In part one of this two-part episode, we hear the origin story of someone who was not your average computer scientist growing up. Dr. Christina Gardner-McCune was not “sitting around building servers” in her free time. Instead, she participated in student government cheerleading and developed a passion for education-based interventions. Although she had a couple of setbacks and restarts in her educational journey with her mother’s encouragement and a desire to blend her creativity with computer science, Dr. Gardner McCune was able to lay the foundations for her career successfully.