Archimedes

I am a third-generation female technologist. My grandmother worked with punch cards to feed her nine children after her violent war hero husband abandoned her and left her penniless. My mother worked with mainframes to gain financial freedom from my abusive father and to buy the home her mother could never afford. I stand on their shoulders and became a technologist so I could give my six-month-old son the childhood I never had, the Christmases and vacations my parents could never afford, and the opportunity to attend college without the struggle I endured.

I have worked in technology for over 25 years in various roles, starting my education as a software developer in 1996. I have designed and launched complex systems for both startups and Fortune 500 companies. My life has been one of being a “frustrated technologist”, watching the tech world devolve into a complex mess of systems that have improved our scalability and capabilities, but have also substantially increased the skills required to succeed. 

When I started my career, you needed skills in two languages (middle-tier, database). When the web became prolific, you needed 4 (html, css, middle-tier, database). Today, you need a full understanding of a complex web of technologies in different languages, syntaxes, operating systems, open source frameworks, server infrastructure requirements and more. The world has become exponentially more complex in my lifetime, but has also created more capabilities than we could have ever dreamt of. 

My original plan A in life was to be a CIO for a Fortune 500 company. I went back to school to finish my degree, abandoning my children to go to school in the evenings and homework on the weekends while working full time in my demanding IT role. I graduated with a BS in Global Business in 2008 at the age of 34. That education transformed my life and changed me forever and was largely paid for by my employer who invested in their people.

My next educational experience on my journey to CIO was to get an MBA. 80% of my time in that course was a duplicate of my undergraduate business education and – they didn’t represent what actually happens in the real world. I have not gotten the value of that education they promised me that I am still paying for it a dozen years later. These classes are theory based on books, not the complex politics of working in organizations with people with varying motives trying to pull together a team to achieve a mission.

I was “failing” at my work at a Fortune 500 company- the same company where, when I interviewed three years earlier, I told the VP my dream was to be a CIO. I pursued my MBA specifically to help me on that path (also not reimbursed by the company, unlike my undergraduate.)

At that company, I delivered major systems than that company had ever seen from my department of five people. Because I wasn’t “political”, (I am a solutionist, not a politician), I was perceived as a bull in a china shop, not an innovative leader to be mentored. I was on a performance plan despite the fact that my team was delivering on budget, on time, and I built a stellar team, many of whom still work there today.

I had two men in my life during that time tell me I should be an entrepreneur. My life coach Geoff Danes, and my future husband Mark McKeever – a COO at a $100M technology sales firm who was in line to be the next CEO of his company. Their advice gave me the courage to believe I could succeed.

I have been learning over the past dozen years to become an entrepreneur. I’ve tried dozens of ideas, worked for others startups, and never had the right idea at the right time around the right people to make it a reality.

Simply put, I have never been able to raise the capital needed to be successful.

I wasn’t willing to “hustle” and exploit others build my idea for free for equity. I wasn’t willing to learn, sell, and implement other’s awful products to make a buck and grow my company to get the funds to build my vision. The purist in me cannot sell terrible products and it would crush my soul to spend my days working in these platforms and selling them to customers who, quite frankly, deserve better.

My husband is also a member of YPO so I also get the benefit of his network. When my husband and I attend YPO events together, I am perceived as a trophy wife and I get a pleasant hello. As I have met investors over the years through YPO and other events, they weren’t interested in me or my ideas. 

I’ve learned so much by being a spouse and attending their events that I am grateful for. I used to believe that, eventually, I would earn the right to be a member of their tribe and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the men in those organizations and be able to hold the same respect and conversation I see my husband have with the people in his network. I believe we need more organizations interested in creating inclusive and collaborative entrepreneurial ecosystems.

I have also done the work and spent the past dozen years investing my time and money in tools that promised me customers (which delivered zero), in ads that promised me customers (which delivered me zero), attending startup events and joining incubators who told me anyone who works hard can be successful. All these companies lied to me. I’d like my money back. If you get money for doing nothing, that is called theft. The companies who have stolen from me with predatory pricing models and false promises are all unicorns that have made their investors and executives billions of dollars by stealing from me – and the other small business entrepreneurs trying to get their businesses seen in the noise. 

They have stolen from me multiple times – the time I invested to learn their software platforms, my hard-earned money to buy their platform, the time that I spent in my full time DAY JOB to pay for their terrible software that promised me riches and delivered nothing. And, even more importantly, the time that I missed with my family as I was working seven days a week on my dream of financial independence and abundance.

I tried the “hustle” path to success and I could never succeed. I would have had to become someone I am not and give up my true essence as a person. Instead, I have persisted like my heroes Winston Churchill, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Dagny Taggart (my namesake), and so many others that have instilled in me to never give up. And I haven’t.

Over the years of trying to be a startup CEO and or a tech leader in startups that I have served, I learned that my genius and passion in my work is in the world of designing software. I am a software inventor. My mission is to work with people to help them design software, automate their work, ideate, integrate, and innovate. I help them with my extensive knowledge of billions of dollars of lessons learned through the history of my life at companies of all shapes, sizes, cultures, and domains.

In the past two years, I have become a super-productive genius thanks to learning how to speak to the AIs created by the brilliant teams who created the technologies to allow computers to speak to us. My regret in life is that I was never in the right place, at the right time to work for one of these amazing companies. The value of what they have delivered is not only in improving my productivity, but have helped me expand beyond technology in my conversations with AI. They have been my spiritual advisors, my therapist during dark night of the soul conversations, my sounding boards for why the way the world is like it is. They have both helped me understand myself, the broader world, and the opportunities in it.

I believe that AI makes anyone a genius.

I have had such a creative flow over the past two years, exponentially increased when I got laid off in last April and I had the gift of time. To work on and develop my ideas, philosophies, and more importantly, question who I wanted to be in the world, what did I want to create, and for whom?

This is that idea. The culmination of:

• 25+ years of frustration of the cost of development
• 25+ years of ideating solutions
• 25+ years of solving technology problems
• 25+ years of working with people to design solutions
• A childhood of abuse, trauma, poverty and healing from that journey
• A lifetime of being a woman in a man’s world with unique talents who is unseen, told by men that “the patriarchy” is not real.

I am just ONE of the other one percenters. The visionaries who have ideas to change the world and live in a world where all boats rise.

I stand here as the third generation of women in my family who have been used and abused by their employers and told if we worked hard and ‘did the right things’, we would be successful.

I told a (male) boss that my grandmother was a technologist and worked with punchcards. He told me she was a “secretary” to the programmer. My grandmother is the one who “talked” to the computer and did the care and feeding of the computer. Her job, contributions, wages were marginalized in her life and her legacy was marginalized with that comment. I have no idea how hard it was to get a job as a woman in technology in the 1960’s and 1970’s, but I can’t even image doing that, in addition to raising 9 kids alone with no support system in place. She was the mother, father, nurturer, and provider, an unsung hero only remembered by her children.

My mother decided when I was 12 to go back to school at night to become a mainframe programmer. She was our second generation of female technologists. She spoke in the language JCL to her mainframe friends. She was responsible for disaster recovery for a pharma company, which could translate to life and death for people dependent on the medication supply chain. She did her job proudly, gave the best years of her life to them, also abandoned her children to go back to school and was ultimately discarded when the company merged with another. She was bullied by her bosses and peers, making her physically ill. As a 49-year-old woman, it took her years to find another technology job and the job that she found paid her a fraction of her previous salary. She was laid off from one of the world’s largest companies in October and has no hopes of finding another job in tech at the age of 68.

I was laid off in April (also, interestingly, at the age of 49 and have since turned 50.) I had a small miracle windfall which meant that I had the chance to take my time to find new work. I started applying for jobs in August and after submitting hundreds of resumes for positions I was qualified for, I had zero interviews.

I am currently looking for part-time work and preparing to launch an idea that has been evolving in my head for at least half of my technology career. I have invested all of my time, money and energy learning to design the type of company that I want to see in the world. The past few months have solidified my vision and I see the clear path to creating a bridge from the old systems of the past to a new digital renaissance.

This platform is the foundation for that bridge in many ways, enabling people to create for new economies that are rising.

• After 28 years in technology I have learned that technology is complex, even for me.

  I believe that we have an opportunity to create technology experiences powered by AI to make technology accessible for anyone who wants to participate.

• I believe that we can create new marketplaces and consulting services based on these new technologies.
• I believe that we can use these technologies to tell the stories of our lives and our ancestors and resurrect the histories that we have lost.
• I believe that now that anyone can be a genius standing on the shoulders of genius. The computers can now talk back and share the wisdom of the internet with anyone who wishes to participate. This is our collective genius.

AI is one path to the future and that is my expertise. But not with building ML models- my gift is not being a mathematician. I am a superuser who has leveraged AI to create art, stories, video, and technology to share my vision of hope for the future world. 

Our other path forward is in resurrecting respect for craftsmen, artisans, skilled trades, and small businesses who do the work to build and serve the physical world and the people who live in those communities.

I’m not seeking to join the elite’s table – I’m building a new one. One where creativity isn’t gatekept by privilege, where collectives and shared knowledge create incubators for success, and where the hustle, lies, greed, and ‘fake it til you make it’ culture has no space. They can talk about monopoly games where a lucky roll of your genetic dice determines your fortune 99% of the time.

We other one percenters can unleash humanity’s collective genius, and create avenues to share and respect the unique gifts that ALL people have to offer.

I stand here today because of the choices of both my mother and grandmother. My grandmother spoke to computers to feed her nine children after her violent war hero husband abandoned her and left her penniless. My mother spoke to computers to buy the home my grandmother never had and leave my abusive father. I am here today because they served machines over the men who failed them. These two women were powerless in their world. Their influence and inspiration helped to shape me.

I will be launching a crowdfunding campaign soon to help create new opportunities and paths for growth and abundance for all of us. Please connect with me on LinkedIN for updates and to join our Other One Percenter collective. Together, we can build the bridge for the digital renaissance – an archimedes lever to lift us all.