When I was younger, I used to think that my unconventional upbringing was a weakness, but over the past few years, I've learnt to see it as one of my greatest strengths.

The decision to join Stripe and run 'Increment' was a pretty easy one for me: It was an opportunity to be impactful, to collect and share best practices from the most effective engineering teams in the world. 'Increment' is a step toward flattening the distance between the Silicon Valley elite and developers everywhere.

A lot of women have been whistle-blowers in the past, and a lot of them have just gotten torn down and treated terribly. One of the things that kept popping up was this idea that if you do whistle-blow about sexual harassment, then that is what will define the rest of your life.

When I was harassed and discriminated against, I fought as hard as I could - because I hadn't gone through all of that, I hadn't worked so hard my entire life, just to have someone take it away from me.