What a year.

525,600 minutes. A lot of them (more than ever before, probably) spent awake, thanks to the growing human that now accompanies me and my husband on our adventure through life. 2024 was a year where I had to complete reinvent myself into a new person, which has been powerful, exciting, scary, lonely, invigorating, marvelous, and awesome (in the true sense of awe).

It is hard to believe that one year ago today, I hadn’t yet taken Hitendra Wadhwa’s course on Personal Leadership and Success. I remember sitting in that classroom at Columbia Business School at 34 weeks pregnant, feeling my son kick and wiggle and squirm when we started each day with a meditation exercise. He was already a grounding reminder about the role that love plays in our lives, and having a course that emphasized the importance of leading with love in a business environment was perfectly timed to the journey I was on.

Anticipating an early arrival of Baby Fox, I took all of February in 2024 off from work. I used the time to prepare myself (as much as I could) for the impending member of our family, took long walks with my husband in Astoria Park in the cold, and watched foreign films at Cinema 123 by Angelika in Manhattan.

The first week of March came and went, with no baby. Cassian’s birth – eight days past his due date – marked the beginning of the rest of my life. It might sound cheesy, and perhaps it is, but for as common an occurrence as childbirth is to the human race, it is grossly under-explored as an individual phenomena. No experience of my life prepared me to so graciously and willingly say goodbye to a version of myself that felt unshakeable.

Eight years before the birth of my son, I had felt an urge to write him a letter. I promised him, at the time, that I would work to become the best version of myself by the time that he arrived. What I hadn’t realized was that the best version of myself would only come after he did. As a mother, I am finally the person that I have been trying to be for my entire life.

April, May, and June were a blur of becoming a parent. I learned how to function on fewer hours of sleep than I thought possible. I felt emotions more strongly and struggled to communicate the intensity of what I was feeling every day. My body was changing and still beheld to the needs of the tiny human who depended on us for everything. As someone who had always felt pride in my strength, I suddenly felt so appreciative of becoming soft.

2024 was a year where my relationships changed. My connections to others in my life were deepened, and I was able to let go of the relationships that had been hurting me. Friendships and relationships are difficult at times, but only some survive the test of one being torn apart and reconstructed around an entirely different purpose.

Perhaps most critically, my relationship to myself changed. I had spent my entire adult life prioritizing my career above all else in my life, and while I still find myself drawn to my vocation in many ways, I have become more pragmatic about how I protect my time and energy. I still joke that my AI computer is my son’s “older sister”. I have new ideas for how to bring technology to life. But these thoughts occupy a more holistic space in my mind, and the obsessive, single-focused nature that I was used to in my work is no longer present. I suspect that 2025 will show that to be a fruitful endeavor, as I cultivate this and find more ways to draw inspiration from the love and presence that I feel and bring a gentler touch to the field of artificial intelligence.

In July, I returned to work. For the first time, I stepped back from responsibilities instead of toward them. I found that I needed more patience with myself to transition, and I still struggle to balance the role of a professional with the role of motherhood. I haven’t yet figured out to reconcile these parts of my self, but I know that the process is occurring.

In September, we launched the first cohort of the Mozilla Builders program. We celebrated with an offsite to kick off the group, and I found myself energized and motivated in my front seat view to so many incredibly talented individuals and their projects.

The fall was punctuated by difficult moments as I struggled with the reconciliation of my role as a parent and my job. I took more time off. We went to Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

In December, we completed the first cohort of the Mozilla Builders Accelerator with Demo Day and the launch of a new website. I wrote about the Interface Revolution and what it looks like to completely rethink how we engage with digital information.

In the blink of an eye, the longest year of my life was complete. In many ways, it was the first year of a new life – not just my son’s life, but my life as a parent, navigating a complex and changing world. I got treatment for postpartum anxiety. I found my yoga instructor. I became a better programmer and data scientist. I got nine classes closer to completing my MBA at Columbia Business School. I rediscovered my passion for art and tarot.

While every year has offered more than I knew that life could offer, 2025 feels special in a way that words cannot quite describe. How could it not, after the beautiful gift that 2024 gave me?

❤️