One month ago, something changed for me.

My feed was stale and covered in posts on how to make money on Substack. I read Notes about how great the Substack community was, and wondered what I was missing.

Then, I started seeing posts by Jenny Ouyang on building with Cursor. Followed by posts from the Code Like A Girl community, created by Dinah.

And then a whole new world of Substack opened up to me.

I discovered and bought Christine Olukere’s book, Code Like a Cutie.

I learned about Apoorvaa Deshpande’s PolyPaths — a way to celebrate the multifaceted skills and passions we all have.

Karen Spinner’s journey launching then abruptly having to pull an AI-powered startup.

Elena | AI Product Leader’s AI advent calendar and incredible rebuilding of an incredible product before go time

Colette Molteni’s embodiment of demonstrating how to move with our emotions as signals when working with AI

Cristina on how to use AI responsibly

Karen Smiley who created the SheWritesAI community

Daria Cupareanu whose hot takes on making AI practical I can’t get enough of

And many more including Emma Klint Dr Sam Illingworth Kathy Wu Brady Valerie Ehrlich, PhD Diana O. The Reluctant Graduate 👩🏾‍🎓

You all light up my Substack. Because of you, my feed is flooded with posts about AI, practical tips on how to make this baffling new technology work for you, but also how to be true to yourself, your humanity, your creativity, your expertise. How to learn, grow, and become an expert in a technology that is still lopsided in who is represented as an expert. How to experiment and how to be messy as the way to move forward.

There is an elbow in my subscriber graph that I love because it commemorates the time I reached my hand out to this incredible community, and the community reached back.

I can’t wait to see what 2026 will bring.