, for example, which some of my friends own, that cater to black millennials, and they put on awesome events at venues in the Bay Area, and they play awesome music. The more that people do things like that, the more palatable living in San Francisco will be for people moving from other cities and countries.

One of my favorite things about New York—I lived there, just for a little bit. Every time I go back there, it definitely feels more culturally vibrant and diverse, but there’s more equalizers, like the subway. Everybody rides the subway. Everybody eats dollar slices of pizza late at night. Everybody gets bagels. I just feel like the lifestyles converge, of everyone, at certain points. I still use public transportation here, because I live next to a BART station, but I don’t feel like there are those unplanned collisions in the same way here.

Not at all. Where would they be, you know?

What advice would you give  to folks from similar backgrounds to yours and similar perspectives to yours who are hoping to get into tech? Or in tech now and are struggling?

I think—and I’m speaking from experience because this has helped me—I think dedicating yourself to learning helps you dedicate yourself towards growth. The only way that you achieve growth—in my opinion—consciously is through consistent effort to learn new things and step outside of your comfort zone. So I would recommend folks that are trying to get into tech to definitely try to learn as much as possible, but also step outside of their comfort zone often because again, that’s where the growth is. And this is a place where you’re consistently expected to create things that don’t exist yet, so you’re going to need to figure out how to be comfortable in that space because it’s not a comfortable space initially.

“The only way that you achieve growth—in my opinion—consciously is through consistent effort to learn new things and step outside of your comfort zone.”

So—if you’re currently in tech—I recommend to work on worthwhile problems. Don’t waste your time at a company or working on a project that  you don’t believe in. Clearly, there’s some leeway there, right? But ultimately if you can align yourself with a company that has similar values as you, then you can be confident in the majority of the work—or the net of the work—that you do is going to be positive and be in the same direction that you would already be going. I think, again, that that breeds quality, but I also think it breeds happiness because you’re working on problems you care about and it increases the likelihood you’re going to ultimately end up fulfilled…versus going to some other company and hitting the same type of keyboard, but working on something you don’t believe in, and in two or three years you’re not going to feel fulfilled about how you used your time. And your time is very, very precious.

“Work on worthwhile problems. Don’t waste your time at a company or working on a project that  you don’t believe in.”

I was born in Redding, California. My parents lived in Hayfork, which is a small town about an hour and a half outside of Redding. My dad is a Seventh Day Adventist minister and my mother is an RN. So I grew up in a very kind of traditional, middle-class, American home. I grew up mostly in Northern California. My dad moved around a bit because of working for the church. I lived in Redding, lived in the Napa area for a while, moved back to Redding. I did junior high, high school there in Redding. I don’t know, I guess during that time I had no clue where my life was headed. I was obviously dealing with a lot of gender stuff, even at a young age. But growing up in a pastor’s home, you’re not really able or ready to deal with that. So things didn’t really connect with me on the identity front or even the career front until much later in my life. I homeschooled for a while when I was a kid. Mostly because I did really well in English and reading and those type of things, but not so good in math or the sciences, so I was constantly fighting this battle over either being really behind everyone in terms of math in school, or being really ahead of everyone in terms of reading. We would have lesson plans and I would finish and then just be sitting there bored for 25 minutes. In fourth and fifth grade that’s not a really fun place to be. So I homeschooled third, fourth, fifth and sixth grades. Went back in seventh grade.

What was it like coming back in the middle of middle school?

It was really different. Going from homeschooling we had these booklets. So you would work through the booklets and then basically for a school year you had to finish 12 of them. You could do them at your own pace, so I would actually do most of them really early, I would work really hard and finish my entire year of school in less than a year of actual school. Which was great, because as a kid it gave me much more time to read and study the things I wanted to study, and tinker with computers. Growing up I had a Commadore 64 that I liked to screw around on. It gave me the opportunity to have a lot more free time to play with things, which was kind of fun.

So you were tinkering with computers. What were the early inclinations that you may be interested in tech?

It’s one of those things that I can look back now and identify stuff, but at the time I had no clue. Hindsight is 20/20, you know? I remember in junior high once I did go back to school—- it was when the TI graphing calculators were really big, and it’s amazing because they haven’t changed at all, even now, but the TI-83 and the TI-85 I think, or whatever they were— I used to take some of those with my friends and we wrote choose-your-own adventure RPG games in the style of those books, where there would be story things that were happening and you would choose where to go. It’s essentially like what twine games are now, especially in the queer women’s community. There’s a lot of twine gaming stuff. But we were doing that on a graphing calculator and passing it back and forth in class to play each other’s little games. That’s probably one of the most crystallized moments.

I played a lot of video games and computer games. Being somewhat gender-weird and feeling like an outsider, spending a lot of time at home on the computer, and lived on message boards and in online chatrooms and in game lobbies, playing games with weird people from all over. I guess technology always kind of was a connection to other people. It was definitely me reaching out trying to connect with people like me, other weirdos. It was a way of connecting that was really easy for me. Tech allowed you to be whoever you wanted to be, which was kind of cool. I think those are some of the earliest times when I noticed that I was somewhat good. I built a Windows 95 machine by myself and would take apart computers and rebuild them. I don’t do anything with hardware now, but looking back I can see the little kernels of getting interested in some of this stuff.

So, take me from getting a Master’s in Fine Arts and Theatre, and then eventually becoming a self-taught coder. Walk me through college, and that kind of wild transition.

So I went to college after high school. In high school I played in a lot of bands and was really interested in extracurricular stuff, and didn’t really have an academic focus. I learned that I kind of liked English a little bit more than I thought I did. But the big thing that I loved was theatre. I got to college, and first quarter I decided to audition for the play that the school was doing, and ended up getting myself cast in a devised ensemble theatre piece that we created ourselves, rehearsing 20 hours a week on top of our freshman load of classes. So I really fell into the theatre.

I changed my major 13 times in college. The first time was before I even got on campus, because when I registered switched my major and my minor, and so I had to change my major before I even started classes. Then I largely changed every quarter. Sometimes it was like minor changes, like I changed my minor out, I started off as a History major with a Religion minor. I dropped the Religion minor and then I added a Photography minor, then switched and did a Photography major and a History minor. Dropped the History minor, added a Graphic Design minor [chuckles]. It was just incremental weird changes. But again the kind of consistent thing in my life was theater. I was in theater rehearsals pretty much every quarter of my college experience.

By my Junior year, I was TA-ing for the Intro to Theater class. Freshmen when they would come in or— we made people who were trying to get teaching certificates take the class. For the education students, it’s a class which helps you get comfortable being up in front of people. I was the TA for that class for two years as an undergraduate, as a Junior and Senior. I kind of realized that I really enjoyed the classroom, I really enjoyed I had that realization that ultimately I liked learning. It didn’t really matter what major I was. I just enjoyed being in class. It kind of became clear that I needed to go to grad school. I very quickly settled on an English degree with an emphasis in Theater. I declared that my Junior year, winter quarter, and I graduated at the end of a regular four-year college program, which is kind of absurd [chuckles].

I was in an honors program which allowed me to get rid of most of my general ed and just take one honors course a quarter. It was Greatbooks focused. Some of them were more scientific, some of them were more literature-focused. We had one called Pattern which became relevant later on. We read Godel, Escher, Bach and we read Flatland and we talked a lot about things that would become more important as I became a software engineer. Just in terms of pattern recognition, how you build things and build systems that talk to each other. It’s funny because because that was actually the class that I hated the most out of my entire honors course. It just didn’t seem as relevant to me. It’s funny that that’s the one that now is probably the most relevant to my work.

I Graduated in 2010 and had, in January of 2010, applied for a master’s program in theater education. One of the three programs in the nation that really focus on this,and it was in Richmond, Virginia so I moved cross-country. I’d only ever lived in California. Moved to Richmond, Virginia and did two years of graduate course work there. That’s also when I started to come out and transition. It was kind of during that time, and then graduated from there in 2012. So I went straight from undergrad into graduate work. Graduated with a master’s degree at 22, 23.

After grad school, I moved back home with my parents and promptly couldn’t get a job doing anything, anywhere for any money. I had applied for teaching positions all over the nation. I had applied for adjunct for full teaching positions. I came pretty close to one position teaching theatre, actually at my undergrad, which was a conservative, private, Christian college. It was right before, and during as I was dealing with gender issues. It’s probably a good thing  I didn’t get that job, looking back on it. So I moved home with my parents, and got a minimum wage job in San Francisco, doing customer service. I guess it was a little bit more than minimum wage. San Francisco minimum wage is $12, and I was making $14. I worked for a company called The Civic Center Benefit District, literally cleaning the streets, interacting with the homeless population in San Francisco, helping visitors to the Civic Center District find their way to the symphony, the opera house, picking up syringes on the ground.

It was not fulfilling work. It was not work I felt good about doing. What the company would say, and what the company would make us do were two very different things. They said that our job was just to advise homeless people about city ordinances. Then they wanted us to actually enforce and get people to move on and not camp in front of businesses that were paying the Benefit District money. So I really struggled with it from a moral sense, but I needed the money and I was getting to the point where I didn’t want to live with my parents any more. I had started transition. I needed to start my own life.

A friend of mine who is a Software Engineer for Intel and the Yocto project. She came down and visited San Francisco, and we went out for drinks one night. She was like, “You should teach yourself how to program. I think you’d be really good at it.” I was like, [chuckles] “Are you kidding?” I didn’t deliberately take a math class in college. I have not taken a math class since high school. My junior year of high school, and I intentionally planned it out that way. I took the honors programs that I didn’t have to take any math. She was like, “You don’t need to know math to be a good software engineer. That’s a lie.”

So she planted this seed gave me some stupid trivia question. The question was essentially like, “There’s a wall and there are two light switches on one side and three lightbulbs on the other. You start on the side with the light switches and you can only go to the other side once. You have to figure out which light switch goes to which bulb.” The solution to me was very apparent. You turn one light switch on for a little while and then you turn that one off. You turn the other one on, and you go to the other side, and you check which one is cold. There are two off; one of them is warm, one of them is cold, and then one of them is on. It tells you which one’s which. I came up with that answer in about five minutes. She looked at me and she was like, “You need to go home and start learning how to program right now.”

So I did. I went home and I started working on Code Academy and started going through their online courses. I started with JavaScript. I found out that JavaScript is really confusing and kind of difficult, and actually gave up at first. I spent two weeks on JavaScript and got really frustrated and felt like it was moving very quickly and I wasn’t comprehending stuff. All of the extra syntax and curly braces and semicolons were just confusing me. So I gave up.

It was probably another month or so later I started dating a girl who was a Ruby engineer. We were kind of talking and I told her about my experience with Javascript and she’s like, “Oh, you should try Ruby. I think Ruby would be easier for you. It would be a better way to start.” So I did.  I started with Ruby and kind of fell in love and rushed through the CodeAcademy stuff and did a whole bunch of other online tutorials. There’s one called “Ruby Monk.” I did Test First Ruby the RubyKoans. I did anything I could get my hands on that was Ruby. And that probably took me about three months or so. I started to feel like I kind of knew what I was doing.

I Went to my first hack-a-thon after like two months— I had done a little bit of HTML and CSS work in college on my own blog or when I worked with a theater company I did some of the marketing and ticket sales, so I did a very bare bones HTML site for them. This was the first actual scripting, actual programming. In November of that year, which was 2014, I started working on a web application that indexes and maps gender-neutral restroom locations called REFUGE Restrooms. Started that at a hackathon. The team that I was working with wanted to do it in Python, JavaScript, and I said, “Okay. I’ll hop out where I can. I don’t have a ton of experience with those languages.”

After the hackathon, they didn’t really want to keep going. And this was a project that I cared a lot about, and I wanted to use it to keep learning. I felt like I had gone to a point where I knew a lot of building blocks, but I didn’t know how to build a house yet. I knew how to hammer some nails and do some screws into a few boards, but I didn’t know how to actually build a table. I had gotten frustrated, but finally I had this idea. I had this thing that I could actually build. So many people, when I started to teach myself, they were like, “Oh well, just build something.” I didn’t even know where start to build something. But finally I had an idea, and so I kind of started and had some terrible best practices in the original version of it, but worked on it for a couple months and took it to another hack-a-thon and got some people to help. In February, we launched the first iteration of it, RefugeRestrooms. During the month of February we got 35,000 unique site visits. And we were featured in AutoStraddle, Bustle, HuffPost Gay Voices, Advocate.

Awesome.

Mind you, at the same time I was working full time at this minimum wage job. I was pushing code in the morning before work. I usually worked a 2:00 to 11:00 PM shift. I was pushing code during my lunch breaks. I was pushing code after, on the way home on BART. I was coding until 1:00 AM, making bug fixes, because people are complaining about stuff, and then going back to work the next day. I was working eight hours at my job but then a full total of like 14 or more hours a day actually on this. My job really wasn’t well supervised, so I snuck into the library with my computer and pushing code while I was getting paid to clean the streets of San Francisco. I was working really hard. It was really exhausting. I was responding to press inquiries on my way walking to work. It was absurd.

I got to the point where something had to give. To get to the next level in my software engineering I needed to get paid to write code. I needed to spend all day writing code instead of spending all day trying to do other work. I started applying for jobs and applying for internships and entry-level positions and didn’t make a whole lot of inroads. Almost had a job with a non-profit, but they decided to go with someone who had more experience. I actually posted on Twitter. I was like, “Hey, I need a job. I work hard. I’m a self-starter. I completely taught myself. I launched this project from scratch. Someone take a chance on me.” I got a bunch of responses. Some of them started to go somewhere, some of them didn’t. but got a response from someone who worked for a small startup about 16 people—YC funded. They had just raised series B. They usually worked with interns from a school, and they were getting ready to have a new intern term, but they were open to hiring an intern not from a school—and asked if I would be interested in that. I said yes. I did a take-home problem for them. Came in, did an interview with them—an in-person interview for half a day. A week later they gave me an offer, and the offer was over twice what my salary was at my old job [chuckles]. I tried not to say yes too fast [chuckles]. Gave a week’s notice at my old company and very quickly moved into tech. My last day of work working at my old company was Sunday, and I started at the new company on Monday.

Found myself doing this six-month internship at a company that has actually ended up doing quite well. I work for a company called FutureAdvisor. We were acquired in October of this last year by BlackRock—the largest financial asset manager in the world. After being an intern for six months, I got promoted to full time very quickly as teams grow and change.  I am now the most tenured member of the front end team. There’s only four other engineers who have been at the company longer than me—which is a cool feeling [chuckles]. Yeah.

Tell me what you were expecting to get out of tech—you were hoping to get out of tech, and then tell me how it’s changed your life?

The biggest thing I was hoping for was a little bit of stability. When you’re working minimum wage, trying to live in the Bay area is really hard. Stuff has gotten even more ridiculous over the past couple of years, but even three years ago, it was still pretty ridiculous. I had an amazing deal for housing. I had a two-bedroom apartment in Berkeley that I was sharing with someone, and it was 1,300 dollars for the entire apartment, for the two-bedroom. I was paying 650 plus utilities, so my rent was 700-something. My take-home from my minimum wage job was 1,600 dollars a month. Almost half of my paycheck was going to rent. Then commute bart into the city, that’s about 250 bucks a month. Food is another 250 bucks a month, if you’re living really bare-bones, which meant I had 200 dollars a month of squeeze room. That’s exhausting. That gets exhausting to live that way.

Being trans, and having trans health care needs that are more expensive that a lot of insurance still don’t cover. It’s gotten better, but you just have a lot more extra expenses. So, I was really struggling, and so I was hoping for some amount of stability, being able to start to craft a life for myself. During this whole process, I ended up having a lot of housing instability. My roommate was going to leave the lease, and I could take over and get my own roommate to come in, which I was really excited about. And then, five weeks before the lease was up, he was like, “So, I decided to stay, so I’m showing somebody else your room today.” And I went, “Oh, okay. Well, I guess I’m looking for someplace else?” I’d been subletting the room from him essentially, he was the main lease holder. I subleased a small basement room in Bernal Heights for a few months. I lived in a warehouse in San Francisco for a little bit. I moved three times within the space of 1.5 months, which was really brutal and exhausting.

So, I’ve finally kind of gotten to a little bit of a more secure spot. I make a lot more money each month now. And working for a company that got acquired, I had suddenly extra money that I had to figure out what to do with. Two years ago, I didn’t have any money saved for retirement. I have $80,000 in student debt, so it’s really I’m just really swamped. I’ve started to make progress on my student loans. I had student loans at Sally Mae and student loans at the government. I’ve now completely paid off the Sally Mae loans, so I just have the government loans now. I actually, with my acquisition money, because I had already hit my one year cliff when we got acquired. I used that money as a down payment on a house. So, I’m a homeowner in the Bay Area now. And as long as I make my payments, I have housing stability for the rest of my life. I’m still getting extra stock payouts every month, and there are bonus pools built into our acquisition deal and stuff. And if those things work out in my favor, I could have the house paid off by the time I’m in my mid 30s, which is absurd.  There’s no way I could have even conceived that.

I was working minimum wage, did not have good health care. My deductible was 1,500 dollars. Surgery was a pipe dream. Being able to get bottom surgery. Suddenly working for a company that has really good health care, because it’s in tech, and they care about employees. My deductible is 200 dollars. My max out of pocket is 2,500 dollars. I got surgery for 2,500 dollars, which is absurd. It’s absurd. To go from, that wouldn’t have ever been a possibility for me, to suddenly, it was within my grasp. It was one of those things in my wildest dreams, I hoped could come from taking a career change in tech, but you have no clue. You have no clue what’s going to happen. Being someone who’s trans, being a trans woman, there’s a lot of prejudice, so you never know if you’re going to even be able to get a job in tech. You hear that things are somewhat better in tech. You never know, right? And I do think I kind of lucked out that my company really makes an effort for diversity. When I started there were five engineers and counting myself, three of us were women. I guess six counting myself so half of the team was women. That’s absurd, like that is absurd in startups. So, I kind of lucked out and I think finding the right spot I could kind of thrive in, it’s not been without it’s difficulties. As the team has grown and changed and brought on more people and new managers come in and whatever but…yeah.

This is such a good story. I’m so happy for you. 

It’s been really incredible.

I want to know more about your experience as being trans in tech. I also want to know what it’s like being someone with anxiety and depression in tech. I’ve talked to several trans folks in this project and I’ve also talked to a lot of folks with anxiety and depression. I want to know more about both of those for you.

Sure I guess I’ll talk about the anxiety first.

That is something on a day to day basis that does affect me. For awhile, I was pursuing getting actual medication for it. Let’s see. I’m trying to figure out the best way to get into this discussion. Maybe the best way is to, again, talk about the difference from working at my minimum wage job before to now.

When I was working a minimum wage job and I had a really bad mental health day, I still had to try to go to work. I still had to wake up, force myself to get out the door, because I literally could not afford to take a day off. You only have so much vacation hours, you only have so much sick hours. So, you literally can’t afford to take time off. You’re also in a situation where because of money situations, your anxiety is increased. So, it’s a tightrope walk. Right.

Getting a job in tech alleviates those money concerns. Like, my team has a “unlimited paid time off” policy. We also have sick days that our policy is, if you are not feeling well, don’t come into the office. I haven’t explicitly talked about mental health stuff with many of my coworkers, but the culture of my company is where somebody just sends an email and says, “Hey, I’m not feeling well. I’m going to work from home today,” or, “I’m going to go home,” they’re not met with a lot of questioning of that. In many regards, it’s a much healthier place.

On the other hand, though, the stakes of my job are a lot higher now. Before, I was getting paid to pick up syringes off the ground. Whether or not I picked them up today or tomorrow, there are going to be more syringes tomorrow. There’s going to be more trash tomorrow. It’s a never-ending process. If someone wasn’t there to tell a homeless person to move down the street, I actually felt better about my day. Versus, I work for a company that, we have millions of dollars under management.  We now are working with BlackRock— are working on major, major business deals. Our first business to business deal was announced a couple months ago. So we’re now partnering with other large banks to provide our service to their customers. That’s incredible, right? We have millions and millions of dollars under management. The stakes are all higher.

Granted I work on the framing mostly and I’m not dealing with the back-end algorithm that could really mess up someone’s financial future for the rest of their retirement. So the stakes are a little bit lower for me. But tech is a very fast-paced world. It’s go, go, go, go, go, go, go, which I think can be really hard as someone who struggled with anxiety and depression. I don’t know, I guess it’s been a mixed bag for me in terms of that. It’s been really rewarding to work on a team where I’m respected and where my opinion is valued and where I’m seen as someone who knows what I’m talking about. From a depression sense, it’s good to work at a place where I feel like my work is important and valued. We’re not working on Uber for ice cream cones. We’re working on something that, I think, is making the world a better place. We’re making retirement more accessible to people who couldn’t get there without us. That’s been something that’s helped my depression. Definitely.

Being able to create stability for myself has helped immensely. Being able to buy a home, being able to get surgery— those are the things that qualitatively improve my mental health, vastly. Since I bought my house—granted it’s only been a couple months—I bought my house in November, but my level of anxiety and depression shot down immediately. I’ve been a medical marijuana patient for a year and a half or two and used that to treat a lot of my anxiety. I was on Lexapro for a while, but realized that when I tend to have anxiety attacks, I tend to forget to take my medication. Which, taking an SSRI every day, you have to remember to take your medication. And so the way that that was treating the way that my anxiety manifest wasn’t really actually very helpful. But the amount in which I’ve had to medicate My anxiety and depression has dropped enormously, especially recently, which is great.

I think in general, people who work in tech, people who are engineers, are weird people. We are the people that are on the autism spectrum, we’re the people that struggle with anxiety and depression. So I feel like when I go to work, I’m working with people who, on some level, even if you don’t talk about it, they get it. They get when you’re having a hard time, they get whatever. Which is very different than I feel like working in some other sectors, because again, the people who developed good computer skills and learned how to talk and work with machines, are the people who didn’t have good people skills growing up [chuckles]. So they were the weirdos, with anxiety and depression, who didn’t want to go out and socialize and hang out at parties. They’re the people who just go home, and cuddle on the couch and watch TV every night. So I feel like tech has been a good place for me as someone who struggles with anxiety and depression.

Again, I think my viewpoint is probably a little bit skewed because I work for a company that I think is really positive. I also didn’t have to do a transition at work. All of my documentation and stuff were changed before I got into tech. I just came in with all of my documentation saying Teagan, with everything saying Teagan. I didn’t have to try to transition on a job place and come out to people. I just started work. I don’t keep it a secret from people. It’s pretty hard to because— I don’t know, I wrote this web application that indexes and maps neutral restroom locations and if you Google my name it’s the first thing that comes up. This advocate article with me. Whatever disillusioned hope I ever had of being stealth or whatever is not something that’s a reality for me. And I wouldn’t want to be anyway. It’s not something I bring up with people a lot, unless I become friends with them through the workplace, but I don’t try to hide it.  If it comes up in casual conversation, like I sometimes just say, ‘Oh, you know, because I’m trans, like blah, blah, blah this thing that I deal with’ or whatever.

I will say the acquisition process was a lot more stressful because of being trans and specifically because of healthcare. We had a really good health clinic and healthcare plan and policy for trans healthcare. I had already scheduled my surgery. Everything had been approved. Everything was in place, and then three months before surgery we get acquired. So suddenly, all of that is up in the air. When I’m having conversations then with my superiors about how I’m feeling about the acquisition, I have to be blatant and upfront about, ‘Look, these are all of the things.’ Where other people are just being concerned about money or about if they’re still going to have their job or whatever, there’s all of these extra levels of concerns that I had. Going from working a small San Francisco startup to a huge mulitnational corporation— it’s very different. In terms of how trans people are treated, you never know how that change is going to happen. So it made the process leading up to surgery be really stressful. I was not productive, and it was just from a very logistical standpoint of that all of our benefits suddenly changed. And so there was disability stuff to figure out, and there was leave stuff to figure out that then all had to be redone, and rechanged, and refiled, and you’re working on the clock. Right, because our benefits changed over January 1st, and my surgery was January 19. So that was an exhausting kind of moment. In general though, I think it’s been really good.

There’s another kind of genderqueer person who works at my company. There are two other gay men— so our engineering team is probably about 21 or 22 right now, 22, 23. Four of us are LGBT, so again I think it’s a little bit of an abnormal sample, not representative of tech everywhere. But it’s pretty cool, right, to be able to go to work and be seen by your co-workers. You know, there were other people at my company. So working in a really nice diverse workplace, I think has made it fairly easy to be trans in the workplace. I do notice some elements of— I feel like it’s been kind of creeping up as we grow and become more corporate in our culture, that men’s voices are being heard more than women’s voices. I think we’ve done some hard work to make sure that’s not the case. We have three, four engineering teams, one of them is managed by a woman. Our director of Algorithms is a woman. I’m the most senior engineer on the front-end staff, so we’ve done well and we’ve hired additional women, but I do notice management tends to pay more attention to the male members of the team, and it’s not— I don’t know. I don’t know, maybe it has gotten to the point where people are actually getting paid more than other people. I don’t know. Salary is such a weird thing in tech.

Maybe one last question would be, what kind of advice would you have for people that have faced similar struggles in either gender confusion or poverty, or all of the things you’ve been through, what are the biggest lessons that you’ve learned that you wished you’d known in the beginning?

I don’t know. It’s hard. I don’t want to be the person who says “Work hard and it’ll pay off,” because that’s kind of bullshit. And I do have a lot of privilege, and i try to be cognizant of that. I’m white. I come from a well-educated background. I’m suffering from a lot of student loans because of it now, but I was able to go to college and learn a lot of things about the world, which has made it much easier for me to succeed now. And so I think I want to recognize those things because it’s not just a situation of “Do good work. Work hard and it’ll pay off.” It’s not that.

Absolutely, the privileges and the things that— the situations that we come from affect our ability to succeed. You just have to hustle. Life is a fucking hustle. And, obviously, there’s mental health stuff and physical ability is— stuff and not everyone can do what I was doing in terms of working 14, 16-hour days to literally just push through. I don’t know.

Listen to yourself. Figure it out what it is that you want. Set some goals. Start working towards them. Evaluate, move forward.

Find a mentorship. I wouldn’t have been able to do what I’ve done without mentors across different parts of that journey. Whether it was Beth really on pushing me to even sit down and write my first line of code, or my friend Matt much later on when I had the internship, starting to talk about career development and where I wanted to go and how to maneuver to get promoted to full-time and to start a career track. Find people. There are career people, there are women that have been doing this, and they can help. Maybe not tell you what to do, but provide a sounding board, give wisdom from their own experience. I found that kind of stuff is really helpful because I could ask questions like, “Am I going crazy or is this something that is actually happening? Is this something that I need to be concerned about with the way that this manager is acting?” Because it can be really easy to get caught in your own struggle and your own moment, so being able to get a little perspective and jump outside of that is really helpful sometimes.

I pay for a therapist every week and it’s the best decision I ever made [laughter].

I was born in San Bernardino, but I grew up in Colton, a train town right next to it.
My grandfather was a farmer in Mexico. He came to the US to work for the Santa Fe Railroad Company, and that’s how we ended up where we did. The train yard was maybe four or five blocks from where we grew up. My father was also born in Mexico but grew up mostly in the US. My mother was born is San Diego. Her father was in the Navy, and he was stationed down in San Diego for a while. She moved back to San Bernardino at one point because of an illness with one of her siblings. So she grew up mainly in San Bernardino and my dad grew up mainly in Colton. They had four children. I’m the youngest. We’re all four years apart, so it’s pretty easy to tell our ages apart.

At a very young age I experienced a pretty significant trauma. I have a burn on my arm.

Oh yeah. I didn’t notice until now.

Most people don’t notice it. The story of the burn on my arm from what I was told (because I don’t remember any of it) is they used to have bottle warmers with super long cords back in the 80s. I was wearing some pajamas crawling around, and I pulled the cord down and the scalding water landed on my arm and soaked into the pajamas. You have this super hot heated water—not boiling—but hot enough that when pressed against my skin for so long— it basically melted my skin. I think what they said was they ran cold water over it and then took me to hospital and when the doctors went to cut the pajamas off, my skin had stuck to the pajamas.

Oh my god.

They bandaged it, and they sent me back home and I was just crying constantly in pain for a couple of days. We had a family friend was a doctor and he said, “No, this is wrong. They totally messed this up.” And so he sent me to a burn center where they undressed the burn and then they put my arm in a bath – like some kind of medicinal bath – and they went and they scrubbed the dead skin off; this is something they had to do several times. Basically, every time the burn would scab over, I’d have to go back to the hospital, put it in the bath, and have it scrubbed off, have my skin scrubbed off. I mean, if this had been taken care of properly, I probably wouldn’t have any visible scarring at all. This is a symptom of not having the burn properly taken care of.

“I got hurt a lot when I was little.”

I think that whole experience shaped me, shaped my personality. It’s something that I didn’t know until the last couple years. I knew about the burn experience, but I didn’t know a lot of the details. One of the things I talked with my therapist was about was the burn experience. She thinks it had a pretty significant effect on my personality. I tend to be a little more introverted, very protective, and defensive of myself. That plays into a part of my personality, and how it became a part of who I am. Maybe if that hadn’t of happened, I could have been a much more outgoing person. I don’t know.

So that was like a very early trauma experience for me. There’s lots of other stuff that’s happened in my life. I don’t think we’ll have enough time to talk about all of it, but that was one of the significant things.

Yeah, totally. I’m all ears. I’ve actually been reading for myself a lot last year. I read a lot about things that were relevant to me and my growth, but I read a particular book that affected me in a lot of ways. About how childhood traumas—whether or not you remember them—you tend to cope, depending on when they happened, you tend to cope in one way or the opposite way. And, you may not even remember it, but it ends up just completely defining your personality profile, people you gravitate toward, etc. I have no idea what happened to me, because I don’t remember. I can make assumptions based on how I grew up. But it’s really fascinating, and horrible, and heartbreaking to hear so many stories of people having—based on very, very early things that they may not even remember—can completely shape them as a human being and how they cope.

I think it’s interesting. I don’t know why this happened, but it may have been one of those things where it’s like, “Oh, we don’t want you to feel different, so let’s not make a big deal about this. You’re no different. Nothing different has happened.” And, so I thought, “Well, this hasn’t had any effect on me. I am just the way I am, because, I’m no different than anyone else.” But, it took some additional processing as an adult to be like, “Yeah, I am different, and that’s not a bad thing.”

When I was a child, I guess there was a common theme of being different is bad, so “let’s not imply that someone’s different.” Instead of an attitude of“being different is great.” You’re adding this different spice to the recipe, and that’s valuable. I think because of that, when I was growing up, I thought, “Well, this is not a factor.” As an adult and re-processing things, I’m like, “I think this is a pretty big factor.” And, there are other people who struggle with this kind of stuff, too, I know. My sister—her husband’s a firefighter—and she invited me this year to go to a burn survivors retreat in Southern California; she invited me to talk about my experience. I’m really looking forward to doing that.

I’m in my 30s and I’m just barely starting to explore this part of my life. It’s like I don’t know what my story is because I haven’t really started to explore it until, like at this point. But yeah that was one experience.

I got hurt a lot when I was little. My brothers and I always used to get into trouble. We had off-road vehicles—ATCs, three-wheelers—we used to ride all the time. We grew up in a part of Colton—the south of the freeway part—which is the not good part of the city. Partly because the Projects were across the street and it was mixed in with industrial. You had the train yards, you had factories, there is a cement manufacturing plant nearby. We lived in probably one of the worst places you could grow up as far as health, safety, things like that. We couldn’t play at the local park because my parents said, “It’s too dangerous.” I remember going there one time and finding hypodermic needles in the jungle gym thing and being like, “Oh yeah, this probably not a good.” As a kid I thought, “Oh, okay, that’s gross. But I’ll still keep playing,” But, yeah we didn’t get to really go to the park to play because my parents said it was too dangerous, instead we played on this train bridge that we used to call the Black Bridge. It was safer than the park, but it still wasn’t very safe because it was an active railroad bridge.

The end of our street got this reputation as being an illegal dump. What that meant is you had large construction equipment—I remember an old school bus—just all this stuff would just get dumped at the end of our street. It was just a mass of stuff. As kids, we were like, “This is awesome! It’s like giant Tonka toys in our back yard.” They had like a crane—it was this old demolished crane, just falling apart decrepit thing—but, it still had the levers you could pull the switches, and we would jump in that thing, and we’d pretend that we were driving this truck. I remember the school bus had all the windows busted in. Glass all along the floor, and we were in there playing in it. Sit in the bus driver’s seat; pretend you’re driving the bus. Usually my oldest brother would be left in charge, and so, he would take us out there with his friends, and we’d all just mess around. That wasn’t very safe. My brother had to go to the hospital because he got glass in his eye from playing in the bus.

One time, I had to go to the hospital because we were playing the good old game of “The Floor is Lava!” And we were jumping from one thing to the next. There was a toilet bowl – yes, someone just came and dumped a toilet bowl at the end of our street – and I jumped to the toilet bowl and suddenly, it shattered and slashed my leg. And so—I just think this is such a funny story because this is a toilet bowl in a dump that I’m getting cut with. [laughter] And as an adult I realize how unaware of the consequences I used to be.

Oh my God.

And I freaked out and I remember going, “Oh, I’m gonna to die, I’m gonna die, I gonna die!” because I’m bleeding out and I crawled my way home. I’m crying, and I’m freaking out, and finally I get to my front door and no one is answering! So I’m screaming and crying and eventually my brother came from around the house and he’s like, “What’s wrong?” and I guess they’d locked the front door cause I was crying and screaming. They didn’t want to deal with me. They didn’t realize I was injured. So, once they eventually saw what happened, they took me to the hospital where the wound got cleaned and stitched up.

Nothing terrible ended up happening to me, but I just think it’s kind of like a funny story about how little I knew of how abnormal this stuff was. I think—I think that’s an element of growing up in poverty, like growing up in this environment of not having safety. It’s just something you accept. You kind of just think of it as the norm. You think everyone lives this way. I thought everyone lived this way. I thought everyone dealt with this kind of danger.

“I think that’s an element of growing up in poverty, like growing up in this environment of not having safety. It’s just something you accept. You kind of just think of it as the norm. You think everyone lives this way. I thought everyone lived this way. I thought everyone dealt with this kind of danger.”

This wasn’t something I typically share with co-workers when I was in San Diego. Instead we would talk about the newest tech gadget that’s coming out, what skills we should be training in, what cool projects we were working on. But people didn’t talk about the personal too often. But at the same time, I got a sense there have been people among us who have had rough lives.

Then I moved up to the Bay Area, and I feel like it’s been really hard to find people who had that kind of life. I share with co-workers about my arm burn. I talk about the experience and about what happened to me as a way to introduce myself. It was actually in the context of in the beginning of our stand-ups.

I started a tradition of beginning stand-up with a brief improv game, and one day the game was to say something about yourself that no one else knows. So I told this story of my arm. Then I also shared over lunch with one co-worker my story about the toilet bowl and the dump at the end of our street, and he just didn’t know what to say. Maybe he’d never really known anyone that had gone through that kind of experience or grew up in that kind of environment.

You mentioned in your pre-interview that as a kid, you got into tech and computers as a distraction from real life.

Computers made me really happy. I think it made me special. It enabled me to stand out from the rest of my family and get attention that I was desperately wanting. When I was born, my mom was a stay-at-home mom, but when I old enough for daycare, she returned to college to become a teacher. So by the time I started elementary school, I went to the school my mom taught at. Back then, every classroom had like an Apple II computer—my first ever exposure to a computer was an Apple II.

“The computer wouldn’t yell at me. The computer wouldn’t put me down. The computer wouldn’t bully me. The computer wouldn’t make me feel bad about myself. The computer was safe, right? I think for me that was a big draw, that computers were safe. They were a safe space for me to spend time to express myself.”

My mom would stay after school, grading papers, and I had nothing else to do, so I started reading books about BASIC and I started programming little things in BASIC on the computer. Usually it was like, “What’s your name?” and you enter your name. Then it would say, “Hello ‘name’.” Because I had all this free time, I started creating these longer and longer scripts. I didn’t really make anything significant in the Apple II. I think it was because of lack of resources. All I had was this BASIC consumer retail book from Apple. I didn’t think, “Oh, I could go to a library and find a book and learn how to do this better.” And I didn’t have a mentor or someone who’d say, “You can do this, this, and this.” I was limited to what I could visually observe by putting stuff in the computer and seeing what comes out. That early exposure to computers made me feel special: something that I can input and get something out and get some creative expression too. I totally believe software engineering has an element of creativity in it.

But yeah, the computer wouldn’t yell at me. The computer wouldn’t put me down. The computer wouldn’t bully me. The computer wouldn’t make me feel bad about myself. The computer was safe, right? I think for me that was a big draw, that computers were safe. They were a safe space for me to spend time to express myself. I think that was a big part of my draw to computers with those early experiences.

Walk me through early computer use to deciding to pursue it as a career and going to college for it. Did you have pressure from friends and family to go to college? What were their expectations?

I did, so, this is funny. So my mother was a teacher, and actually I didn’t want to go into computer science as my first job. I wanted to be a teacher. My mother at one point let me teach lessons in her second grade class while I was still in elementary school. The lesson I remember teaching was on how to do origami, and she gave me a bulletin board, and I thought that was the awesomest thing in the world. Again my own bulletin board space, I get to put the little wavy cardboard things around the edges, and then I’m gonna teach these kids how to create something, and then we’re gonna take all of their creations and we’re gonna put them on the bulletin board, and it’s gonna be awesome. I think this is a pivotal moment in my love of learning teaching. Kind of the concept of continuous learning.

“We didn’t afford a home computer for a long time, but I had an uncle who put computers together. He put together a computer for my parents. Kind of a little Frankenstein computer. Nothing name brand at all, it was totally pieced together from a bunch of cheap parts. It ran Windows 3.11. First time seeing a GUI interface, first time seeing control panels and settings and software programs all this stuff. I spent a lot of time fiddling with it.”

I remember another teacher, my math teacher in sixth grade let me teach a lesson on radius, diameter, circles, things like that. So I had several of these experiences where I was experimenting with leading as a teacher, leading students, helping people learn. At one point, I was talking to my parents about how I wanted to be a teacher, and I remember my mom saying, “You know, I don’t think you should be a teacher.” She said, “I think you should do something greater than that.” I’m not exactly sure why she said that to me. It may have been seeing how I interacted with the computer. That’s another thing, that throughout my life, my family regarded me as the computer whiz. To them, computers were like foreign entities. To me it was like something that naturally fit. Although my mom saw me having passion being a teacher, she also saw me having a passion for computers, and I think that’s why she told me, “Why don’t you try this other thing. Why don’t you focus on this other thing, because I think it’d be really great for you to get into something like that.”

We didn’t afford a home computer for a long time, but I had an uncle who put computers together. He put together a computer for my parents. Kind of a little Frankenstein computer. Nothing name brand at all, it was totally pieced together from a bunch of cheap parts. It ran Windows 3.11. First time seeing a GUI interface, first time seeing control panels and settings and software programs all this stuff. I spent a lot of time fiddling with it.

My brother used to work at Software, Etc. One year, he bought me this amazing Christmas gift. We didn’t always get along really well, so I was like, “This is really expensive, it’s huge.” It was a sound card. Back then, at least from my point of view, these things were like gold. Again, another piece to put into our Frankinstein computer. I remember putting the sound card in, and hooking up some speakers. I remember putting the sound card in and it didn’t work. This was before the days of plug and play. I had to go into the .ini file and look at the settings there. I had to call the tech support line at like six in the morning because the company was in Eastern Time Zone. My dad was like, “Long distance is too expensive during the day.” It wasn’t even an 800 number, so I had to wake up super early so I wouldn’t waste long distance minutes being on hold. Anyway, tech support walked me through putting things into the .ini file. It was like magic; suddenly I was getting sound out of my computer. It was amazing. All my games had sound. It took our computer to a whole other level. Taking just the visual and adding audio to it, that, I think, furthered this passion I had for fiddling with computers. To have a computer at home where I can take it apart and open it up and play SimCity with sound took it to a whole other level.

Again, this is all me almost bonding with the computer, getting to know it better, realizing the tricks it can do. I didn’t do a lot of programming though, just configuring and stuff. We got dialup and AOL when I was in high school. I remember people running all of these software programs that would stream stuff into the chat window automatically, and I really wanted to learn how to do that. Back then, the Internet wasn’t full of tutorials, forums, and websites, as it is now. Every time I’ve ever gone into one of those bulletin boards I’ve found it to be a rats nest of people saying things and doing things. It was hard for me figure out how to take step one.

They had this thing in AOL called the Community Leaders, and they let underage kids get free AOL in exchange for monitoring their bulletin boards, the junior bulletin boards. And so I did that for a while and was able to get the Internet access that way, and I thought that was really cool being connected with everyone. Eventually the Internet, AOL, chat rooms, and stuff like that became a huge part of my social life. To a point where my parents were worried about me spending too much time with computers. I think they were worried because I was in junior high, and I didn’t have a whole lot of local friends. I had a friend from Ohio. I had a friend from Los Angeles. I had a friend from Texas – all across the country. I would spend hours at a time on the internet chatting with these people, playing games, and stuff like that. My parents were worried to the point where my mom one time took the whole computer and put it in the trunk of her car and drove to work. Like pulling the needle out of a heroin addict, right?

It was really painful for me, having that taken away. Especially because I was confused as to why it was a bad thing for me to have that kind of social life. Again, I think it really fit my introverted personality, to be able to socialize on the Internet. I was also learning lots of things. It’s when I started learning about how to make web pages. I had my own webpage as a freshman in high school, and I started making webpages for friends.

I used to do online role-playing. So I would write out the roles or the characters or whatever, kind of D & D style. That’s when I also started getting interested in how to make dynamic webpages, not just static ones. And I was trying to learn Perl. And I did some Perl programming back then which was really difficult. I asked my uncle, “I want to learn how to do this. Are there any resources? What should I do?” and he connected me a student who was a computer science major who would basically just say, “Go get this book,” or “Go look at this website.” And I would just have more questions and it was kind of like I could have used, I guess, a little bit more hand holding at that point.

“And so, ironically, recognizing it as something that’s not normal actually helps me. It puts my efforts into perspective. I shouldn’t feel bad because I wasn’t writing complete pieces of software at age 16. I had adversity I needed to overcome before I could get to the point of being able to learn how to write software. Acknowledging adversity, that what I went through is not something a lot of people in software probably went through, makes it easier for me. I put less pressure on myself. I feel more motivated. I feel more successful. I feel more accomplished. And, that enables me to continue to do the things that I love doing in my career.”

There was no computer science at Colton High, so I took a class on programming at the community college when I was still in high school. I learned Pascal. Later I went to UC Riverside and took some more classes on programming. And I loved doing it. I also wanted to go to computer camps and stuff we couldn’t afford, so we were really dependent on the public education system. I wish I had access to more resources, and especially a little more mentorship. My parents did their best to get me the resources that would help me learn how to do this stuff because they knew I was excited about it. I think I had a lot more potential that I wasn’t tapping into. And there were a lot of battles that were almost impossible for me to overcome. Again, I didn’t even understand that the environment I was growing up in wasn’t normal.

And so, ironically, recognizing it as something that’s not normal actually helps me. It puts my efforts into perspective. I shouldn’t feel bad because I wasn’t writing complete pieces of software at age 16. I had adversity I needed to overcome before I could get to the point of being able to learn how to write software. Acknowledging adversity, that what I went through is not something a lot of people in software probably went through, makes it easier for me. I put less pressure on myself. I feel more motivated. I feel more successful. I feel more accomplished. And, that enables me to continue to do the things that I love doing in my career. Helping people learn, learning more myself, mastering the craft that is software engineering, and trying to make things better for people who came from backgrounds similar to mine. We haven’t even talked about what it’s like dealing with also being gay.

Let’s go into that. Did you want to come out prior to college?

I wasn’t even out to myself. I grew up in a Mexican-American household. Machismo’s a big thing. My family—nice things were not always said about gay people. And so, here I am hearing those things said, there’s no way that I am going to come out. There’s no way I’m even going to come out to myself. I told myself, “This is just a phase. You’ll get over it.”

I’ve known people, also Latino, who came out to themselves but didn’t come out their families. But there was no way I could do that. I believed that it was just a phase. I thought that eventually I’d like girls; eventually I’d feel that same drive. Or I thought, this is what all guys feel—I’m just not as motivated as them.

I remember I came out to my parents—I think it was my freshman year of college. Like, Christmas or spring break or something like that. I came back from school and I told them—initially I identified as bisexual, so I first accepted at least that I was attracted to men, but didn’t want to let go of that other part that I may be attracted to women. So I came out to them as bisexual initially, and they didn’t have a terrible reaction. I remember my mother saying something like, “We love you and we care about you, and we’ll always accept you. What we’re worried about is how other people are going to treat you. How hard your life’s going to be now given like the discrimination and the downright hatred some people have towards those kind of people.” I was expecting the worst when I came out to them, and I was relieved to have them accept me.

What was it like suddenly being out in your freshman year of college?

It was really exciting. I was like 1600 miles away in Iowa, three days drive from home. So I’m in a completely new environment; it was liberating. It was also the first time I had the opportunity to shape my identity without restrictions, and I discovered some of that social awkwardness that is still in me. Like even though I was outgoing, the introverted part of myself, at times, got the best of me. On one hand, I felt more extroverted because of that feeling of excitement, of feeling free, of feeling liberated, being able to shape my identity. But I also didn’t—still didn’t feel completely safe. Still worried about people judging me. There’s kind of this to-and-fro of getting excited about doing something new. And then, almost an emotional backlash later of, “Oh wow, did I fuck up? Did I make a mistake? Are these people not going to like me anymore because maybe I was being too gay?”Like maybe I was taking it over the top? I did stuff like dye my hair a different color. I tried wearing different clothes. I watched a lot of gay cinema. In the late 90s, early 2000s, I think there was almost a Renaissance of all these gay movies that came out. I was watching one and after another, especially since I think Netflix came out.

“I wasn’t even out to myself. I grew up in a Mexican-American household. Machismo’s a big thing. My family—nice things were not always said about gay people. And so, here I am hearing those things said, there’s no way that I am going to come out. There’s no way I’m even going to come out to myself. I told myself, ‘This is just a phase. You’ll get over it.’”

The extroverted part of me kind of took it really far and then we’d dial it down a bit. I had friends who I thought we were really good friends, and we hung out a lot. And then the next year they wanted to room with different people. I think it was maybe a little too much. And so that maybe strained those friendships, being a little too different. I don’t know. I just noticed like a distance after freshman year. It’s Iowa, right? It’s a small college town in Iowa. I’m this kid from California. The roommate I had my freshman year, He said to me, “I was expecting this blond-haired, blue-eyed surfer dude.” And here he got this kind of chubby, gay Latino as his roommate. So maybe that’s an element of the culture shock I’m talking about, like I didn’t know what to expect with Iowa, and at the same time Iowa didn’t know what to expect from me. It took time.

The period of first and second year socially was a little rough. It was more like my junior, senior year that I met people that I really meshed with and got along with. And also, I think I toned down the gay thing. I found a balance with my identity. I found the things that I really thought were me, and not just all this new stuff that I’m learning about and experiencing. And I still had the parts of me that loved to play video games, loved to watch movies. My sense of humor—that it’s a little obscene, a little twisted, but not just too gratuitously obscene. Things like that.

I met people who I could make laugh. I met people with shared interests and people I could geek out with too. That’s the other thing. I think my freshman year—It was a large group of people who weren’t really nerds. They weren’t really geeks. It wasn’t computer/video gamey people. They were into sports. They were into athletics, and it’s hard to stay connected to those kinds of people unless you can find some kind of commonality. I was doing things that they weren’t necessarily interested in.

How do you feel like that culmination of those life experiences—like growing up in poverty, coming out as gay, tough family situation, childhood traumas, all of that—how do you feel like that affects you today in both a personal and professional way?

I think that it makes having a space very important. It’s one of the consequences of those traumatic experiences is there’s just too many things that can go wrong. There’s almost like this embedded belief of there’s too many things to go wrong.

I think you mentioned before, risk aversion. Like, risk aversion was a huge thing for me. I did not like taking risks, and that’s been one of the pieces of the adversity I’ve had to deal with and I’ve had to try to overcome. If you’re risk averse, it holds back your potential. If you’re risk averse, it holds back the opportunities you can potentially take. Moving up here to the Bay Area from San Diego was a gigantic risk. A lot of this was attributed to the successes I had in therapy. That enabled me to take that risk. But here I am having to spend years in therapy working on lots of little things that have created this nest of triggers or behavior patterns that make it so hard for me to overcome or to take a risk. Had I not had to deal with any of that stuff, I probably would’ve moved up to the bay area as soon as I was out of college. I probably would have taken a risk.

“It makes having a space very important. It’s one of the consequences of those traumatic experiences is there’s just too many things that can go wrong. There’s almost like this embedded belief of there’s too many things to go wrong.”

Moving to the Bay Area wasn’t an option I considered after I graduated from college. I thought “There’s no way I could make it up there there’s no way I could be successful.”I remember looking for work in Southern California, and it took me like three months to find my first entry-level job as a software engineer. I was already giving up hope. I was already like, “Wow, I’m never going to be able to make this work. I have this degree and I’m never going to be able to find anyone that I can help, really.” And I think that’s something that was a consequence of all that adversity. And it’s something that I’ve been slowly getting over, being willing to take risks. When I do take risks, seeing the rewards that come of it, and that like, “If I take this risk, I’m not going to be abandoned by everyone. I’m not going to be physically hurt. I’m not going to get hit. I’m not going to be in a lot of pain, right?”

Like kind of anticipating pain, and anticipating trauma is one of the big things that holds me back from taking risks. And every time I take a risk, and I see that it’s not resulting in pain, and it’s not resulting in trauma– and in fact, usually it results in very positive experiences. And it results in making really wonderful relationships that also add to that positivity. It just reinforces kind of—It’s like a changing of your reality of from the world is a dangerous place to the world is mostly safe. The world is mostly positive.

“I was nervous coming here for this interview. Those things are running through my mind simply because it’s part of my behavior patterns, my mental make-up. Kind of like someone who has a permanent injury where maybe they have a limp on their leg. You can’t really do anything about it, it’s there, but you learn to still walk, you can still do your job, you can still do all these other things. But you have to be aware of it. It’s also something that with work can get better.”

I have run into situations even since coming up here where I see everything is positive, everything is great, and then, something comes along that just is a huge unexpected threat. It’s funny because it’s from like the least likely of places like maybe other minorities, maybe people who you’d think would identify with you, maybe they share the same experience and yet like they’re not making safety a priority. And I’ve had to stand up for myself and set boundaries not just for myself but for all the other people who may not have the strength. Maybe they’re not far along enough in that process to stand up and say, “This is wrong.” And that’s something I’m still going through, too.

Admittedly I was nervous coming here for this interview. Those things are running through my mind simply because it’s part of my behavior patterns, my mental make-up. Kind of like someone who has a permanent injury where maybe they have a limp on their leg. You can’t really do anything about it, it’s there, but you learn to still walk, you can still do your job, you can still do all these other things. But you have to be aware of it. It’s also something that with work can get better. Kind of like physical therapy. So yeah. It’s hard to talk about.

I really focused on my career, and I think also the other part was my relationship with my husband in my 20s. It was my career and my relationship. Now I’m getting to this point after being in therapy so long I’m actually calling it my story, taking a magnifying glass to my history and talking to friends and family about my experiences and saying, “Hey, wow this did probably affect me. And this maybe explains some of the reasons why I’m this way and that way, and I also don’t think I’m the only person who’s had these types of experiences.” I’m willing to say things that aren’t popular, or may have consequences. That’s kind of a weird thing about me I guess. Even though I’m terrified of pain, I have experiences where the only solution I had was to invite it. The only solution was to stand up and get ready to face the consequences. But in cases where it doesn’t go so well, it is really hard for me. It is very painful. It just activates, it just runs through all of those old wounds that I’m still working on and still processing.

“Even though I’m terrified of pain, I have experiences where the only solution I had was to invite it. The only solution was to stand up and get ready to face the consequences. But in cases where it doesn’t go so well, it is really hard for me. It is very painful. It just activates, it just runs through all of those old wounds that I’m still working on and still processing.”

That’s why I have a support network. I have friends, and family, and my therapist, and other people that I’ve explicitly called and said, “Hey, if I need someone to talk to. Are you willing to listen to me? And can I trust your confidence, your confidentiality?”My husband, of course, a big part of my support network, a big core. And that’s how I’m rolling right now. It’s a long story, both exciting and scary to tell at the same time.

Well, I thank you for being so open. And if I’ve learned anything from just starting this project and being terrified to do it, it has been received so well, that I can only hope that it’s gonna be hugely positive for everyone involved.

I think this is a wonderful conversation to have. I think it’s a wonderful conversation to have about understanding where people start from. Because how can we measure someone’s accomplishments without recognizing that not everyone starts in the same place on the race track. Some people start a mile or two back, and then when they don’t finish in first place, we say, “Well, you didn’t do very good.” When the reality is they ran faster, and they ran longer than any of those other people. The person who ran first place, they just started at a different location. And I think that’s an important part of this conversation, about what is that mile or two back, what makes up that distance. It’s going to change people’s mind. It’s going to change people’s perspectives. And I really think it’s going to help us get better solutions, as far as diversity in tech. Some of the solutions don’t make any sense, and I think it’s just because we’re solving it without looking at what the actual problem is, or where the actual—I don’t want to call them shortfalls, it’s more like why there are differences, and how can we value those differences. I think that’s really about valuing differences.

What advice would you have for folks that come from a similar place, or have been through similar struggles to you, and are hoping to make it in this industry, or just make it work? What do you wish you could have told yourself in the beginning?

There’s a common thing about imposter syndrome, and having confidence in yourself and stuff like that. I think that’s all true. Working with a therapist really helped me, so I would say if you’re struggling, seriously consider meeting with a mental health professional. There’s nothing shameful or bad about it, in fact I think it’s a great way for people to take care of themselves. I think we should all get mental health check-ups regularly, totally embrace that. Therapists are helpful. You choose your therapist; you don’t just accept whichever one you get. Find a good fit and then you work with that person. You are building a support network. I think it’s very important in this industry especially for people who face the kind of adversity that I faced.

I wish when I was younger I had met someone who was like me now. Someone who did struggle growing up, but eventually got to the point where I’m at. If they told me,“You know, it’s gonna be hard. It’s gonna be scary—you’re gonna feel scared, but you need to know your potential. You need to know that you have lots of potential and you can tap into it, and you are going to blow everyone else away. You are gonna do amazing things.” I wouldn’t tell myself that it’s an easy place to get to. I would say, “What do you want to learn? Let me hook you up. Let me connect you. Let me call people.” We really need more mentors like that. We need more people who are inviting others to the table who have similar backgrounds, saying, “Okay, what are you struggling with? Let’s help each other solve this problem. You’re having problems in interviews, doing white-boarding, or whatever. Let’s practice white-boarding together. Let’s get you up to that level. Let’s get you some additional help where you can get the jobs and get hired, and get into the industry. And then start doing the same thing where you start helping other people get up and reach the same bar, and help other people learn.”Not exclusively people who maybe didn’t have adversity or whose adversity is different. Invite everyone to the table, but don’t ignore the adversity.

“I wish when I was younger I had met someone who was like me now. Someone who did struggle growing up, but eventually got to the point where I’m at. If they told me,’You know, it’s gonna be hard. It’s gonna be scary—you’re gonna feel scared, but you need to know your potential. You need to know that you have lots of potential and you can tap into it, and you are going to blow everyone else away. You are gonna do amazing things.’ I wouldn’t tell myself that it’s an easy place to get to. I would say, ‘What do you want to learn? Let me hook you up. Let me connect you. Let me call people.’ We really need more mentors like that.”

One of the things I started at Solar City was a continuous learning group I call Knowledge is Power. Our first book was the Solar Energy Handbook. We’re now reading a book on Raspberry Pi, and we’re programming on Raspberry Pi as a group. I think there’s about 30 people right now in it. One of the first things I said when we started was, “I want everyone to know that this is a safe space, and that includes level of ability. Let’s not make fun of anyone if they don’t know about something. Let’s not laugh at anyone’s questions. There’s no such thing as a stupid question here. Every question is great because no matter what level it may be at, it gives not only the person asking it an opportunity to learn, it gives the person answering it opportunity to teach. This is a safe space for all levels. And this is also a safe space for all other groups that maybe face adversity in other places.” I wasn’t sure what kind of reaction I would get – but I had people thanking me in private messages and stuff, “Thank you for saying that.” And I was like, “Yeah, it’s kind of where we start, it’s where we begin.”

One of the goals is not just to learn, but also to create a safe space. How do we do that? How do we start that? I wish that I could have found someone when I was starting out who was doing the same thing. It would have helped me in multiple ways, not just with technology. I probably would have told this person, “Hey, I’m gay. I trust you more because you’re establishing this as a safe space to work together, and to get to know each other.” Also at Solar City we just started an employee resource group for gender and sexual minorities. It’s another way hopefully, of making the people who want to help visible, and giving people the opportunity to help just by connecting.

“I think it’s a wonderful conversation to have about understanding where people start from. Because how can we measure someone’s accomplishments without recognizing that not everyone starts in the same place on the race track. Some people start a mile or two back, and then when they don’t finish in first place, we say, “Well, you didn’t do very good.” When the reality is they ran faster, and they ran longer than any of those other people. The person who ran first place, they just started at a different location. And I think that’s an important part of this conversation, about what is that mile or two back, what makes up that distance.”