Kelsey Hightower

So by the time I turned 15, I was a assistant manager.

So...

nights and weekends, you know, other managers would leave, they would give this 15 year old the keys.

And I knew how to do everything there, including close out the store, right?

So you have to count all the money, you have to fax this huge spreadsheet to corporate every night, and then my mom would pick me up.

And so it was really good learning how to really be responsible even for adults at that age.

So that's how I got my first dollar.

How did you get into tech?

How did you get into programming?

In high school, since I moved from California to Atlantis, you're going from one side of the country to another side of the country.

And I missed maybe three to six months of school.

And in order to graduate on time, I had to take some extra classes.

And so as someone who played sports, ran track, played football, played basketball, and it's like, you know, there's this computer programming, you know, computer club, technology student association.

There was a class component and then there was after school component.

And I was like, I don't know, man, this computer stuff, that's for the, you know, I'm trying to be a cool kid.

But the one thing I did, I really enjoyed it, right?

So I had a liking to AutoCAD.

I even competed at the state level in AutoCAD.

So we drove down and you compete, they give you a task and you sit in front of the computer.

It was my first year doing it, but I really liked the idea of like taking a specification, designing it.