31. Gant Laborde: Making it All Add Up - My Journey to Chief Innovation Officer

In this episode of We Belong Here, Lauren interviews Gant Laborde. They talk about how Gant was, in fact, “really bad” at computers when he was a kid. His light bulb moment was when his neighbor showed him how to make his computer *talk back* to him and say, “Hey Gant,” instead of “Hello World.” Books and learning resources were not available to him. So instead, he had to learn by breaking things. Gant had many limitations working against him: he always had the oldest computer and was pretty bad at math. But he refused to give up on his goals and dreams. 

Eventually, he did enroll in a Computer Science program but found it damaging in that it was painfully uninteresting or inspiring. However, he stuck with it and discovered the value in pursuing roles that challenged him to think beyond the basic execution of a problem and actively welcomed his unique perspective to the job.  

Lauren and Gant chat about burnout and how the industry can sometimes beat the passion out of you in the industry. Open Source was the thing to reignite his love for the community and the tech industry itself. 

Today, as the Chief Innovation Officer at Infinite Red, he gets to go out into the wild and research cool things and bring that learning back to the company and essentially functions as a mad scientist for them! He shares loads of wisdom and advice for the listener who might be curious to break into tech. This is not an episode to miss! 

Resources: 

Follow Gant’s adventures at GantLaborde.com

Gant on Twitter: @GantLaborde 

Two Minute Papers  

Infinite Red

We Belong Here Podcast: 

Follow Lauren on Twitter @LoLoCoding 

WeBelongPodcast.com website

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