I was born into a low-income family in Brazil. We were poor — sometimes we didn't even have enough food. I fell in love with computers at a very young age and would sneak onto my uncle's computer at night to teach myself how to code while still in middle school. I attended public schools, but I studied every single day to earn a place in the engineering program at the best university in my country.

My dad was murdered, and I never found out what really happened. I poured myself into my studies and earned a full scholarship for a PhD in String Theory and Astrophysics in New York. In the beginning, my spoken English was rough, but I enrolled in more classes than I needed and studied every moment I could. I wrote books, contributed to open-source projects, and fell in love with software engineering all over again.

By the end of my PhD, I turned down a postdoc offer at Los Alamos for a job as a Software Engineer at Yelp. In less than a year, I was poached by Apple. After working as an engineer for a while, I realized I wanted to start my own company — something my dad had always dreamed of but could never pursue due to the difficult economic situation in Brazil.

I tried several approaches, but it's incredibly hard to build anything without real leverage — and without crossing moral lines. So I decided to join Shopify to learn more. Then DeFi Summer happened, and I got hooked on crypto again. I left my safe and well-paid job to go all in, building in crypto, with countless ideas for new products and research. I dreamed of a decentralized, logical, and fair future — something I had been passionate about for decades. Since then, I've tried many things, faced many failures, and celebrated many successes. I'm still walking this rocky road less traveled.

It's really hard to be a woman in my world — it was hard decades ago, and it's still hard now. It's even harder to be an autistic Latina. Harder still to be on your own. But I will never allow anyone to call me a victim. I am healthy, smart, young, and capable of building any reality I dream of. My real superpower is that I will never give up. And that is something no monster can take from me.