Connie Qian grew up in Silicon Valley in a largely immigrant community and learned Java in high school, later building a specialist focus on cybersecurity and infrastructure software at Forgepoint, where she served as a board observer for Sphere Technologies, ReversingLabs, Converge Insurance, and Verituity and started the Field Guide series to pass along lessons from company-building experts. At Square she built the business case for a centralized procurement function after noticing inefficiencies that don't show up in consolidated financials, and she likes to joke that business school was worth it partly because she visited all seven continents in a year and picked up D-league ice hockey.