When I was five, my mother immigrated into this country with $25 to her name. She built her own catering business, and everyone lent a hand to keep us afloat. I come from a world where we sleep little, leave class to go to work, and always watch out for heat strokes.

I come from a very low-tech world. In 1999 my mother brought home our first computer after hearing someone was trying to get rid of it. It had a small black screen and green letters. I had fun making pictures on it using little square characters against the black background. Years later my brother got a computer for his birthday. It was a machine for MS Paint, some video games, and not much else. A few years after that, it was stolen. Beyond that computers were always something used in school.

When I was 18, I was working enough to save up for a smartphone and laptop for college. I entered bottle-cap codes for Coke Rewards to get a Wired Magazine subscription to read on the train rides and bus rides to and from class. I loved reading about people slowly building a science fiction world, but never considered this was a field I could work in. I never met anyone who worked in tech.

After college, I got a job at a company that builds rewards websites. I answer calls from people having issues with the sites. On my breaks, I took courses on Khan Academy. One day, Intro to Programming popped up and they had me make a sun rise out of a green field. I could not believe that is what programming was.

So here we are.