A high school computer science teacher handed me a book and decided I had the chops to understand neural networks and C++. Not a curriculum. A deliberate act of belief in a specific kid. Without that moment, none of what came after looks the way it does.

Someone at JPL took a chance on me without a fancy CS degree. Someone trusted me to build high-performance distributed systems at Myspace before my resume said I'd earned it. Someone wrote the first check for Prevoty when it was still rough around the edges and a belief. Someone gave me my first leadership seat, then my first C-level seat.

None of these were policies or programs. They were people.

That's the thing about generosity of opportunity: it rarely feels monumental in the moment. A small door, held open a little longer than usual…but on the other side, sometimes everything.

One of my favorite things is pair programming with our interns. Sitting next to someone early in their career and watching how their brain works is genuinely incredible. The way they approach a problem, the assumptions they make, and the things they reach for first. I end up learning as much as I'm teaching. Probably more. There's something about being in the middle of your career, with all the scar tissue and stories that come with it, sitting next to someone at the very beginning of theirs. The exchange is real in both directions.

You don't need a program. You don't need a budget. You just need to be intentional about whom you bring into the room, whom you give five minutes of real attention to, whom you hand a book to, and whom you hand an opportunity to.

Keep the door open. That's all it takes. That's all it ever took.