Alarice's Authentic Journeys

Earlier this month, my daughter finished her first coding class, and she was glowing with pride. It was the glow from building something from scratch.

She created a game! (Yes, this was a proud mom moment)

There were characters. Movement. Rules. A goal. It wasn’t perfect, but it was hers.

What struck me wasn’t the technical skill. It was the mindset.

She didn’t worry about whether she was “technical.”
She didn’t debate whether coding was “for her.”
She didn’t hesitate because she might “get it wrong.”

She learned the tools over 5 weeks (with high school girls as the instructors!), and then started experimenting.

Move the character. Add a jump. Test it. Fix it. Try again.

Iteration as an instinct.

And it made me wonder, when did we stop doing that?

Somewhere between school and the C-suite, many of us trade curiosity for competence. We build careers around what we know and quietly avoid what we don’t. We protect our expertise. We avoid looking like beginners. We say things like:
“I’m not technical.”
“That’s for the innovation team.”
“AI is moving too fast.”

But watching her build that game reminded me of something simple and powerful: No one is born technical. They are born curious.

Coding, AI, new platforms, emerging tech… these are all just tools. And tools reward the curious.

In her class, mistakes weren’t failures. They were debugging steps.

Imagine if we approached emerging technology the same way.

What if instead of debating whether AI will replace us, we experimented with it?
What if instead of waiting to be trained, we opened the platform and clicked around?
What if we modeled visible learning for our teams — and our children?

When I asked her about her game, trying to understand how it worked, she lit up even more.

Curiosity is contagious.

And leadership in this era requires it.

The leaders who will thrive aren’t the ones who know the most.
They are the ones willing to learn in public.

While my daughter built her first game in an afternoon, she also built something else:

Proof that confidence grows through creation.
Proof that technology is a canvas.
Proof that the only real barrier to learning is the story we tell ourselves.

So this week, I started exploring a few new AI tools that I’ve been meaning to explore. Not because I need to master every AI platform, but because I refuse to let curiosity and learning expire.

If a fourth grader can build a game from scratch, I can certainly build a new skill.

And maybe that’s the real lesson.

Stay curious.
Stay experimental.

The future will not belong to the most experienced person in the room. It will belong to the most curious.

What’s one new tool you’ve experimented with this month?

(The image above was created using AI image of a photo I had of my daughter. You can ask me about my prompt in the comments.)