The next few years were grueling but straightforward. I rented a tiny studio, accepted every extra shift, and poured overtime pay into online health informatics courses. The deeper I got, the clearer it became: hospitals didn’t just need more staff; they needed smarter systems. Jess joked that I was trying to “code my way out of childhood,” but she also passed my résumé to a visiting executive from MedLink, an expanding healthcare-tech firm.
At twenty-nine, I traded bedside nursing for an analyst position there. The raise wasn’t dramatic, but the stock options were tangible, and the work energized me. I helped develop tools that reduced charting time and flagged medication mistakes. Our CEO, Angela Flores, took notice. Within a few years, I was leading a product team, staying late to build solutions that made nurses feel seen.
When MedLink went public, the shares I’d quietly accumulated were suddenly worth more than every paycheck I’d ever earned combined. I cleared my loans, bought a downtown condo, and replaced my Honda with a new Tesla.