Code Paths

“YES, NO, HELLO, THANK YOU, GOOD-BYE.” Eight-year-old Jearranai “Jear” Jujaroen’s English vocabulary comprised six words when she arrived with her family in Portland from Bangkok, Thailand, in 1997. “Seeing snow for the first time was really fun,” she recalls. “I was young, but I had always been adaptable and self-reliant. This helped me quickly get used to the new culture.” Jear’s grandmother had immigrated to Maine a decade earlier, opening Saeng Thai House restaurant on Congress Street.

Jear attended the former Cathedral School on Munjoy Hill, then King Middle School, taking public transit or walking everywhere she went. A teacher at King encouraged Jear and her family to consider a program at Waynflete that had been created to attract students from diverse backgrounds. She began her studies at the school in ninth grade and was later followed by younger brother Jomkit “James” Jujaroen.

“I tried almost every sport—even bowling—while I was at Waynflete,” Jear remembers (she was also involved in many clubs and organizations, including Student Council, during her sophomore and junior years). It was difficult for her to commit to any activity that required significant time after classes, however, as at one point she was working three part-time jobs: at her family’s restaurant, for a financial advisor, and for an interior designer. Faculty member Lydia Maier helped arrange support for Jear to attend The Island School in Eleuthera, Bahamas, in the spring semester of her junior year—just one of many memories Jear has of Lydia helping her get the most out of her Waynflete experience.

Jear matriculated at Sewanee: The University of the South in Tennessee, where, like most Waynflete alums, she discovered that her writing skills gave her a significant advantage over her first-year peers. During her undergraduate program at Sewanee, she proposed an independent project on internet censorship in China. Jear won a grant that enabled her to travel to Beijing, where she stayed with a family for two months while conducting research and working with Chinese students who assisted her with translation. “I have a distinct memory of trying to search for information on the Tiananmen Square massacre, because I happened to be in China on the anniversary,” she says. “There were no search results.” The experience caused her to reflect on how lucky Americans are to be relatively free from government intrusion. The trip also provided Jear with her first significant exposure to the technology industry.

After graduating from college, Jear returned to Portland to work for a time at her family restaurant while she considered next steps. Diplomacy seemed like an interesting career option, but the thought of years spent advancing through a dense bureaucracy was ultimately unappealing to an individual who is eager to see quick results of her hard work. While browsing the internet one day, Jear stumbled on an ad for a coding boot camp. “I had always been told that you had to be good at math to be a programmer or that coding isn’t for women. This way of thinking is why there’s an imbalance in the tech industry. I’ve always looked at imbalances as opportunities. I thought to myself, ‘Why don’t I try learning this?’”

Jear began making her way through online coding courses in her spare time and also sought out software engineering and coding clubs in Portland. “I connected with a local mentor, who I met with every week. They helped me see that there is often more than one way to solve a problem. Sometimes we would sit and work on a coding project together. It made a huge difference.” Jear was surprised to discover that she was engrossed by books on topics as obscure as JavaScript. She was also learning that software engineers could enjoy lucrative careers with the freedom to work from any location that had a reliable internet connection. “My next thought was, What’s the fastest way to achieve what I want? Because there’s always a better way than the traditional routes that are typically considered the only paths to success.”

The answer revealed itself in the form of a program at Hack Reactor, a New York City-based coding boot camp that is well known for its challenging curriculum. It was an intense three months. Dollar pizza slices and $5 halal cart dinners—split in half to make two meals—helped her make ends meet. “I met people from all walks of life,” she says. “Individuals from music backgrounds, people with computer science degrees, MIT grads. It didn’t matter where you had started. It was all about how much hard work you put in.”

Jear’s first few jobs immersed her in startup culture—small teams, extraordinarily long workdays, and business struggles due to precarious funding. She worked for an organization whose technology facilitated resident moves for property management companies, coded for a firm that described itself as the Airbnb of medium-term stays, and helped build a group event planning app. “I saw that you don’t need to have everything figured out to start a business,” she recalls. “These were great learning experiences for me— we were all learning together.” She observed talented, well-connected business owners in vulnerable moments, unable to raise further funding. (“I also learned that it’s good for a startup to fail faster rather than to drag things out when they’re going bad.”) Jear was eventually offered a role as a mobile engineer, a discipline that was entirely new to her. “I thought, ‘Here we go again. I can learn this!’” She went on to serve as the team’s senior engineer.

Jear was eventually recruited by Chief, a private membership network that connects and supports women leaders, to work on their mobile application and help transition to a new platform. “Female empowerment, female leadership—it felt like everything had come full circle for me. I was ready.”

During a recent Waynflete alumni panel, Jear made the thoughtprovoking point that a traditional four-year college doesn’t have to be the mandatory destination for every Waynflete graduate. “The path to success isn’t always straightforward,” she says. “Some careers demand a specific college degree, of course, and college can help some people figure out what they want to do. But countless tech entrepreneurs have demonstrated that some high school graduates can learn better in the real world. Four years in college can delay their path to success and set them back financially with a lot of debt. One great thing about America is that you can always go back to college.”

Jear was thrilled to learn of Waynflete’s expanded computer science, engineering, and robotics offerings in Middle and Upper School (see article on page 14). She wholeheartedly endorses the idea that even if an individual isn’t destined for a career in technology or engineering, having an understanding of these disciplines will be increasingly essential. She relishes opportunities to mentor women who are interested in tech, particularly young women of color. She is involved in Women Who Code, which hosts virtual events ranging from an introduction to the fundamentals of programming to interviews with women from the tech industry. She is a member of Code Nation, an organization that leads boot camp programs in partnership with New York City schools for minority students who might otherwise be excluded. Finally, she serves as a mentor for the group Girls Who Code. “We talk about their aspirations and career goals,” she says. “I’ve met so many amazing girls. I think to myself, ‘Wow, I want to be you when I grow up!’ I am constantly impressed by how brave girls are these days in pursuing what they want to do.”

As a young girl growing up in Thailand, Jear had been taught to assume traditional gender roles, “to just do what elders say—be a ‘good girl,’ don’t ask questions, don’t speak up,” she says. She recalls being amazed by a dinner out in Portland with a friend’s family. “It was the first time I had actually ordered something on my own. The server was going around the table and asking everyone what they wanted. I remember being in awe of my friend, that she knew what she wanted and she could order it herself.” While she believes that much of her personal growth was the result of simply moving to the United States—and having no choice but to develop a sense of independence and self-reliance at a young age— Jear also observes that her sense of self-confidence was unleashed at Waynflete. “I absolutely think that Waynflete was a great place for me to grow into myself. It really helped bring out that curiosity in me.”

Ask Jear what she loves best about her work and the answer comes quickly: “solving problems.” She performs at her best when learning something new—and learning it quickly. “I like seeing patterns and connecting the dots and finding opportunities to discover that I can do things I didn’t believe I could,” she says. Her hopes that software engineering would provide a sense of freedom have borne out in reality—her remote work for Chief meant that she was able to return to Portland, where she lives with her fiancé (both work in the technology field and are also involved in real estate investment). There are many paths open to Jear in the future: continuing to advance her skills as a solo engineer, moving into leadership roles, or starting her own business. “None of us are entitled to anything—we have to put in the hard work,” she says. “But as long as you are persistent and consistent in your actions, and give yourself a chance to succeed and to fail, you can be anything you want to be.”