In 1979, opportunities for a single mother were scant in Holly’s deep South Texas hometown. Struggling to provide for her three-year-old son, Holly received a call one day that changed her life forever. “A family friend phoned me from LA saying he was going to send me an airline ticket to come learn about computer programming. ‘You’d excel at it,’ he said. And I had nothing to lose, so I packed up my son and went,” Holly recalls. You see, Holly had horrible asthma as a child, meaning she often had to stay home from school and teach herself. “So, for him to say, ‘You can learn this,’ was a no-brainer,” says Holly. “It was my forte, like, give me a book and I’ll figure it out.”

Much to the dismay of Holly’s parents, she took a computer programming job in Los Angeles, where she worked for three years, earning approximately $27/hour-an amazing salary back then! However, Holly longed to be near family, eventually moving back in 1981. Holly’s parents were entrepreneurs to their core, and when Holly arrived back in Texas, she found her father had started his own computer software business. She worked alongside him for over 15 years until the next chapter of her life began to unfold.