Setting the Record Straight

Code and Collaboration

I had my eye out for someone who would shared a similar excitement for learning code.

I was at BART, headed home to SF from Berkeley, when some guy asked his friend to ask me how to get to SF. Let’s call that first guy Jean. Jean and I maintained good conversation throughout the duration our ride to the city. “Randomly,” we discussed his startup success story. I didn’t mind, I dreamt about someday obtaining the same type of success.

Jean traveled a lot and it was clear he had no intentions of meeting up. I was itching to know more about his experience. Feeling especially inspire— I just went for it:

Via Facebook -

Laura: “Will you be my mentor? I want to learn about the tech industry. I saw Sheryl Sandberg when she was at Dreamforce, she mentioned how important mentors are.”

Jean: “Well, we can chat sometime. I’m out of the country until the 10th. Let’s set something up when I get back.”

A few days later we met for lunch. It was discovered that we both were passionate about learning to code and had no experience.

At this point, I felt empowered to learn code. I had 1) a coding buddy and 2) two strong women at home encouraging me to follow my dreams. Props to all of them for being so darn cool.

The collaboration begins.

Originally published at codetoempower.com.