When you think of the word “successful,” who’s the first person that comes to mind and why?

Truthfully, I would have to say that I am the person that would fit that definition of being “successful”, I state this because I am the one that went above and beyond. Especially out of all the kids I am the only fully traditional Navajo and still I utilize a medicine man for issues that a clinic cannot take care of. My parents had me go to school at one of the best schools you could go to at my time, Kindergarten was in 1989 for me, aside from Gallup Catholic School, Rehoboth private school was the other place to go. I literally went to this school from K-12th grade. I graduated from this school in 2001. A week after I graduated I was sent to Fort Jackson, South Carolina for basic training and after that I traveled to Georgia for Signal Corp. training, which was located in Fort Gordon, but has been changed to Fort Eisenhower. From there they sent me to Korea where I lived for a year and then I was pushed out.

For years after that I had to deal with the horror’s of what I had experienced, but eventually I took the leap in 2010 on going to school and ended up at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh for Web Design & Interactive Media, which was my Associate’s that I received in 2012. Then after moving back home to Gallup I was working as a housekeeper and someone brought up that if I went to school and got my degree for Information Technology that I would be hired as that, so I received my Bachelor’s of IT in 2015. My final degree that I earned was my Master’s in IT focused on Security and Assurance, which I finished in 2017. Eventually I would retire after that at the age of 32.

No matter what, I know that I am doing awesome because I started from the bottom, and suffering through the years with Mental health I was still able to come out on top, because I never had co-signers and I am still married to the same man since I met him in 2001 and I also have a grown daughter that is in college. So if none of that says “success” then I have no idea what to say except I worked hard to get where I am.