Can you stand the rain?

This is a submission for the 2026 WeCoded Challenge: Echoes of Experience The story of how Alicia Keys accidentally got me a career in tech Can you stand the rain? That's what New Edition asked about love and life. I was listening to the song while reading about the WeCoded challenge, and it made me realize the rain in my own life shaped me more than sunny days. I knew this was the story I wanted to tell. The way I ended up in tech came from the most unlikely place: an Alicia Keys concert my mom took me to by accident, and the online community of Black and brown people I found because of it. This is how diversity, real diversity, the kind with no panel moderator and no walls got me into tech. The Rain I grew up in a small suburb in the south right by the Mason-Dixon line, in a family that made no sense to anyone around me. My mom was Guyanese. My family is diverse. "Mix up" is how we called it. At home my kitchen smelled like chicken curry and roti and dhal while every other house arou