Why don’t we start at the beginning? Tell me a bit about your early years and where you come from.

I am a Bay Area native. I was born and raised in San Francisco and Daly City. Then I moved to a suburb, and then moved back. Actually, moved to a suburb, then moved to Sacramento, which was terrible, and then moved directly back to San Francisco.

I went to college because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do after high school. I always prioritized my social life and my friends and fun before anything else. I would do this thing where I would just go into random classes and not really be fully participating in any. I ended up going to college for seven years, and I did three or four different major tracks. I was about ten credits short for three different majors. Then they finally just came back, one of the deans were like, “You need to graduate. You need to leave.” I made a special major out of basically a theory that I would write in a paper format for a cumulation of what I had learned over the years. My actual college degree is a  communication analysis of the performativity of lesbians in mainstream media from 2001 to 2007. So, I like to joke that I majored in the L word. That’s pretty much what I majored in.

“I went to college because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do after high school. I always prioritized my social life and my friends and fun before anything else. I would do this thing where I would just go into random classes and not really be fully participating in any. I ended up going to college for seven years, and I did three or four different major tracks. I was about ten credits short for three different majors. Then they finally just came back, one of the deans were like, ‘You need to graduate. You need to leave.'”

While majoring in the L word, I would work odd jobs to make up the gaps for my scholarships. That’s how I found my way into computers. I started out in sale at Best Buy. I moved from sales at Best Buy to sales at Geek Squad, to tinkering in Geek Squad, to independent consulting work, to working at an enterprise and fixing computers there, to provisioning computers, and then moving into Linux System administration and systems work, and then bouncing around at different areas of a start up. Which is how I’ve landed at Twilio.

When you were first entering computer land, selling computers at Best Buy, did you have any inclination that you would end up in Silicon Valley or was this more of a, “I gotta pay my bills” situation?

It was a little of both, actually. Initially I wanted to work in tech but I didn’t actually want to be a technical person. All of my friends and all of my background has been really focused on communication analysis. So, I really wanted to be in PR. I thought that by having a family friend that had worked at Google—and this was back in the day when, actually, having a family friend working at Google meant something—I thought that I would have an in after I graduated. Because I took so long [in school] and Google blew up the way that it did, that was no longer valid. So, when I first started working in tech it was just a way to pay the bills. Then when I worked at Sales Force it was mostly to pay the bills but also it was that really small foot in the door. Every position I applied for out of that consulting position, none of it was engineering focused. I applied for human resources, for marketing, for project managers, for an admin in their real estate department. I kept going for literally, again, anything other than technical.

When was the moment that you discovered coding and was like, “Oh, this is my shit.”

The part where it was “the shit” was probably not for a long time. I was on this rotating consulting gig. The team was me and less than 20 other people. We all hated it because we were paid nothing compared to what other people were paid. And by nothing, I mean, our consulting firm happened to be based in Dallas, Texas and so we were being paid Dallas, Texas wages. It just so happened that the people sitting next to me were a consulting firm based in San Francisco. We were doing the exact same thing and being paid vastly different amounts.

“I found programming as a shortcut to doing things versus falling in love with it.”

Everyone on the Dallas team were leaving. One dude was leaving and he was the only person to support Linux machines at Sales Force at the time. He turned to me and said, “Dude, I’m leaving. I’m going to Yelp. Do you want this book?” I said, “Yeah. Of course I want this book.” I ended up just filling the gap after he left. As I became the only person supporting Linux machines, I found that a lot of the same things were happening over and over again so I would just script certain things. I found programming as a shortcut to doing things versus falling in love with it. I didn’t fall in love with programming until I went to Twilio and started actually developing.

Interesting. You used the term community-taught to describe your past engineering. Tell me more about that concept.

A lot of people like to say self-taught, self-taught, and I feel like that’s a little too elitist for me. Community-taught comes from the authors who wrote the beginning books that I read to the online tutorials that were always free. I utilized a lot of people’s time. There’s two different camps of people I learned from:  people who wanted to teach and people who just got stuck teaching me. When I didn’t understand something, I would start off by tapping them on the shoulder. When I realized that wasn’t productive, I would actually just carve out time with them. I had to show that by taking two days just to teach me how to do something, it would in the end help me ramp up faster, and I would bother them less if they just took two days, two hours, whatever to teach me.

“A lot of people like to say self-taught, self-taught, and I feel like that’s a little too elitist for me. Community-taught comes from the authors who wrote the beginning books that I read to the online tutorials that were always free. I utilized a lot of people’s time.”

I really need to give credit to these people. I bugged them relentlessly when I was first starting. People who spent their free time learning how to create easier ways for people to grasp concepts. They did that in their free time, too. It’s not fair to say that I learned this all on my own because I didn’t.

What would you say are the most exciting things, to you, about working in tech? What parts of the work really activate you?

Growing up, I really wanted to be an inventor. I knew that inventing something new was going to put me on the map. It fostered creativity. Now I get to invent things, or new ways to interact with things, every day.

I think that where we are right now in tech, or in computer engineering, in general, is at a larger scope than we’ve ever had before. We have people and ideas that are solving problems that we never thought imaginable.

“Growing up, I really wanted to be an inventor. I knew that inventing something new was going to put me on the map. It fostered creativity. Now I get to invent things, or new ways to interact with things, every day.”

There’s this one project that I keep thinking of where these two students figured out a way to use Google to send Doctors Without Borders a text in when they saw outbreaks of diseases. They would map it to a Google heat map and use an algorithm to track the progression of a disease. They were able to send resources before a disease was going to have an outbreak in a certain area—just by using an algorithm. We have all of these minds! Sometimes they’ll do something silly like create new ways to say “Yo” to each other. Other times you have people who say, “Here’s a problem that I totally think that we can solve together.” Generally, the people who really, really want to solve a problem have come at it from a place of passion versus a place of greed. It’s so amazing to see what people come up with.

When did your focus turn to inclusivity in tech?

It kind of bounced around inclusivity in tech. When I was at Sales Force and I didn’t feel like I was a part of the technical community. I thought using employee interest groups would be a way for me to network. That’s kind of how I got started with inclusivity.

When I moved to a smaller company, I realized that things were way different. We had started an inclusion group about eight months after joining. A colleague and I were leading that for a while. When that person left, we started to feel a lot of the impact of having a person leave or why people were starting.

It wasn’t until someone explicitly pointed it out to me that I was the only girl in the room or that I was the only gay person on the team that I moved into the diversity inclusion work. I was constantly the spokesperson for this entire identity. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it. Someone pointed it out it was like, “You know you wouldn’t have to be that if there were more people of color in your company.” And I was like, “Oh, shit. I probably wouldn’t have to be the spokesperson.”

“It wasn’t until someone explicitly pointed it out to me that I was the only girl in the room or that I was the only gay person on the team that I moved into the diversity inclusion work. I was constantly the spokesperson for this entire identity. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it. Someone pointed it out it was like, ‘You know you wouldn’t have to be that if there were more people of color in your company.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, shit. I probably wouldn’t have to be the spokesperson.'”

It wasn’t until I  joined Lesbians Who Tech that I realized that I could have a positive lesbian role model in my life. I was like, “Holy shit. They exist.” They’re not just at home with their wives and cats, or girlfriends.

I started to ask why don’t these groups exist? Why was it hard to get into this industry? When I ask people – whether they’re people of color, or people who identify as female, or LGBT people, or someone with a disability, associating background – there are one of two camps. One: they will believe fully that they got where they are because of who they are and their skill set. And there are other people who are like, “Holy shit. I am so lucky to be here. And I worked my ass off, just like everybody else, but the system worked against me way more than it did everybody else.”

I’m in the camp where I think that the system worked against me a lot and I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for opportunity. It’s not fair that I’m the only person to have gotten that opportunity. That I found some random loophole or some random person to give me a shot. I owe almost everything in my tech career to two people. Two people who I interviewed for a position that I definitely was not good for. I left that thinking, “I don’t know why I went to this interview.” They gave me a shot. They did this thing where they assessed what I knew and what I knew and how long it would take me to get up to speed. That’s something I’ve never forgotten and something that I want to give as an opportunity to everyone else.

“It wasn’t until I  joined Lesbians Who Tech that I realized that I could have a positive lesbian role model in my life. I was like, ‘Holy shit. They exist.’ They’re not just at home with their wives and cats, or girlfriends.”

I’ve focused a lot on inclusivity in tech and making sure that the way that I interview a Harvard or Stanford or MIT grad is not going to be the way I interview somebody who is a person of color. The way that I approach a negotiation tactic is not going to be the same for the way that I would interact with somebody who doesn’t have my identities. I need to give these opportunities to people who never even thought these opportunities were available for them.

Let’s go to the dark side for a minute. What have been some of your biggest struggles that you’ve had to overcome during your time in tech?

I have consistent impostor syndrome. I had an interview a couple of weeks ago where they asked me a question and I felt like the answer was way too easy. So, I didn’t say it. And I was just like, “No. There’s no way that the answer is this.” It was, literally, one of those things where it was like, “Tell me one of these things is not like the other.” And it was the equivalent of all of them being blue except for red. I thought, “Nope. That’s not it. They’re tricking me.” I refused to believe that I knew the answer that quickly. I ended up second guessing myself the entire interview.

I am absolutely a workaholic and this industry has definitely helped that. It’s not uncommon to get an email at two in the morning. It’s not uncommon to see people in the office 9:00 at night. It’s generally because we like what we do. It’s not a case of having meals catered and transportation taken care of and lack of dependencies on being home at a certain time. It’s the fact that you love what you’re doing and you believe in what you’re doing. It’s so easy to just lose track of time. Especially if your days are filled with in-person meetings or interviews. By the time six o’clock rolls around, you can finally start doing your work.

“I’ve focused a lot on inclusivity in tech and making sure that the way that I interview a Harvard or Stanford or MIT grad is not going to be the way I interview somebody who is a person of color. The way that I approach a negotiation tactic is not going to be the same for the way that I would interact with somebody who doesn’t have my identities. I need to give these opportunities to people who never even thought these opportunities were available for them.”

In the past while I was fixing computers, having to continuously prove myself was exhausting. It’s compounded by having two kinds of people that you prove yourself to: the ones who have no idea they’re undercutting you and the ones who know that they’re undercutting you, and they expect you to prove something. It makes you work harder, which makes you work later. Before you know it, you’re only sleeping two-three hours a night.

What is it like being part of both the tech community and the queer community? I’m curious to know from your experience what it’s like being queer in tech and being a techie in the queer community here?

Being queer and tech is one thing. Being queer in tech, especially being a female identified queer person in tech is almost invisible. I say that because when you work in a male dominated team, especially a millennial male dominated team, a lot of people will always think, “Oh, yeah, it’s totally cool that you’re gay. Don’t worry about it.” It’s a millennial time where you’ll hear things like, “Oh, yeah, I totally dated a bi chick once.”  I don’t care about that. When I was younger and men were trying to find a common ground with me through male dominated activities. They would say things like, “Yeah, did you see the ass on her?” Or, “Would you hit that?” It’s like, “We both like women, but I like and respect them, and you don’t.” I found that it was so much easier for someone to see me as one of the guys versus someone to see me as a queer person, especially a queer woman. That was always a struggle for me and that’s why I left a previous company.

“I found that it was so much easier for someone to see me as one of the guys versus someone to see me as a queer person, especially a queer woman.”

As far as being a queer person who techs, I feel like there’s a lot of pressure on me. It’s not necessarily because I’m a queer person in tech. It’s more or less that I am a queer person in tech who is also female identified, who is also a person of color, who also came from a lower socio-economic background. Those are so many groups of oppressed people who are looking at you like, “You made it. What else can we do? How can you bring us with you?” It’s like, I can’t carry four groups of oppressed people on my back right now.

It’s also those things where a diversity company or a diversity focused initiative will come to you, and just say, “You want more diverse talent, right?” It’s like, “Yeah, I do, but I want the right talent, and I want to give equal opportunity without you forcing people that you know aren’t right for this position.”

I went to a career fair recently just to recruit people, and they were like, “We’re diversity focused, diversity focused.” I’m like, “Okay, that’s great.” I would love to hire more people that are like me, or that are in groups that I feel have been oppressed, and have more obstacles than others. The candidates that were thrown at me, just at this particular conference, had never programmed a day in their life. There are a lot of great candidates who identify with these groups but are not as entry level. People expect you to make certain changes or judgement calls because you’re a person of color and I don’t think that’s fair.

What is it like in your experience being both a techie and a local?

I have tried very, very hard to not say this and to not blow up at this. I have felt this bubbling below the surface for a quite some time now. My family was pushed out of San Francisco. It was San Francisco before the first bubble burst back in early 2000. I remember watching my family be a little devastated that they could no longer afford the place that they had lived in for decades. Moving us up to the suburbs where my dad had to commute two and a half hours to work and my mom had to commute an hour and a half. I remember not being able to be with my family because they were always working and commuting in order to pay for our house in the suburbs.

I went to school. I got a great education and I worked really hard to be where I am. That’s when I moved back. I actually moved back to the same neighborhood that I grew up in. People call me “Techie Scum” and that I’m gentrifying our neighborhood when I’m really just taking back the neighborhood I was kicked out of. It really sucks. People who have been here for six years will tell me that I’m ruining the neighborhood, or that because of my company, or the industry that I’m in, that I’m the reason that they’re being evicted.

“My family was pushed out of San Francisco. It was San Francisco before the first bubble burst back in early 2000. I remember watching my family be a little devastated that they could no longer afford the place that they had lived in for decades. Moving us up to the suburbs where my dad had to commute two and a half hours to work and my mom had to commute an hour and a half. I remember not being able to be with my family because they were always working and commuting in order to pay for our house in the suburbs. I actually moved back to the same neighborhood that I grew up in. People call me ‘Techie Scum’ and that I’m gentrifying our neighborhood when I’m really just taking back the neighborhood I was kicked out of. It really sucks.”

I understand it because I went through it for a long period of time. I moved back because I wanted to be home and I wanted to feel like I was safe again. My grandmother actually lived and has lived for a number of years, one block away from where I live or where I work now. When I was growing up, I was told never to leave my grandmother’s house and go anywhere, except for going straight to BART. Now the rent is more than she’s ever made in a year, probably. It’s so infuriating to see people who actually just fit that mold of what everybody hates, and then to be put in that same bubble. I don’t think there’s anything that I could actually do to make my voice heard in that.

There are people who complained about the homeless population in San Francisco, or the people who like to capitalize on buses, or who like to celebrate sports wins in a violent way towards the city. You know when I was growing up, they were giving out Giants tickets on the streets, begging people to go to those games before it was relevant. While I was growing up, 49ers game was something that we don’t even go to because it wasn’t in a safe neighborhood. And now, people are basically just reclaiming it, and claiming that they’re natives after six years. It’s just infuriating, really. I love San Francisco. I grew up here. It’s great. It’s changed a lot. But the hostility from six-year locals is almost enough to just not want to be here anymore.

“I love San Francisco. I grew up here. It’s great. It’s changed a lot. But the hostility from six-year locals is almost enough to just not want to be here anymore.”

We’ve touched on this but where do you find your support networks? Where did you find them earlier in your life and where do you find them now?

My support networks have been people who’ve watched my progression of change over the years. My biggest supporter is probably my brother. He’s seen me through everything. My best friends from high school because we’ve literally gone through everything together. They were there from first kiss to me coming out to somebody’s first marriage and divorce and first kids and everything. My support network are the people who I know I’ve been vulnerable with. People I know who would never judge me for that. Sometimes I know that there are friendships where people feel like they’re depleted because the friendship seems one-sided but these friendships that I have, they’re people I could not talk to for six years and come back and just say, “I need you right now.” And they’re fantastic people.

My technical support networks have been the people who have mentored me and I can, in turn, return that favor. I’ve never felt like that was a one way street. One of my seniors, I probably go to him ten times a day to ask him a question. I try to reciprocate in being like, “Hey. This is an easy request. Let me take all of the easy stuff off your plate and I will work five to ten extra hours a week because I know I took up some time of yours earlier.”

My partner, of course, has been my biggest support network. I’ve never met anybody who has been as supportive as she is. I’ve absolutely never met anybody like her.

“My technical support networks have been the people who have mentored me and I can, in turn, return that favor. I’ve never felt like that was a one way street. One of my seniors, I probably go to him ten times a day to ask him a question. I try to reciprocate in being like, ‘Hey. This is an easy request. Let me take all of the easy stuff off your plate and I will work five to ten extra hours a week because I know I took up some time of yours earlier.'”

What do you look for in a job now versus when you started? 

When I first started looking for jobs I was looking for the right company. Once I got in the door of the company I would find out if the company had a volunteer program. Did it have employer resource groups? What was their PTO like? Did they have food catered? Did they allow dogs in the office? I was all about the perks.

Now, the first thing I think of is, “What does your company look like? What does your board look like? And how does that reflect on where I’m going to be in a couple years?” If I can look at your company and know that these engineers, who just happen to be engineers of color or women engineers, have not progressed in their career for the three years that they’ve been here, that’s going to say something to me. That’s going to either say that they were not set up to succeed or that no one is checking in and seeing what the progression of somebody’s career is. How often are they going to ask me to be their diversity advocate? How often are they going to ask me to be at a table to recruit or to speak on their behalf? Which I’m happy to do but if they means that I’m going to miss a meeting in which I’m going to miss a promotion I don’t know if I want to do that anymore.

“If I can look at your company and know that these engineers, who just happen to be engineers of color or women engineers, have not progressed in their career for the three years that they’ve been here, that’s going to say something to me. That’s going to either say that they were not set up to succeed or that no one is checking in and seeing what the progression of somebody’s career is.”

I’m really focused on what they look like when they work remotely. I have very bad ADHD and a little manic so if they have an open floor plan I can’t work productively. I have to spend one to two days just working at home or in a quiet room. If this company doesn’t know how to work remotely then I can’t be a part of this company in the way that is set up to succeed.

I like to look at where their focus is, as far as how they give back to the community. I like to look at whether they have a dot org and if I can tell that their dot org or non profit branch seems like it’s because it’s a great tax benefit or because the people actually believe in that mission. I like to look at their onboarding process; if they just throw me in the deep end and I’m on call the next day, that’s really shitty, but if they look like they have a 90 day plan to have people succeed that’s fantastic. I look at the things I love from my previous positions and hope that the next company can do better or is open to doing better.

When I worked in tech a primary feeling I had was that of isolation—I mean, there were chicks in tech at that time but it was more socioeconomic for me. I’m curious to know how your socioeconomic background contributes to the way that you feel in the industry. I’m curious if you can relate.

Yeah. Actually, a lot. That’s just something that I don’t think we talk about enough in the industry. We talk about diversity and we always talk about the visible things. As someone from a lower socioeconomic background, it is amazing the difference in ways that people see things. For instance, the first thing is you’re surrounded by people who make so much money and spend it like it’s nothing. The people that you sit with every day may not have the mounds of student loan debt that you do. Or if you are helping your family out, they don’t have to help their family out.

I recently heard a story where there were two people in a sales division at another company and, basically, they were both caught fluffing numbers, essentially. And one of them was a CIS white man who came from an affluent, affluent family. And the other one was a Latina woman who was a single mom and she had just graduated from a state school. And the Latina woman was like, “No. I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.” And the company came back and it’s just like, “If you just tell us you’ll be fine. Just tell us that you did it.” She like, “No. I didn’t do it.” They tell the same thing to the guy and the guy’s like, “Yeah. I did it. My bad. I didn’t know.” And they ended up firing the Latina woman for lying. And somebody comes back and was like, “Do you know what you just did?” She lied because that was her only source of income and you just cut it. You rewarded an affluent person because he told the truth knowing that if he lost his job he would have his trust fund to fall back on. He would have these resources to fall back on.

“We talk about diversity and we always talk about the visible things. As someone from a lower socioeconomic background, it is amazing the difference in ways that people see things. For instance, the first thing is you’re surrounded by people who make so much money and spend it like it’s nothing. The people that you sit with every day may not have the mounds of student loan debt that you do. Or if you are helping your family out, they don’t have to help their family out.”

A lot of the people companies employ people to clean the offices or to serve food are people of color. That’s when you can really tell who came from a background where bussing their own tables is foreign to them. I will definitely see somebody cleaning off their own table or cleaning out a workstation on their own or offering to hold the door for somebody who’s in the service committee because they recognize those faces. They recognize people like that.

I remember when I got my first offer. I was so excited. My first offer was more than both my parents made combined. I was so excited for a whole month. I remember texting my partner, “I have enough for all of my bills and I can eat this week and I still have more money to put into savings than I know what to do with.” It was amazing and then someone was like, “Oh, cool. I’m so happy for you. What did you make?” I was feeling really good and I told them. They’re like, “You know that your offer was thirty thousand less than what you’re supposed to be making, right?” I was like, “Ugh. I’m an idiot. I feel like shit,” and it was also because I never learned to negotiate. People who come from a lower socioeconomic background learn to be happy with what they have got.

“I remember when I got my first offer. I was so excited. My first offer was more than both my parents made combined. I was so excited for a whole month. I remember texting my partner, ‘I have enough for all of my bills and I can eat this week and I still have more money to put into savings than I know what to do with.’ It was amazing and then someone was like, ‘Oh, cool. I’m so happy for you. What did you make?’ I was feeling really good and I told them. They’re like, ‘You know that your offer was thirty thousand less than what you’re supposed to be making, right?’ I was like, ‘Ugh. I’m an idiot.'”

I spent my college years driving an hour and a half back to my parents’ to clean office buildings from 11:00 PM until 3:00 AM, and then I would drive back to the city, and go to school from 8:00 AM until 5:00 PM, and then I would go to another job from 6:00 to 11:00, and then drive back to clean office buildings. That’s how I could afford rent and that’s how I could afford ramen – and ramen back then was ramen. Ramen was not $11 a bowl. It was like, “Hey. I spent $3 and I got six weeks of food.” There’s so many different aspects. You hang on to the things that you are so afraid to lose because you know that as much as you save, you could lose this job. And this job can be the only opportunity for you crawl out of a hole of debt that you’ve been told to invest in. The amount of times that you hit up for get rich quick schemes, for borrowing money, and everybody who’s asking to borrow money from you is your family, your homies, your best friends. You all grew up the same way and you can’t say no because you know where they’re coming from and you feel guilty for all the money that you make. I think being in tech from a low socioeconomic background is more guilt than it is ever pleasure.

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

A lot of them make fun of me. Not that I’m the one that made it or anything like that.They’re just like, “Dude. You were the class clown and you never took anything seriously.” And they’re seeing me being featured on random articles or something or being mentioned in certain things. And they’re just like, “Who are you right now? When did you grow up and become and adult?”

I think a part of that is because when you grow up in a different socioeconomic background it’s so much easier to get caught in those loops. I still know people who are at Best Buy and who it’s easier for them to climb up that corporate ladder than to take a risk and leap somewhere else.

My dad keeps giving me all these random rules to live by so that I won’t lose my job. His rules are so outdated where it’s like, “Don’t you ever check e-mail from your work computer.” It’s like, “Wait. What?” I think we got into an argument today because I sent him a Google link from my work computer and he was so afraid that I was going to get fired over it. I think that fear rules because people—whether they’re people of color, or from a different socioeconomic background, or people who’ve ever just been fired before —are in a constant level of fear to never let anybody they ever know, make the same mistakes that they did. It’s one thing to get fired if you have a safety net, but if you come from a lower economic background getting fired is not an option.

“It’s one thing to get fired if you have a safety net, but if you come from a lower economic background getting fired is not an option.”

We’ve definitely touched on this, but how do you feel about the state of tech in 2016? What is really exciting to you? What frustrates you?

Exciting, again, is that something is going to come out, that I’ve never even thought of. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I don’t know. We have all these really, really great minds that are learning to exercise a muscle in ways that they’ve never knew was possible. This big focus on pushing towards diversity.

My biggest fear is that it becomes noise, versus action. I really hope that the right people get involved, not just these companies that want to solve the problem, and not just recruiting in HR, that’s like, “No, we should totally hire more people of color, and women,” but people who are in a position to hire, or in a position to move a product forward, I hope that they will look back and say, “You know what? I can skip this product cycle, and we can really invest in our team, here.”

I’m afraid that the bubble is going to burst, and what that means for the bubble to burst, especially for the people who came out of nothing, and worked their entire asses off, just to get to the brink of it can have it burst on them. People who are entitled to get a dose of reality, if that does happen. The stereotype is just like there’s no wrangling it. There are so many emotions out there like I don’t know what to feel because it’s too much effort to try to wrangle  those emotions because it’s mainly fear.

Yeah. What advice would you give to folks from similar backgrounds to you who are getting a start in tech or are hoping to get into it? What do you wish you’d known in the beginning?

I wish I knew that I belonged here and I didn’t have to continue to try and prove myself everyday. When people give me a compliment, that they mean it. I don’t have to deconstruct it. They were happy with my work and I don’t have to find reasons that they shouldn’t be. I wish that I knew not to be so afraid of losing what I have in working here, and that a risk is worth taking. That it’s really, really, really hard to take when you know what you can lose. That’s why it’s so hard for people who come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to start their own company. Probably people from affluent backgrounds just sitting there and judging you and the statistics the way that they are, probably people who were male, white, CIS just sitting there and judging you as I was like a person of color just asking for money. Those are the biggest things that I wish that I knew.

“I wish I knew that I belonged here and I didn’t have to continue to try and prove myself everyday. When people give me a compliment, that they mean it. I don’t have to deconstruct it. They were happy with my work and I don’t have to find reasons that they shouldn’t be. I wish that I knew not to be so afraid of losing what I have in working here, and that a risk is worth taking. That it’s really, really, really hard to take when you know what you can lose.”