So why don’t we start from the beginning. Tell me about about your early years and where you come from.

I’m from a town called Newtown, Pennsylvania, it’s about 45 minutes north of Philadelphia. I grew up there, but went to high school in Princeton New Jersey, which was kind of interesting  because it was a day school, so I would drive back and forth across the river every day from Pennsylvania to New Jersey to go to school. The school I went to for middle and high school was a school called Stuart Country Day School. It was very interesting, it was an all-girls private Catholic school.

I think that was definitely formative, in terms of only being around other girls for most of my significant schooling. So I’m definitely a proponent of single-sex education, at least in the classroom. I think that it suffered a little bit because we didn’t have a social component, like a brother school with high school boys. The prom was kind of weird because it was just  women in dresses, but we still had a great time. But in terms of academics, it was definitely cool to be in advanced physics classes with all girls.

“I hadn’t really considered computer science as a major, mostly because I didn’t really know what computer science was. When someone told me they had a degree in computer science, I thought, ‘Oh, that’s like the Geek Squad.’ I didn’t really understand what that meant, and what you do. As a funny anecdote, I actually remember one of my teachers in high school saying, ‘I really think you’d like this computer science stuff. You could get a great job.’ I was looking through some information trying to figure out what kind of jobs I could get with that degree, and one of the things was a job at Google.  I remember asking her, ‘How could you work at Google? It’s a website; that doesn’t make sense!'”

I can’t even imagine what that’s like.

It was pretty awesome. This whole concept of, “Women can’t do science” and “girls are bad at math,” just wasn’t a thing, because it was like, “Well, someone has to be good at calculus, and we’re all women, so…”

I love that. When did you first get interested in tech? Was it early on, or was it after you were already in it?

I actually got interested in that in college. I hadn’t really considered computer science as a major, mostly because I didn’t really know what computer science was. When someone told me they had a degree in computer science, I thought, “Oh, that’s like the Geek Squad.” I didn’t really understand what that meant, and what you do. As a funny anecdote, I actually remember one of my teachers in high school saying, “I really think you’d like this computer science stuff. You could get a great job.” I was looking through some information trying to figure out what kind of jobs I could get with that degree, and one of the things was a job at Google.  I remember asking her, “How could you work at Google? It’s a website; that doesn’t make sense!” [chuckles].

Little did you know.

Yeah. Surprise! [laughter]

How was your college experience working in computer science? I’m assuming that it was gender mixed at this point.

After high school, I enrolled in the engineering school at the University of Pennsylvania. First of all, it was  a culture shock to go from an environment that was all girls to an environment that was almost entirely male. That was just a strange transition to make. I think college is what made me know for sure that I wanted to be in tech. It’s also probably the time when I wanted to quit tech the most and it would oscillate back and forth everyday.

Tell me more about that.

I struggled a lot with confidence and identity in college because there was this general feeling that there’s a certain type of student in CS and that student is going to grow up and change the world. They’re the next Mark Zuckerberg and the next Bill Gates. That archetype was almost always a white or Asian male student. But even more so than their race or their gender, it was really this attitude that you had to be bored in class. In your 100- and 200-level courses, you had to be like “It’s so easy; I’ve done this so many times; I’m so bored.”  And because they were so “bored” in these very difficult classes, they would go home and spend all their time learning about other technologies because they had the time to do that, apparently.  It turned into a vicious cycle where you would talk to some classmates and they would be like, “Oh, you don’t know Django?” And you’re like, “No. I’m in CS 101. Why would I know—what is that?”  And they’re like, “Oh, well, I’ve been programming since I was 14.” So even though I was learning a lot, I always felt like I was behind my classmates because I had to work hard just to get my schoolwork done.

“I struggled a lot with confidence and identity in college because there was this general feeling that there’s a certain type of student in CS and that student is going to grow up and change the world. They’re the next Mark Zuckerberg and the next Bill Gates.”

You’re not the first person to say that was the vibe. It was competitive—flaunting, some maybe not even being truthful about it.  Everybody competing about how easy this is, when in reality, most people are like, “Am I the only one who’s struggling here?”

Yeah, and that was very different from high school for me. I’m not going to beat around the bush; my high school was very, very competitive. But you could see the toll that the hard work was taking on the students. No student would ever tell you, “Oh, I’m so bored, this is so easy for me.” Students were like, “Yes, this is a lot of hard work and I’m tired as hell”. When I went to college, I really fell for the idea—for a long time—that if you don’t find everything easy then there is something is wrong with you. It felt as though even if you got an A, if you had to work for the A, then you didn’t really belong there.

“When I went to college, I really fell for the idea—for a long time—that if you don’t find everything easy then there is something is wrong with you. It felt as though even if you got an A, if you had to work for the A, then you didn’t really belong there.”

From there, walk me through how you got into your career.

After I graduated, I did an internship at Apple. That was a ton of fun. I learned a lot and it was incredible to actually see one of these big tech companies from the inside. After I finished up at Apple I went back to Penn to finish my Master’s. Looking back, I think the reason I did the Master’s was because I didn’t feel confident in my own skills. I figured instead of graduating with a Bachelor’s and maybe not getting the job I wanted, I would stay for another year and finish up the Master’s. I thought that would put me on par with my undergrad classmates, which was not true, but that’s what I still believed deep down.

So I went back and did my Master’s, and while I was in school I met a guy named Andrew, who eventually became a good friend of mine. When I met him, he was looking for people to work on his app. He was a business and product-minded kind of guy with a lot of hustle, and I decided to work with him and see what came of it. We ended up working together during my last semester on iPhone/iPad apps, and we had a ton of fun. So after I graduated, we decided to just start a company called Nymbly. It was just the two of us, contracting and writing apps. We did that for about a year, and we had this whole plan where we were going to become this tech/media empire where we would do contracting, then subcontracting, and then start coming out with original content. We had a few successful apps, but the overall vision was way too ambitious. After a year I was struggling, and we decided to take a break and quit while we were ahead and still friends—and still healthy [laughter]. We ended up going to a company in New York called Fueled. It was this big flashy agency that was doing apps for both big companies and one-person startups, and they had their own original content. It was exactly like what we had hoped our company would be. We both quit Nymbly, applied to Fueled, and got hired in more or less the same roles. That was super cool, because it felt like an acquisition but without the paperwork [laughter]. I ended up moving up to New York to work for them.

And how did you end up at Google?

Before I accepted the offer at Fueled, I had been in contact with a Google recruiter, but I put my application on hold because I got the Fueled offer soon after that. A few months later, they got back in touch and I decided to just continue the interview process to see if I would have gotten the job. The answer was yes, and I was like, “Are you kidding me? If I had known it was going to be yes, I would have just waited [laughter].”

But it worked out, and I ended up moving over to Google New York. That was probably the greatest day of my life. The first day at Google I got the hat with the pinwheel and everything.

Working at a website? Woohoo!

I should go back and email that high school teacher and just tell her,”I did it. I’m working at a website.” [laughter]

So you’re doing really well at Google.

Yes.. I joined the Google Wallet team for iOS because I really wanted to make sure I kept doing iOS development. I was on the Google Wallet team for about a year, and then there was a restructuring and we ended up moving the Wallet team from New York to San Francisco. I had a choice between staying at Google NYC in a new role, or moving and keeping my current role. I liked what I was doing, so I moved to  San Francisco, and that’s where I am now. I live in Oakland these days.

“I was terrified, but I didn’t want to tell anyone at work that, so I tried to be confident at work and then I would go home and freak out. I was really afraid that I was going to mess it up and that in messing it up not only would I ruin my own career, I would ruin the careers of all the people who came after me that look like me. I was afraid that if I made a major mistake people would say, ‘See, this is why we don’t put black women in charge of stuff because look what happened to Google Wallet,’ and that would be the reference from then on.”

How was that shift for you? I’ve lived in New York and San Francisco and I love them both, but they’re so different.

That was a crazy shift. As an East-Coaster I am confused by California daily, and I just don’t understand what’s wrong with people sometimes. They’re too nice!

I get it.

Yeah. The geographical transition was interesting, but the work transition was even more daunting. In the shuffle of moving everything from New York to California I went from being one of a handful of junior engineers on the team to being the lead engineer. I decided to run with it and it’s been about a year since then.

Was there any apprehension about suddenly taking charge ?

I was terrified, but I didn’t want to tell anyone at work that, so I tried to be confident at work and then I would go home and freak out. I was really afraid that I was going to mess it up and that in messing it up not only would I ruin my own career, I would ruin the careers of all the people who came after me that look like me. I was afraid that if I made a major mistake people would say, “See, this is why we don’t put black women in charge of stuff because look what happened to Google Wallet,” and that would be the reference from then on.

On that note, what has been your struggle either in work, or the culture, or anything?  What has been hard for you and what have been road blocks?

I think that at work my struggle has really been this fear of failure, specifically being afraid that my failure is going to be an issue for not only myself but also for other black women in the future. Sometimes that leads to a little bit of extra frustration. I look around at my coworkers and I know that if a white guy messes something up he’s probably going to be fine, relatively speaking. Sure, he messed up the big meeting, but no one’s going to look at him and think, “Boy, that went poorly, maybe we shouldn’t let white guys run meetings anymore.” That’s just not a thing that people are likely to say. Sometimes I get tired of the fact that there’s this extra pressure on top of already having what I consider to be a pretty difficult job, so that’s definitely a challenge. Some people talk about not fitting in with the stereotypical geek culture of Star Wars, Star Trek, video games, comics, etc. That hasn’t been too much of an issue because I naturally gravitated toward that stuff anyway. I think the number one issue I have is really just the confidence and the identity thing. It goes back to those same issues from college of feeling like I’m the only person that’s struggling with something, or I’m the only person that hasn’t read this book, or learned this specific part of computer science. That feeling is so dangerous because it makes you think that whatever it is that you didn’t do, you’re the only person that didn’t do it. “That thing that you’re not doing? Everyone else is doing it and that’s why they’re going to be the next Steve Jobs and you’re not.” And even though I know that’s not true, it’s very, very hard to break that cycle and stop listening to that narrative whenever you hear it. I think that it is really isolating when all of us feel pressure to just make it all look so easy and refuse to share that sometimes things are really difficult for us. I think it affects your work relationships, too. There are times when I’m reluctant to go to someone for help because I don’t want them to know that I’m struggling, or I don’t want them to know that I didn’t quite understand something. Sometimes, rather than asking someone and getting a five-minute explanation, I’ll go home and read documents for an hour to try and figure it out because I don’t want everyone to know that I had trouble. I know it sounds crazy, but I still find myself doing it sometimes, and I see lots of other people doing it, too.

“I think that at work my struggle has really been this fear of failure, specifically being afraid that my failure is going to be an issue for not only myself but also for other black women in the future. Sometimes that leads to a little bit of extra frustration. I look around at my coworkers and I know that if a white guy messes something up he’s probably going to be fine, relatively speaking. Sure, he messed up the big meeting, but no one’s going to look at him and think, ‘Boy, that went poorly, maybe we shouldn’t let white guys run meetings anymore.'”

I can totally relate. During my time in tech, I remember just putting in hours and hours and hours of secret work, to make sure that I was twice as good without having to ask for help. 

In your pre-interview, you mentioned being a double minority in tech,  and I’m curious to know if you experience the two separately, in different ways? Does that make sense?

Well, it’s very hard. A lot of times, when there is an incident, it’s so subtle that you can’t tell what the other person was reacting to, race, gender, or both. I think the time that I’ve felt one minority status more so than the other is actually when I would go to the computer science club for women in school, or the female employee group at work. I actually feel a lot of otherness in those situations because even though on the surface, the group is dedicated to women and our unified experiences, they often cut out the experiences of women of color. It’s  like the lowest common denominator; the women’s groups only talk about experiences that all women face, not experiences that some women in the group may face. It ends up being mostly about the experiences of white women, rather than any and all women.

“I think that it is really isolating when all of us feel pressure to just make it all look so easy and refuse to share that sometimes things are really difficult for us. I think it affects your work relationships, too. There are times when I’m reluctant to go to someone for help because I don’t want them to know that I’m struggling, or I don’t want them to know that I didn’t quite understand something. Sometimes, rather than asking someone and getting a five-minute explanation, I’ll go home and read documents for an hour to try and figure it out because I don’t want everyone to know that I had trouble. I know it sounds crazy, but I still find myself doing it sometimes, and I see lots of other people doing it, too.”

That’s really interesting. I am learning so much from this project. It’s really amazing. Have you had mentors or people that you’ve looked up for inspiration along the way or have you just been creating your own path?

Yeah, I definitely have. My parents are definitely examples for me. Both of them grew up in low-income areas and went on to graduate-school and were very successful. Within the office, I was very fortunate to be placed in a group where the director was black. He was also one of the advisors of the Black Googler Network, so it was really cool to be able to talk to him, because he was someone who was higher up in engineering. He had experienced a ton of things within Google as an engineering director. But he also understood the product that I work on, so I didn’t have to talk in vague terms. I could actually talk to him about the work I was doing on a daily basis, and that was really great.

Similar, but different, what are your biggest motivators? What drives you?

It’s different every day. I think overall what drives me is really just wanting to see what I can do. I think something that’s unique to this generation is that when we were kids, we were told, “You’re so smart. You’re so talented. You’re going to do amazing things. You’re going to change the world.” So now that I’m older, it feels like it’s time to put my money where my mouth is. A lot of people are motivated by a single cause, and I just want to find something and run with it until I can’t do it anymore, then switch and do something else until I can’t do that anymore, and see where I land.

Back to your parents, how do your friends and family from home feel about the work that you’ve done and how far you’ve come?

I think they’re definitely proud. It’s funny because neither of my parents have technical backgrounds – they’re both in law – and sometimes I’ll try to explain why something was good or bad and they’re like, “That’s nice. Just keep up the computer stuff.” I’m like, “Alright thanks, I will.” [chuckle] But knowing people are rooting for me means the world to me.

“I think the time that I’ve felt one minority status more so than the other is actually when I would go to the computer science club for women in school, or the female employee group at work. I actually feel a lot of otherness in those situations because even though on the surface, the group is dedicated to women and our unified experiences, they often cut out the experiences of women of color. It’s  like the lowest common denominator; the women’s groups only talk about experiences that all women face, not experiences that some women in the group may face. It ends up being mostly about the experiences of white women, rather than any and all women.”

You’re far from home, so where do you find your support networks here?

It’s difficult, to be honest. I’ve actually started going to more meetups and events for women in tech, or people of color in tech, or women of color in tech, or any combination of that. Those have actually been really cool just to start building a friend network and things like that. It is tough, though. Most of my friends and family are on the East Coast. I also think it helps a ton that my boyfriend moved out here with me from New York, and we live together. It’s been really great to have him since he’s the one person who understands everything I’ve been through recently. He’s also in tech, so he understands the work I do, in addition to things like the cross-country move. He is  the one person that’s been here for the whole thing [chuckles].

What do you think about the state of tech in 2016? What excites you? What frustrates you?

I think those are actually the same thing. I think what frustrates me—I’ll start with that—is this proliferation of useless tech. People are just pouring money into it, and it’s like, “Oh wow, an app that’s like Tinder for cats.” I’m not going to use that. Yet, they manage to raise like $10 million—that makes no sense. It’s ridiculous. Especially in San Francisco, everywhere you go, there’s a person who’s trying to push a stupid startup on you. But I think that there’s more people who are finally coming to that realization, and there’s a second undercurrent of people who are intentionally shunning those things and turning toward what I think are better causes. I’ve seen education becoming a bigger thing. There are startups trying to fix what’s wrong with the government or the environment, and more focus on diversity and inclusion. It seem like people are turning toward more serious causes than just seeing what kind of app you can make, how fast, and how much money someone will give you for it.

So I’m hopeful about that.

What do you love most about working in tech and the environment you’ve ended up in?

I think I’m a person that even if I wasn’t in tech, I would be a techie-type person. I would be all about my phone and all about my computer, so it’s cool that, given that that’s something that I think I naturally gravitate toward as a hobby, I get to see the cutting edge of that. And to understand how the products you use work is really empowering as a consumer. And then in terms of being at Google, I think it’s really cool that there’s so many people who are so incredibly brilliant and talented, that you could walk down the hallway and run into someone who wrote the book that you were just reading before you got up. It’s great to be in an environment where there’s that many smart people all working toward a common goal.

What do you think your background and life experiences impacts the way that you do your work and bring something to a team?

I think that the number one thing that I bring to the team is making sure to always acknowledge other perspectives. For example, the product I work on is a personal finance app. Growing up I came from a very economically privileged background. I was a prep school kid.  Even though I’m privileged enough that I don’t experience some of the things that a lot of our users experience, I think being “on the outside” in other ways has ingrained it in me to always at least ask what someone else would think about the product we’ve made, and not to assume my experience is the default. I think that sometimes people get worried about being privileged and they ask, “How could I have every perspective? I haven’t experienced what it’s like to be everyone, that’s ridiculous!” The result is that they view designing products for everyone as an impossible task, and don’t even try. You don’t need to have every perspective yourself. You just need to be able to know that someone else might think about things a different way, or they might use the product in a different way. To be willing to go out and ask those questions and figure out what that different way of thinking is, I think it’s pretty valuable.

What are you working on right now, either for work or for yourself?

For work, still Wallet, though I’m excited to say I’ll be transferring to the Android Wear team soon. Personally, however,the thing I’m really excited about—which has nothing to do with tech—is adult literacy, teaching with the Second Start program through the Oakland public library. I just signed up and completed the training, and soon I’ll be assigned a student. I’m going to start meeting with them in the next couple of weeks. I’m so excited to be able to teach someone to read.

Do you feel that compulsion the longer that you’re here, to start giving back to the city and getting more involved in things like that?

Yeah, I’m definitely feeling very connected to the community in Oakland. And I think there was also a realization that everything that I have is because of the fact that I read something. I read some book that sparked an interest in something that led to an interest in something else, which made me pick up another book and read something else. And the whole chain of everything I know and care about is built from things that I’ve read. I don’t even know how much of my waking time I spend reading. It’s probably about 75 percent. I’m always looking at something. Imagining what that’s like to not be able to read and to be so cut off from that experience. It breaks my heart, so I want to try and do something about it.

“Even though I’m privileged enough that I don’t experience some of the things that a lot of our users experience, I think being ‘on the outside’ in other ways has ingrained it in me to always at least ask what someone else would think about the product we’ve made, and not to assume my experience is the default. I think that sometimes people get worried about being privileged and they ask, ‘How could I have every perspective? I haven’t experienced what it’s like to be everyone, that’s ridiculous!’ The result is that they view designing products for everyone as an impossible task, and don’t even try. You don’t need to have every perspective yourself. You just need to be able to know that someone else might think about things a different way, or they might use the product in a different way. To be willing to go out and ask those questions and figure out what that different way of thinking is, I think it’s pretty valuable.”

I love it. Where do you see yourself in five or ten years? Do you think you’ll still be in tech?

Yeah, I think I’ll still be in tech. Like I said earlier, I want to go as far as I can with something until I can’t anymore, and then just figure out where I can go from there. I think that I still have a lot to learn in tech. I’ve mostly been doing mobile development. I haven’t tried my hand at hardware or server-side development, or even front-end web development. I still have a lot that I could learn within tech.

Lastly, what kind of lessons have you learned or what advice would you give to folks starting out in tech, or hoping to get into tech?

The number one piece of advice would be: tech is not easy and don’t get discouraged, or think you’re not cut out for it if something is difficult. If it seems like everyone else around you is having an easy time of it, trust me, they’re not. It sound  cliche, to say “believe in yourself.” But really, do it.

“Tech is not easy and don’t get discouraged, or think you’re not cut out for it if something is difficult. If it seems like everyone else around you is having an easy time of it, trust me, they’re not.”